> You can't always apply modern standards of morality to historical figures.
That's fine, but lets understand that this applies to Edison as well. Tesla fanatics judge him by modern business practices and regulations, but Tesla gets the hand-wringing reply of "but but at the time..." which seems unfair.
Lets also get something straight, its one thing to have a positive view of eugenics and another to be a fervent supporter. Tesla published that screed in, what we would call a sci-fi or futurist magazine, and signed his name to it in 1935, during the height of Jewish persecution in Germany. As an educated Serbian I'm sure he was fully aware of this.
Eugenics received widespread support pretty much until the truth came out about the treatment of the Jews in Germany, which is when the supporters suddenly woke up and understood what the realization of those ideas inevitably leads to.
But that truth was not fully revealed until 1945 with the liberation of various concentration camps. Until then, most details and rumors about the camps was dismissed as idle propaganda because noone believed the reality could possibly be so shocking.
In 1935, little was known about what was going on in with the Jews in Germany, and most of the really extreme ideas were not implemented yet. What discrimination occurred was not unique in Germany, as most nations of Europe practiced some minor forms of tacitly-approved anti-semitism
>But that truth was not fully revealed until 1945 with the liberation of various concentration camps.
This is harmful revisionism. What was going on in Germany in the 1930s and the laws and actions against Jews were well known at the time around the world.
Are you saying that what was going on at the camps was well known across the world in the 1930s, even though it wasn't even happening yet? Hitler was practicing on the mentally disabled, handicapped, and the poor at the time.
If you're saying that racial laws and discrimination against Jews were well known, that's clearly true. Eugenics has nothing to do with fair treatment, though, it has to do with sterilization and extermination. Discrimination against Jews by law in Europe is older than Christianity.
Just like what is going on with the Australian aborigines and the laws governing their 'management as a species' until the 80's are widely known around the world too, right?
(Hint: Australia was practicing real race-based eugenics programs until the 80's. Australian aborigines' weren't even considered human beings until the late 60's.. the point is that atrocities can occur right in front of our eyes, and if we're not willing to see them, they can just stay there ..)
Antisemitism is different than eugenics in fact, if not in spirit. Eugenics is the conceit that elites amongst the population should pick the winners of this generation in order to 'improve' the next. Antisemitism is saying that there's something in the nature of Jewish people that is bad for society in general.
One is about picking winners; the other is an opinion on how to pick them.
That's fine, but lets understand that this applies to Edison as well. Tesla fanatics judge him by modern business practices and regulations, but Tesla gets the hand-wringing reply of "but but at the time..." which seems unfair.
Lets also get something straight, its one thing to have a positive view of eugenics and another to be a fervent supporter. Tesla published that screed in, what we would call a sci-fi or futurist magazine, and signed his name to it in 1935, during the height of Jewish persecution in Germany. As an educated Serbian I'm sure he was fully aware of this.