Body Fascism and Genetic Cleansing
a television polemical script by Nabil Shaban
for "The Heaven and Earth Show" BBC
The following speech is an extract from Nabil Shaban�s stage play �THE FIRST TO GO�
...a play about disabled people in Nazi Germany.
Nabil Shaban was initially commissioned to write this play in 1995
by Graeae Theatre Company of Disabled Performers, England.
THE SPEAKER who thinks he is HITLER
Now is the time. Now is your time! Now we must clear the ground for the Coming Race, the Herren Volk, the Race of Super Men! First, we must rid Germany of inferior, physically and mentally degenerate Aryans. If we want beautiful and healthy flowers to grow in our garden then we must destroy all weeds which take all the goodness but give nothing in return. The Unproductive Consumers. The Useless Eaters! No, do not squeal at the harshness of my words. I am not the first to speak out. Did not that great British scientist, Sir Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, argue that with the selection of the finest and fittest specimens of humanity, we could eradicate physical and mental defects. Did not Charles Darwin in his brilliant book, �THE DESCENT OF MAN�, cry out for the eugenic organisation of society. He spoke the God given truth when he said the care of the weak and sick members of society will lead inevitably to a serious degeneration of the human race. Nietzche, our Germany�s very own genius who spoke for Zarathustra, proposed that only people with proper family histories be permitted to marry and that there be a forbidding of life to decadents, that they must at all costs be eliminated. This GOD among thinkers wrote, and I quote �....society is not entitled to exist for its own sake, but only as a substructure and scaffolding, by means of which a select race of beings may elevate themselves to their higher duties, and, in general, a higher existence.�
No, I am not the First with this Vision.... But I AM THE FIRST with the Will and the Power to see it through!
It is my privilege as your Fuhrer to inaugerate the first Biocracy in world history....
We must see to it that only the healthy beget children. And that only the healthy and pure be born. The state must act as the guardian of a millenial future. It must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must give racial leadership to our doctors, who - as cultivator of genes - biological soldiers - must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on.... One day in the not too distant future when we have the right tools, the people will lose their sentimentalism and will demand that we make war on the feeble-minded, the epileptics, the mentally diseased, the blind, the deaf, the deformed and the cripples. Soon the time will come when society will value the shining truth that these pathetic creatures are inimical to the human race because they perpetuate their deficiencies and thus threaten the quality of the ensuing generations.
(from �The First To Go� - Nabil Shaban - 1996)
The following are extracts of Nabil�s written contributions to �D.A.R.E.�, a play created by Robert Rae
and company of Jim McSharry, John Hollywood, Darryl Beaton and Nabil Shaban in 1997, at Theatre
Workshop, Edinburgh, Scotland)
(The SLEEPER awakes to echoes of the following list)
�X-ray sterilizations, womb-removals, lethal injections starvation, deliberate
deprivation of medicines, gas chambers. Slaughter of the Innocents, Life unworthy of
life. Half a million dead - probably more. If looks can kill, they probably will and they
did....kill you because they hate the way you look.
But why haunt me with all this Third Reich nightmare stuff now?
Is it that time already? Ideas and plans for a Perfect species of Human have come
back. Now we have the technology
....They told us Hitler was dead as they laughed all the way to the bank, but we, the
Hidden Ones, knew that the allure of his perverted paradise would bring him back to
life, and so counted the hours when the Call to Arms would sound, we Mutants would
rise up to save humanity from itself. �
(a proposed polemic for BBC tv �Heaven and Earth Show�)
In 1983 I came up with the term �Body Fascism�. Body Fascism is where a person is categorised or presented as superior or inferior on the basis of physical appearance. Where a person�s value in society is determined by what they look like. Where expectations of virtue, heroism, intelligence or worthiness is premised on whether the person�s body or face has a socially or culturally acceptable appearance. Beauty is Good. Ugly is Evil. Two legs Good. No legs Bad.
During the 1980s, the Thatcher Era inaugurated the Fertilization and Embryology Bill which carried an amendment that allowed the termination of a disasbled foetus which achieved its full term of nine months. It was no longer a criminal offense to eliminate a human being that is recognised as having full consciousness, if the doctors and parents decide it is a life unworthy of life. With the passing of this Bill the Writing was clearly on the Wall. And Disabled People were being made to feel that modern society really wished them dead.
In 1995 I came up with the term �Genetic Cleansing�. Genetic engineering, gene therapy, DNA testing, genetic and embryo screening made me realise that the Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia was just the tip of the iceberg of the new Nazi mentality that was reinfecting the world.
Why do people see Hitler�s eugenics movement as evil but not today�s? Today�s scientists in collusion with politicians and the entertainment business, are trying to wipe difference. The packaging is different but the outcome is the same.
I see things like DNA testing as pinning a yellow star on our chests. Its putting a noose around our necks. It legitimizes the medical profession when they terminate children with unreasonable disabilities, when they medical and surgical treatment to patients whose illness is seen as an unnecessary drain on resources. How dare the filthy doctors withdraw food and water from people, they deem in their arrogance to be invalid.
It is our duty as disabled people to stop the rot. We have to resist, we have to fight, we have to block Genetic Cleansing, we have to prevent this insidious, creeping sanitization of the annihilation of disabled people.
For me, DNA stands for a loud Disabled No to Annihilation.
Our Disabled Activist groups should go beyond handcuffing themselves to buses because soonthe issue of accessible transport will be academic, because soon there will be no disabled people needing accessible transport. Our new targets need to be genetic research institutes, the Royal Society of Paediatrics, the British Medical Association. We should chain ourselves to gates of Downing Street.
We must make you realise that the world you love, the world that excites and entertains you, would not exist if there were no defective genes....and it will cease to exist if you continue to seek to remove disabled people from the future of humanity.
We, so-called disabled and defective people have brought you Beethoven, Toulouse le Trec, Byron, Walter Scott, Stevie Wonder, Virginia Woolf, Woody Guthrie, Stephen Hawking, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Ivarr the Boneless, Nelson....Roosevelt,JFK, Stephen Hawking.
Eliminate us from your future and the world will be a very sterile, stagnant, bland, boring place.
However, I�m not pleading with you to allow us to continue to exist....I�m telling you.
And if you continue to ignore our peaceful protests...then we should consider a declaration of war and an armed response. After all, the British Government believes in fighting fascism with violence. We have only to look at the bombing raids on Libya, Iraq and Serbia to be set an example.
In my view, anyone who wants a Perfect Baby is a Nazi.....and should be put up against the wall and SHOT....whether they be scientists, doctors, politicians, businessmen or parents. The Second World War was supposedly fought to rid the world of Nazis....if we now look at the modern eugenics movement with its genetic engineering, embryo screening and genetic cleansing....it seems we were lied to...we didn�t win the war after all.
(Dr. Nabil Shaban, England, 2000 A.D.)
In Germany's Third Reich, the first people to be gassed by the Nazis were the Disabled People. The whole extermination machinery was created and designed by bureaucrats and doctors to find the most efficient, speedy and lethal method of carrying out Hitler's Euthanasia Project. The Final Solution to the so-called Jewish Problem was originally devised as a biological weapon for the Eugenics Movement and Philosophy.
"The First To Go", a painting by Nabil Shaban, April 2000
