thesenecaeffect | Nevertheless, there could be creative possibilities for a "soft" elimination of large numbers of consenting people. One way could be not letting them know that they are being killed. Alternatively, they could be convinced to kill themselves in ways that they don't recognize as "suicide." Both methods require deception, but that's not a problem: deception is part and parcel of the very concept of "Propaganda."
We all know the story of
people quietly walking into gassing chambers after having been told that
they were going to have a shower. It is an example of the strategy of
deception used in Nazi Germany to eliminate that fraction of the
population defined as "Lebensunwertes Leben," ''life unworthy of life.''
It included not only Jews and other ethnic minorities, but also "Aryan"
German citizens affected by malformations or just considered a burden
for the state.
In Germany, regular medical doctors used
barbiturates to kill children and gas chambers to get rid of adults.
Neither the victims nor their families were told of what was being
done. Officially, the victims were hospitalized to receive medical
treatment, and, later on, families received notice that, unfortunately,
their relatives had not survived the attempt to cure them. The number of
ethnic Germans killed in this way is estimated as around 300,000. Much smaller than that of the Jews and other ethnic groups exterminated, but still not negligible.
These
deaths were not suicides, but there was a certain element of voluntary
acceptance of the procedure and it is hard to think that people would
not at least suspect what was going on. The human mind is pliant, and probably everyone, including the victims, was doing their best to believe that it was all done for the sake of their health. Hence, they offered no resistance and even collaborated with their exterminators.
In our times, we have methods to get rid of people with their consent that were not available in Nazi Germany.
In terms of "substance abuse," we have a wide choice of substances that
shorten one's life expectancy and that are willingly ingested by
people. In some cases, they are forbidden, although obtainable illegally
(heroin, cocaine, and others). Some are marketed but advertised with
severe limitations (alcohol and tobacco). In other cases, they are
heavily advertised and widely available (junk food). We need also to
mention that some medical treatments are widely recommended as good for
your health, but nobody really knows if they really are (4) and in some
cases, it is discovered only later that they are very bad. Maybe you
remember the case of Thalidomide, but there are many more in the history of medicine. Surely, there will be more cases in the future.
Although effective, these substances are slow and messy ways to get rid of people and
they may generate negative side effects, for instance criminality and
handicapped people that are expensive to care for. For instance, cocaine
taken every day will shorten a person's life by
about 10 years, too slow to be interesting for would-be exterminators.
It is at least unlikely that the diffusion of heavy drugs in our society
is the result of an evil plan of extermination, although some agencies
of the deep state may well have a role in their supply and
distribution.
At this point, the question is
whether the stress on our society could accumulate to a level in which
we would start doing the things that were done in Germany during the
Nazi period, that is to exterminate people singled out for some physical
factor, religious belief, or ideology. And there is no doubt that our
society is heavily stressed although, probably not so heavily as Germany
was in 1945 (not yet, at least).
Of course, the reaction to this hypothesis normally comes with the sentence "It can't happen here" and
clearly, we are not seeing our governments distributing cyanide
capsules to the population. Nor we have evidence that doctors are
willingly killing their patients. But a basic rule in history is that if something happened once, it may happen again.
