Robertson: Planned Parenthood Inspired Adolf Hitler, Behind 'Genocide' of Black Community

[The Straight Story]

Today on the 700 Club, Pat Robertson said that Margaret Sanger “was the one who set the stage for Adolf Hitler, she didn’t copy him, he copied her.” After running a story about how President Obama postponed his speech at Planned Parenthood in order to attend a memorial service in Texas for victims of the fertilizer plant explosion, Roberston said that the group founded by Sanger is “evil” and targets black people.

“What they said was, they said ‘what we’ve got to do in order to get the black people in America to have abortions, we have to have some noted black leader who will come out for Planned Parenthood and we’ll give him the Margaret Sanger award and therefore he will be our poster boy showing the black people they should have abortions,” Robertson maintained, “it was strictly genocide.”

While Sanger was tied to the eugenics movement, the claim that she intended to exterminate black people and use black leaders to hide such a plan is based on a quote taken badly out of context.

As PolitiFact reports, the eugenics movement was widely popular at the time of Sanger’s work, but there is “no evidence that Sanger advocated - privately or publicly - for anything even resembling the ‘genocide’ of blacks, or that she thought blacks are genetically inferior”:

video at link

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-planned-parenthood-inspired-adolf-hitler-behind-genocide-black-community

[olddots]

1. the people who watch or listen to this scum sucking tapeworm Robertson

aren't coherent and are drooling on their crosses .

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. - Mencken

[loyalsister]

3. Actually

Eugenics was not exclusive to bad actors. It was popular among progressives who thought it was humane to force sterilization so that more poor or disabled children would not be born.
The only way it got as far as it did in the US was because of that unholy alliance. The only reason it did not go further was the "discovery" of Hitler's activities.

The American Breeders Association, Harry Laughlin (head of Eugenics Records office), and other backers set the stage.

Alexander Graham Bell was a big supporter of eugenics, as well.

The movement did take on a racist agenda with the "one drop" rule and marriage restrictions. It's more complicated than what Robertson said, but there is truth to some of what he said.

I don't believe we should sanitize the history of our heroes or our villains. Margaret Sanger did great work and was a humanitarian. She did hold some unfortunate views and it leaves her open to distorted representations.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. No, Mr. Robertson, your state of Virginia inspired Adolph Hitler.

In 1924 the Commonwealth of Virginia adopted a statute authorizing the compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded for the purpose of eugenics. That's right, the state could petition to have a citizen taken into custody and involuntarily sterilized. The case of Buck v. Bell went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1928 and no one less than Oliver Wendell Holmes gave the statute his blessing and Carrie Buck was sterilized for the stated reason of being "feebleminded" when in fact she wasn't. She was merely poor and unmarried.

Other states adopted this statute and BTW, it's still standing Supreme Court law as it's never been overturned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

Hitler was so impressed with this system of sterilizing "unhealthy" individuals, he adopted the program wholesale. And it started in Virginia.

Adolf Hitler closely modelled his Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring on Laughlin's "Model Law". The Third Reich held Laughlin in such regard that they arranged for him to receive an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936. At the Nuremberg trials after World War II, Nazi doctors explicitly cited Holmes's opinion in Buck v. Bell as part of their defense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

And BTW part II, the litigant in Buck v. Bell was sterilized at the Lynchburg Training School. In Jerry Falwell's hometown, Liberty University, and not a word of condemnation or contrition.

[Initech]

5. It sure is fun to make Nazi comparisons isn't it?

The GOP wouldn't have a thought in their heads if they couldn't make Nazi comparisons all day could they?

[eShirl]

6. I wonder if there were any other prominent supporters of the eugenics movement besides Hitler?

Let's send Pat all the information we can find so he can give credit where credit is due.