The unexpected intersection between Adolf Hitler and Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) is often left out of history books, yet their philosophies reveal striking parallels. Both were committed Darwinian evolutionists and eugenicists, believing that “survival of the fittest” justified the elimination of what they considered “lesser races.”1

While their methods differed dramatically, their goals were aligned. Hitler wielded overt force with catastrophic consequences. Sanger, by contrast, adopted a more subtle approach that ensured her influence extended far beyond her lifetime. She played the long game—and gained her objective.

Instead of concentration camps, Sanger promoted birth control and abortion, writing that these measures were essential to controlling the “mass of Negroes who breed disastrously from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”2

Both operated under the belief that reason, science, and facts validated their ideologies. At the time, evolutionary theory and “survival of the fittest” were widely regarded as factual and irrefutable.

Disguised as Compassion

In a plot twist, Sanger disguised her eugenic goals as compassionate intervention—a “caring project”—stating, “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

Scholar George Grant described this as “a ruse, a manipulative attempt to get blacks to cooperate in their own elimination.”

In other words, “facts” became street thugs disguised as nannies. But these facts were neither neutral nor truly factual—they were always part of a selectively biased narrative.

While we don’t see eugenics today (or at least not openly), similar patterns of persuasion persist.

The New Scientific Era

Paul Kingsnorth described what happened this way:

“Into the ruins walked the new authority of ‘science’—an ideology posing as methodology, ready to carve up and remake the world… When we ‘Follow The Science’… we are following instead a pretense of objectivity and a claim to authority. We are following a new priesthood…”

“Neutral” facts continue to be used to coerce and manipulate. Backed by the vault of scientific knowledge, white-robed experts leverage data and charts, often still under the guise of a “caring project.”

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Covid Mongering

The Covid lockdowns offer a modern-day example of the same kind of “compassionate” crowd control. Retrospective apologies, admissions, and acknowledgments reveal the real truth: the alarms surrounding Covid were highly exaggerated. They were used to steer public behavior under a pretense of neutrality and almost motherly concern.

But perhaps the real tragedy was that many notable Christian leaders, far from opposing this, actually allowed themselves to be used in furthering this agenda.

Investigative journalist Megan Basham detailed this in her book Shepherds for Sale, noting how the government used evangelical leaders to amplify its Covid messaging. She covered a podcast that took place between Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer, who interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins (Dr. Anthony Fauci’s boss).3

The podcast covered “Why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.”

Basham goes on to state that, “As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

Notable church leaders championed slogans like “Love your neighbor, get the jab” despite limited evidence supporting vaccine safety.4

Christians who helped promote this agenda included not only Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition, but as Basham pointed out, even they “were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.”5

These echo Sanger’s tactics, where supposed compassion masked manipulative agendas.

As Flannery O’Connor observed:

“In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness… When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror.”

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A New Authority

Science posed as a compassionate religion, a source of absolute authority.

“Science, right from the beginning of the modern enterprise, was always, and explicitly, a new way of seeing; even a new faith… which is why arguments around scientific questions, from COVID to climate change, are often so vexed and divisive. Each of us wants to claim the mantle of ‘science’ for our perspective because of the authority it bestows. ‘Follow The Science’ usually translates in practice as ‘follow me.’”

The answer is not simply to throw down the bloated mantle of science but also to raise something new in its place. In dropping this nefarious cancer of “neutrality,” tell a new story in its place.

Tolkien and Lewis saw what was happening even in their day. At the front of their battle lines, they wrote stories depicting what this looked like. In part two of this article, we’ll look at that next week.

Stay tuned!