Charles Darwin gets shoddily treated, in my view, by the whole ‘Social Darwinism’ idea. As a pal of mine likes to point out, it’s really Social Spencerism, anyway: ‘it was Spencer, not Darwin, who gave us the phrase “survival of the fittest,” though Darwin would later use it in his writing.’ And it was Spencer, not Darwin, who used these ideas to support his conservative economic ideology. That said, Herbert Spencer derived the term and his ideas from his reading of Darwin. Suffice to say then, that these are, perhaps, somewhat muddy waters?
But I guess my beef here is twofold. I don’t know that much about Herbert Spencer. I’ve read a lot more by and about Charles Darwin, and what I know of him suggests a subtler and more humane mind; the kind of mind the quote in the picture at the top of this post reflects, aware of and sensitive to moral socio-political issues. Not the ‘spiritual father’ of the ‘perverted science’, as Churchill so memorably and astutely put it, that informs such ideologies as fascism, and the current ‘free-market’ right, as embodied by Trump, Bojo, and now the appalling cypher that is Liz Truss.
Darwin knew the answer to the rhetorical question he posed. And I think it’s long past overdue time to stop attributing fascist ideologies to him.
PS – The Darwin image is a tea-towel, from The Radical Tea Towel Co!