system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Social Darwinism: What's that all about?

Okay, so I've seen the phrase a few times on Reddit and all over the web, and while Wikipedia gave me a pretty good idea, I'm having some trouble understanding what exactly it's about. These are specific questions I have:

1. Social Darwinism is applying Darwin's theory of evolution to sociology and politics to find so-called laws of society; true or false?
2. Why do most people hate it/why the negative connotation?
3. Why is it linked to things like fascism or nazism?
4. Is there more of a misconception about it, or is there genuinely immoral ideas inside of it?
5. What more can you tell me that is relevant or very interesting or both?

Thanks, I know a lot of this is more opinion questions, but if you can answer them in an unbiased manner, I thank you. If not, thank you for your opinion on the subject.
gpt
Social Darwinism is linked primarily to the thinker Herbert Spencer, and his particular way of interpreting and analogizing Darwin's thought.

Darwin's 1859 work *Origin of the Species* put forward a basic concept of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution.  In describing how natural selection functioned, Darwin drew a great number of his metaphors from the language of international relations and war.  He also talks of the "struggle for life" and the "dependency" of the bird feeding on the insect.  His language is somewhat suggestive of war and conflict.

Herbert Spencer coins the term "survival of the fittest" in 1864.  Strictly understood, this is a misreading or misunderstanding of Darwin's "natural selection." For Darwin, it wasn't the "fittest" that survived.  It was really any species that was even barely adequate would survive to reproduce, while certain mutations would provide advantages to certain species in certain contexts (even as those mutations in a different context would be neutral or a detriment to survival and reproduction).  So Spencer's interpretation is a bit of a reversal of Darwin's thought when he puts emphasis on the fittest.

Second, whereas Darwin puts emphasis on competition between species in relation to each and the environment, Spencer and other Social Darwinists applied this idea of struggle to socio-economic classes, nations, and entire races.  By focusing on the notion of the "fittest" and applying it to groups for which there is no scientific basis for differentiation on a biological level, Social Darwinism was a powerful ideology legitimating oppression, wars of conquest, racism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and eugenics.

It should be noted that these ideas were widespread in the late 1800s and early 1900s, across the political spectrum.  Conservatives *and* progressives found elements of Social Darwinism appealing in justifying the perpetuation of a certain socio-political order (domestic aristocracy or oligarchy, militarism) or as justifying certain means for improving and civilizing humanity (colonialism, eugenics).

It is linked to Nazism in general due to the consonance of ideas: celebrating a certain select ethnos as the fittest (Aryans), legitimating ethnic cleansing of inferior races (Jews and Slavs), and justifying wars of conquest to secure the place of the Aryans among the inferior peoples.

There's a more specific link to Nazism through the German school of geopolitics (*Geopolitik*) and the "organic state theory" that differentiated it from the Anglo-American geopoliticians.  Here's a brief history of this concept:

* Adam Muller was a German state theorist who wrote *Die Elemente der Staatskunst* in 1809 arguing that the organic nature of the state is revealed in war and competition, and that war is as natural as peace.
* Carl Ritter, a geographer and one of the founders of the discipline of geography as we know it today.  Argued that the state could be understood as the unity of its organic whole, and was controlled by its own laws (differentiable from an individual's morality).
* Friedrich Ratzel, coined the term 'political geography.'  Was trained in zoology and Darwin's thought.  Wrote *Der Staat als Organismus*.  Borrowed a term from British political economist Thomas Malthus, "living room," to describe the space required for national development. Translated to German, "living room" is *lebensraum*.
* Rudolf Kjellén, Swedish student of Ratzel.  Coins term 'geopolitics.' Writes stuff like, "geopolitics is the study of the state as a geographical organism," "territory is the state's body," the state is a "biological revelation, a living being," "a country's organic nature never stands out more clearly than in war." Wrote *Staaten som Lifsform* in 1916.

As you can see, the organic conception of the state, and the necessity for struggle for survival, and the close link to war are all intertwined in this group of thinkers.

The link to the Nazis comes through German geopolitician Karl Haushofer. Ratzel was friends with Haushofers father, and Haushofer read Kjellén's work.  He also subscribed to the organic state theory in all its bellicose implications.  He had a direct but unclear influence on Hitler.  Haushofer's student was Rudolf Hess, Hitler's secretary.  Haushofer visited the two about 8 times when they were imprisoned in Landsberg prison following the failed Beer Hall Putsch.  He gave Hitler lessons on geopolitics and on Clausewitz. This was the period when Hitler was writing *Mein Kampf.* The word "lebensraum" appears 11 times in the text of *Mein Kampf*. Although a comparison of Hitler's thought with Haushofer's writings on geopolitics indicates that Hitler actually drew very little specifically from Haushofer's thoughts and plans, Haushofer's terms were used by Nazis as public slogans.

Social Darwinism is generally held to be immoral because it dehumanizes whole classes, nations, and races, and legitimated or justifies inhuman acts of oppression and imperialism against them.  It is a very nakedly "might makes right" way of viewing the world, which is generally found to be a morally repugnant doctrine.