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'This may be the most dangerous thing Donald Trump believes’: eugenic populism and the American body politic

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Version 2 2023-06-16, 09:46
Version 1 2023-06-13, 14:12
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-16, 09:46 authored by Sue Currell
The 2016 election of a self-declared eugenicist to the most powerful political role in the world signified a widespread and worrying forgetting of America’s eugenic past. This essay shows how America’s current president employs similar rhetorical and fictive devices to those employed by eugenicists and politicians in the 1920s and 1930s, strategies that he now uses to fuel his supremacist fantasies. By linking up Trump’s lifelong belief in his genetic superiority (and thereby the apparent “truth” of eugenics more broadly) with earlier eugenic beliefs of the 1920s and 1930s, this paper explores how, despite being scientifically discredited, eugenics steadfastly remained a popular ideological staple of American meritocratic and supremacist belief.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Amerikastudien / American Studies

ISSN

0340-2827

Publisher

Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg

Issue

2

Volume

64

Page range

291-302

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2020-01-10

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2020-07-14

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2020-01-13

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