This is an extreme example but would like to point out that there is a long history of using doctors and scientists for propaganda purposes to further a transformational political agenda, as is happening with “global warming” and appears to be happening now with Covid-19 pandemic as well.
One of the first principles of propaganda is to have those who are authority figures in the eyes of the public promote your agenda. Doctors are probably the most respected authority figures you can have and scientists are a close second. People have to entrust their lives to doctors, so they are very respected, in general.
Eugenics programs are an example of a time when doctors and the medical system was used in order to propagandize the people into accepting a process that was intended to fundamentally transform nations. The public inherently trusts doctors and for that reason they can be valuable tools for propaganda purposes. Eugenics was not just a Nazi program but there were eugenics laws in the US also. Hitler was actually inspired by the eugenics program in the US.
The Nazis implemented the first universal healthcare system in a country with a mixed system, at least partly capitalist. The holocaust began in the German hospitals with the T4 program, which had a goal of exterminating unwanted members of society, such as the retarded, insane and the handicapped.
The idea of eugenics started in Great Britain and was also popular in the United States. At one time over half the states had eugenics laws. The goal of the eugenics program in the U.S. was to eliminate undesirable families in the US by sterilization. Many progressives were involved in the eugenics movement in the US, such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of International Planned Parenthood Foundation.
Eugenics can be considered to still be active in the US in such programs as Planned Parenthood, which tends to abort minority babies and those from poor families.
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