Breivik Was a Fan of Neo-Eugenics

From Jihad Watch:

That Breivik’s mixed bag of writings reflects, explicitly and conspicuously, the thought of a distinguished Princeton University professor, Lee Silver, has so far gone almost totally unacknowledged.

Not totally because my Discovery Institute colleague John West picked it up and has written about it searchingly. Who is Lee Silver? He’s the evolutionary biologist and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who invented the term and concept of “reprogenetics,” a new spin on the old idea of eugenics as a means to perfect the human race. In his manifesto, Breivik goes on about this idea, citing Silver by name along with his book Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family, copying passages from Wikipedia that elaborate on Silver’s proposed scheme.

Breivik likes that in contrast to the old pseudoscience of eugenics ...

...what of the sinister scientism to which Breivik, in fact, subscribed and that he wrote about in detail? He expounds on the importance of government funding for science, that feeding the poor must not take precedence over science, that feeding the Third World poor is in fact a bad idea, that the size of the human population needs to be halved (through voluntary means!), that “social Darwinism” got a bum rap, that “[t]he never-ending collective pursuit for scientific evolution and perfection should become the benchmark and essence of our existence.”

From the self-interview section of Breivik’s manifesto:

“Q: What should be our civilizational objectives, how do you envision a perfect Europe?

“A: ‘Logic’ and rationalist thought (a certain degree of national Darwinism) should be the fundament of our societies.” This dark vision is not his invention. It’s a spin-off of what he aptly calls “National Darwinism,” which got its start in the writing of Charles Darwin. While a gentle soul in person and wishing no harm to anyone, Darwin envisioned a picture of the world that equates “extermination” (a favorite word of Darwin’s) with biological advancement. I’ve written elsewhere about the historical, moral consequences of Darwinism, quite apart from any explanatory value of natural selection in biology.