In which the pond wonders whether Miranda the Devine and the Bolter should be the first to be sterilised in its brand new eugenics programme ...

(Above: please, relax, you're in safe hands, the pond has passed the toughest of tests and is well fitted to promote the happiness and future welfare of the race).

The pond has to regularly, if reluctantly, split infinitives and break Godwin's Law.

This is an expensive business, with the fines in the swear jar almost amounting to the cost of a square centimetre of Sydney soil, but given the number of proto-, neo- and plain, common, ordinary garden-variety fascists writing for the reptile rags, it's an everyday hazard of reptile watching.

For today's read, for example, it's necessary to do a little bit of background research.

Fortunately back in 2004, Edwin Black wrote Hitler's debt to America for The Graudian, which inter alia, contained these pars:

...In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant wrote: "Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilisation of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race." 
One day in the early 1930s, Whitney visited Grant to show off a letter he had just received from Germany, written by the corporal, now out of prison and rising in the German political scene. Grant could only smile. He pulled out his own letter. It was from the same German, thanking Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race. The fan letter called Grant's book "his Bible". The man who sent those letters was Adolf Hitler. 
Hitler displayed his knowledge of American eugenics in much of his writing and conversation. In Mein Kampf, for example, he declared: "The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of clearest reason and, if systematically executed, represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole."

Of course it's possible to research the original text of Mein Kampf, available in many places on the full to overflowing intertubes, with a copy at Project Gutenberg here.

Hitler was paying particular attention to the syphilitic at that point in his proceedings, but his point applied to Jews and homosexuals in equal measure, just as eugenics and the notion of sterilisation has also been applied to American blacks, Australian aborigines, and anyone else fascist writers happened to dislike at the time of writing.

Just before that quoted par, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:

This process of cleansing our 'Kultur' will have to be applied in practically all spheres. The stage, art, literature, the cinema, the Press and advertisement posters, all must have the stains of pollution removed and be placed in the service of a national and cultural idea. The life of the people must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our modern eroticism and also from every unmanly and prudish form of insincerity. In all these things the aim and the method must be determined by thoughtful consideration for the preservation of our national well-being in body and soul. The right to personal freedom comes second in importance to the duty of maintaining the race.
Only after such measures have been put into practice can a medical campaign against this scourge begin with some hope of success. But, here again, half-measures will be valueless. Far-reaching and important decisions will have to be made. It would be doing things by halves if incurables were given the opportunity of infecting one healthy person after another. This would be that kind of humanitarianism which would allow hundreds to perish in order to save the suffering of one individual.

Now the pond could go on quoting Hitler endlessly - after all, the entire book is infested with ideas of what the strong should do to the weak and the different and the other, and some ideas - such as the cleansing of the Press have a strong appeal. (By golly, give the pond a minute to come up with a list of names ...)

But why waste time on ancient history, when we have a real live fascist in the form of Miranda the Devine scribbling furiously for the Daily Terror?

Yes, it's Adolf Hitler day at the Terror, and even more amazing, they want people to pay for the pleasure of the read, when Adolf himself and his talk of the boon of sterilisation can be had for free.

Now it will be noted that the Devine doesn't raise the matter as a rhetorical question - is it time? - and is vaguely aware that others in the past have said similar things ...

Well, yes, that's because the idea, and the logic, is straight out of Nazi Germany, and it embodies exactly and precisely the sort of thinking used by Adolf throughout his book ...

The devine right of the Devine to judge and to punish is a standard play in old school eugenics ...

There's plenty for Greg Hunt to wiki (watch out for stray walri) on eugenics ... and there's also a listing for Eugenics in the United States ...but of course the pond must pay attention to the local resident fascist ...

Indeed, indeed, the sensitive fascist always thinks of the hip pocket and cares about humanity ...

One of the pond's particular pleasures when it strays into this area is to recall that Dr Kellogg - of the infamous cereals the pond refuses to purchase - was a prime nutter and eugenicist ...

Whenever Kellogg pops up in the conversation, the pond can get distracted for hours - his wiki is just the start for enthusiasts wanting to explore a genuinely mad man, who in other times would have been considered a prime candidate for sterilisation ...

One of the great things about the movement was its tendency to do posters and illustrations ...

And so to the rest of the Devine, with her bit about the Nazis in context:

No doubt the Devine would take it personally if the pond were to suggest that, pace Adolf, on the basis of her scribbling, and her bilious contributions to hate, fear and loathing in the community, she had forfeited her right to be a parent, and should be dragged off to enjoy forced sterilisation ...

But those in power never have the empathy or the imagination to wonder whether what they want to do to others might at some time, for whatever reason, be done unto them ...

And it's not just the Devine.

Here's how the crypto-fascist in the Bolter struggled with the issue back in 2010, before allowing the full fascist in himself to bloom ... (the rest of the text is easy enough to google, because while the pond will link to Hitler, it worries about encouraging present-day fascists with a link) ...

...yes, any suggestion of compulsory sterilisation does indeed strike me as "Hitleresque". Nor can I help but flinch even at Harris's method, to leave it to the addicts to decide whether to spay themselves for cash. I agree with the critics who say this is preying on people at their most vulnerable, tempting them with cash they're desperate to blow on drugs. But I can afford to be squeamish. I never have to see the babies born screaming for mum's drugs, or the ones left unfed while mum and dad get high. I don't foster the children whose mum is too drug-blasted to look after them, and nor must I patch up the ones belted bloody by a step-dad amped up on amphetamines. Easy for me to be moral, see? So I must force myself to face this issue squarely: if a drug addict would sell even their fertility for just $300, what might they sell their children for? If they're so desperate for cash for drugs, what would they do with the grocery money for their family? And how sinful is it really to offer them $300 to do what you'd desperately hope they'd do just out of pity for their yet-unconceived child? So, no. I don't see Geschke as "Hitleresque" but desperate - beside himself with worry for children beyond our urgent help, no matter how brightly we vow to fix our "poor communication between departments". And I'll go further. Ask what is most truly insane and even evil: to pay addicts $300 not to have a child, or have our Government pay them the $5294 "baby bonus" if they do?

Translation. Yes, the Devine is quite possibly Hitleresque, but what's so wrong with Hitler and some of his ideas? After all, he was a vegan, loved dogs, and was a keen amateur painter ... and he was always keen to save a little money while helping the master race rule the world. And the pond, with its German blut, would have been destined to rule down under ...

By golly we could do to the Dutch down under what Hitler did to the Dutch in Europe ...

So sorry defectives, you've been Devined ...

After all this, the pond usually enjoys a cartoon as a way to cleanse the pallet, but strangely, Rowe's evocative 'toon this day hints at another way to deal with difficult people (and as always, more Rowe here).