Three prominent researchers warn about the current existential threat in the United States
Helmut Schwarz has been reading about what happened to science during the rise of Adolf Hitler, almost a century ago.
The German chemist just received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA Foundation in Spain, due to his contributions to the field of catalysis. For him, there are parallels between the situation in Nazi Germany and Trump’s United States.
“From 1900 to 1932, a third of all Nobel Prizes went to Germany, more than to the U.S. and the U.K. combined,” he tells EL PAÍS. He and two other scientists sat down with EL PAÍS in Bilbao, where they received their awards.
“When Hitler came to power,” he continues, “German science — which led the world — completely disintegrated. But Hitler thought that wouldn’t be a problem,” he continues. Now, Donald Trump’s administration views universities — supposed hotbeds of progressive ideology — as the enemy. He wants to bring them under his control. “In my opinion, the threat isn’t immediate, but it’s very important in the long term,” Schwarz adds.
Psychopaths, sycophants and grifters vying for power were all very prevalent at German universities and research labs at that time. While Engineering still kind of worked - as it was needed for the war machinery and larger industry - even there, with it being "politically neutral", there was a brain drain - because education allowing for creative thinking was curtailed more broadly, and many talented minds were killed or displaced or even just disfavoured in favour of more nepotistic choices.
And the myth of "German engineering" being fundamentally way above allied engineering during the war still holds in some circles, when mostly it was about different priorities (like - reliability instead of complex engineering, or the proximity fuse instead of rocketry, or radar instead of jet engines), and even in the spaces where Germans had a leg up on their enemies, it was not a fundamental advantage, but a gap that was being bridged even before German scientists were recruited after the war.
As much as history was distorted, the Nazis regime still fancied itself as secular and intellectual, right?
This one seems to view the scientific establishment as a distrusted obstacle, corrupt. There’s not even the pretense. Demolishing “woke” science is the stated point.
Sort of, they also had weird currents of esoteric nonsense, like "Welteislehre" for example. Or Himmlers expeditions to Tibet to find the origins of the master race and evidence of supetnatural abilities. They believed themselves to be secular and anticlerical, but they had their own cult with superstitions.
And they absolutely hated some scientists, relativity was a thorn in their eyes, for example, as "Jewish Science".
That's fascinating. I vaguely knew of the superstition angle, but not specifics or the extent.
There goes my afternoon, thanks.
But it does remind me of similar issues in other countries. China, for example (not to single them out) has issues with Eastern Medicine culture conflicting with scientific practices, right?
There are definitely similarities, but China has its own fascinating history there, with a lot of traditional beliefs resurfacing as weird, sanctioned versions of themselves after the cultural revolution had mostly suppressed them. I think on average, the administration in China will probably have less "true believers" and more "stuff like this is necessary to maintain societal peace and harmony" opportunists.
But that is mostly speculation on my part and hard to gauge without looking into peoples' heads.