A dark passage from Thomas Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin:
Very often the question of 1941 is posed in a more abstract way, as a matter of European civilization. In some arguments, German (and Soviet) killing policies are the culmination of modernity, which supposedly began when Enlightenment ideas of reason in politics were practiced during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The pursuit of modernity in this sense does not explain the catastrophe of 1941, at least not in any straightforward way. Both regimes rejected the optimism of the Enlightenment: that social progress would follow a masterly march of science through the natural world. Hitler and Stalin both accepted a late-nineteenth-century Darwinistic modification: progress was possible, but only as a result of a violent struggle between races or classes.
The last sentence is the most important: Hitler and Stalin both accepted a late-nineteenth-century Darwinistic modification: progress was possible, but only as a result of a violent struggle between races or classes.
This is what I find troubling about those who accept the natural history of Man as the only history of Man. In many cases they equate Darwinian evolution with human advancement, and belief in Darwinian evolution with political progress.
There is no reason to suppose that social progress, however defined, is a survival characteristic, or that it can only come about as the result of peaceful cooperation between human beings.
—–Addendum—-
I would like to clarify what I wrote above. I usually post when I’m on-shift, meaning I’m exhausted. I wrote the above before the coffee had kicked in
What I am saying is that, if there is nothing in the story of man that transcends nature, that is, evolution, than there is no more reason to believe that mankind shall progress in an environment of ever greater inclusiveness and cooperation than there is to believe that mankind will progress due to violent struggles between nations, races, and social classes. There is no scientific reason to believe that the “19th century modification of Darwinism” is incorrect.