I saw this quote on reddit today:

Most people are generally good to other people. The limiting factor is who they consider ‘people’. Doctors who comitted what are now known as barabaric acts – lobotomy, for example – genuinely thought they were doing good, because at the time all the common morals to their social/class group said so. Doctors who experimented on the bodies of minorities saw nothing wrong, because the results of these experiments were for the good of people. ‘Real’ people, that is.

It’s kind of a mind-blown moment for me as it makes so much sense. Ever since becoming ill and disabled and finding out how the disabled and unemployed are treated, I have been baffled as to how so many people who consider themselves good, kind people, passionately advocate for making the lives of the disabled more difficult. Wanting to cut or stop disability benefits, make them harder to get, complaining about how much we cost the health service, pushing us down priority lists - remember during covid when the disabled who became sick were usually left to die while the able bodied were treated? And this was justified and considered appropriate? At least in the UK. So many other things. But this is it. We simply aren’t really considered people any more, we’re now just seen as parasites. Really humanity hasn’t progressed on from being animals, we’re treated the same way many animals treat a sick or injured pack member, trying to push them out of the group and get rid of them so they don’t drag the rest of the pack down by being a burden.

  • hellinkilla [they/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    4 days ago

    Well you’ve been fooled into sharing far right propaganda. I looked up one more and here’s what I found.

    The top one, Canadian Doctors Urged to Suggest Euthanasia by Wesley J Smith to “The Corner” blog on the National Review. (Like the first one I searched up, this one is also republished on “National Right to Life”… hmmm could it be a pattern?).

    What is going on at The Corner these days?

    a few items published on https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ in the past 3 days:

    there’s even a fresh one from Wesley J Smith:

    Wow that’s a lot of content… I’m sure they get lots and lots of money from evil, wealthy jerks to manipulate people to their ends. I think it’s worth knowing about so as not to do their work for free.

    NR was founded by William F Buckley and has shaped right wing politics in the US, advocating for a vision which is even further right than what has happened. It has published defence of epstein, climate change denial, racist shit of all kinds etc etc. Wesley J Smith himself wrote a book (A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy) advocating for factory farming and is one of various things he’s done to speak against animal rights. He is associated with Discovery Institute, a far right “think” tank that promotes christian creationism being taught in schools, opposes the teaching and application of evolution by natural selection, opposes civic measures to house people (particularly those who they perceive as being mentally ill or having addictions), denies the scientific consensus on climate change. &c &c &c.

    You know, between my earlier comment and now, I was thinking of following up with something about how everyone needs to be really careful in this area, because fascists and their ilk use it as a wedge issue. The waters are filthy. Of course people can arrive at a similar conclusions from totally different premise— which is to say I am not calling you a fascist. However you have been tricked into spreading fascist propaganda. But if you are arriving via communist route, you should not need to rely on, or even include, these sources. I haven’t done any further research than what I have posted here, but given the non-existent intellectual credibility and rigour of these fash, it actually makes me personally have a worse opinion on the position you are advancing than I did 24 hours ago. These people are wrong about literally everything else. I am very skeptical that they are accurately reporting good science, more likely they are bullshitting on this as they do on every other subject.

    I wasn’t expecting to find this, perfect little 🎀 after just 10 minutes more of research. As it turns out, Discovery Institute has apparently authored a well known paper called “Wedge Document” describing this very method. You’ve literally fallen into their trap, as described. Please at least skim so you can be aware of this sort of thing going forward.

    None of this was difficult to find out about; writing the comment is longer than looking it up. So I mean anybody could have done it, and I think if you are going to post something that is pretending to be “news” or otherwise factual it makes sense to do some minimal diligence, no? I had a strong sense of what I would find before starting because of how the sources have been redacted, that is not a very good sign. They want you to emotionally agree with the idea but not put you off by pointing out it is from known fash publications. Were you tricked by the original just because it is contrasted with racist stories about China? To me the complete image (How it started…) is even more stupid because nothing was “starting”? I see no apparent connections between left and right other than Canada. Anyhow, I’m not even going to get into that, I’m just sticking to the first image. There are no secrets from the curious. All I did was take the trouble to put the provided information into a search engine, for example: canadian doctors urged to suggest euthanasia wesley j smith. I’ll bet 5 beans the rest of the screenshots are from similar sources.

    Whoever found this regressive, hateful propaganda convincing should likely go through all the “information” they have stored away in their brains with a fine toothed comb because there is probably other related bullshit in there.