Trump says criminal activity is genetic. The Nazis showed where such conversations could lead

By Benjamin Carter Hett

In a recent interview, Donald Trump claimed that 13,000 “murderers” had been allowed into the United States through an “open border.” He added that with murderers “it’s in their genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

That criminal activity has its roots in a perpetrator’s genetic makeup is an old, largely discredited idea. Trump spewing questionable science is nothing new. But the disturbing implications of what he said raise the specter of crimes far worse than anything a murderer could do.

The Italian doctor and criminologist Cesare Lombroso came up with the idea of ​​the “born criminal” in the 1870s. Lombroso believed criminals were “primitive” people born into the modern world – recognizable by their thick hair, dark skin and small skulls. As an expression of the racism of his time, he equated criminals with Africans, indigenous Americans, Sinti and Roma and even southern Italians. In the fifth and final edition of his book Criminal Man, he concluded that the “struggle for existence” should protect us “from pity” for born criminals who belonged “not to our species, but to the species of bloodthirsty beasts.” . Ironically, his criminology became a justification for mass killings.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Lombroso’s ideas gradually fell out of favor. But under the Nazis they made a comeback in Germany as what the Nazis called “criminal biology.” When the Nazis gained control of the German police, criminal biology became their paradigm for identifying and punishing lawbreakers.

For the Nazis, the task of the criminal police was not only to catch criminals after they had committed a crime, but also to prevent crime. The Nazi criminal police, based on their supposed criminal biology, had the authority to send anyone they suspected of committing a crime in the future to a concentration camp.

And Nazi leaders talked about criminals—particularly repeat offenders—with clear murderous intent.

Hans Schneickert, a high-ranking Berlin police officer, wrote in 1935 that criminal policy was about “exterminating life unworthy of living,” i.e. genetic criminals. The term “life not worth living” had been coined just a few years earlier by a prominent criminal law professor.

The head of the entire criminal police in Nazi Germany, Arthur Nebe, wrote in 1939 that a criminal “should not be given the opportunity to carry his terrible genes into the community and breed criminals unhindered.” Nebe’s deputy Paul Werner added that “if a criminal or antisocial person has (criminal) ancestors”, their behavior is “hereditary” and “change cannot be achieved through educational influences”. different.”

The Nebe police began working closely with Robert Ritter, a doctor engaged in research into the alleged criminal habits of generations of Sinti and Roma and his strange obsession with the “Jenisch” people – a Sinti-affiliated group, the Ritter belonged – had made a name for being “a remnant of primitive tribes” and was responsible for most crimes.

Two things are important: First, that the Nazis racialized criminals by assuming that lawbreakers were defined by their genes and closely related to the Sinti and Roma, the Yenish people and the Jews. And secondly, that the Nazis took the next step: this racial group had to be “dealt with differently” – in other words: killed.

The Nazis created “special courts” to conduct quick trials without appeals and to “render harmless,” “eradicate,” and “destroy” their defendants. Criminals or even suspected criminals could also be sent to concentration camps. Eventually, these camps began what was known as “extermination through labor.”

It didn’t stop there. Nebe’s crime lab began with gas chambers that used carbon monoxide. People with mental and physical disabilities were killed in these chambers. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Nebe went east to command what the Nazis called a task force – tasked with shooting “saboteurs,” “looters” and Jews in unimaginable numbers. He brought many detectives with him. This was the first form of what we now call the Holocaust.

When mass shootings proved too stressful for task force personnel, Nebe remembered the gas chambers his laboratory had developed and began experimenting with them again. This was the technology of the Holocaust as we normally imagine it. Most of the people the Nazis executed in gas chambers were killed with carbon monoxide. Nebe and his criminal police were the architects of this form of mass murder.

Having developed this model of racializing “criminals” and the technology to kill them on a mass scale, the Nazis had no problem applying it to the killing of people with disabilities, Sinti and Roma, LGBTQ+ people, and of course Jews.

When Trump makes statements about genetic criminals — particularly when he equates criminals with immigrants and ethnic minorities and talks about giving police “a really violent day” to deal with them — we should be concerned. We know the dark truth about where racializing, criminalizing and genocidal language can lead.

Benjamin Carter Hett is Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. His most recent book is “The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War.” This article was published by the Los Angeles Times and distributed by Tribune Content Agency.