"It's really simple. You bring two sides together. They fight. A lot of them die. But those who survive are stronger, faster and better." The Social Darwinist is someone who believes that the Darwinist theory of evolution i.e. "survival of the fittest" to oversimplify it should be applied to people, and sometimes entire societies or nations. To the Social Darwinist, all life is a struggle for survival in which the strongest naturally prosper at the expense of the weak and it is right, and natural that they should do so, because that's just the way things are, and/or natural law is Above Good and Evil. Such characters rarely concede that their chances for survival may have started higher than others due to reasons such as inherited wealth or social prestige. They typically state that We Have Become Complacent and stupid, and want to remove weakness and stupidity from society. It may seem to some that because humans aren't currently having wars/disaster and humans aren't endangered as a species that evolution in humans has ceased altogether. If they do talk about evolution, they are very likely to talk about Evolutionary Levels and Goal-Oriented Evolution rather than Darwin's actual theory (which was more of a pass-fail concept.) Fictional Social Darwinists generally come in five major flavors: The Straw Meritocrat: Basically, a Nietzsche Wannabe without the overt craziness. This first type believes in Social Darwinism, which misinterprets the idea of evolution and natural selection and holds that people who rise to the top in society, by whatever means, are automatically "superior" - even going so far as to praise the evils of over-ambitiousness and condemn kind behavior. Frequently this will be held even in settings where the people in charge are clearly getting there through Nepotism, or otherwise as a result of luck and privilege. Despite it being nothing more than a Theme Park Version, this philosophy is still frequently held by both fictional characters and a few Real Life 'successful' people. The Nazi By Any Other Name: The second type is a racist or speciesist who believes that their race is a Master Race, and by extension, the only one fit to live and reproduce in this world, and uses this belief as a justification for subjugating, enslaving or just plain getting rid of those that they consider "inferior" (as the Real Life Nazis did). Scary Dogmatic Aliens are very likely to have this mindset, as is any society modeled upon the Nazis. Occasionally also held by superheroes. The Evilutionary Biologist: The third type is the Evilutionary Biologist or anyone who has mistaken ideas about how evolution works "for the good of the species," and in order to help it out or not "get in its way," anyone with a birth defect or who is in any other way "weak" in this villain's eyes deserves to die to keep the gene pool strong. Many such characters hope to create the Transhuman Ultimate Life Form. This type is also what Those Wacky Nazis had in mind with Aktion T-4. The Jerk Justifier: The fourth type is simply selfish and uses Social Darwinism as just a justification for sociopathic behavior. This character may not actually believe it and may not even care, but finds Social Darwinism to be a convenient justification or excuse for the way they were going to behave anyway. Often overlaps with Straw Hypocrite - especially if he's a coward who'll immediately resort to "un-Darwinist" cheating if he's ever exposed as inferior himself. The Struggler: The fifth type believe that competition, suffering and struggle makes the individual, and possibly a society (as a whole), superior. They tend to believe in Evil Virtues like cunning, ruthlessness, opportunism and the ability to endure and survive by any means necessary, and tend to have a cynical view of the world as a hard, harsh place and that Hobbes Was Right; they may also / instead suffer from Evil Cannot Comprehend Good and thus undervalue non-Social Darwinist virtues like kindness or pacifism. A Real Man Is a Killer logic often falls into this category as does War Is Glorious. Those Wacky Nazis held to this view as well. Differ from the first in that they don't necessarily believe that those at the top always deserve it; they tend to take a Might Makes Right view of things, and the most sincere of this kind do not believe the struggle ever ends. If the Social Darwinist doesn't suffer a Karmic Death, the heroes "disprove" his might-makes-right philosophy by demonstrating the The Power of FriendshipnoteIn fact, actual evolutionary scientists posit The Power of Friendship and general co-operation as the best survival strategy for most people most of the time, not to mention an evolutionary strategy that the human species specifically evolved to exploit: either by ganging up and beating the crap out of him and his cronies, or by the leader of the group (often the All-Loving Hero) doing it himself while repeatedly driving home that he's fighting for his friends. A particularly profound way this to happen is to have the character beaten by a character who is either a visible minority the Social Darwinist considers inferior or has a glaring physical or mental handicaps. More sympathetic Social Darwinists (i.e. if they aren't hypocrites) will often begin to respect the heroes after their defeat; they may turn into a Worthy Opponent or even become a Noble Bigot as they struggle with their beliefs and begrudgingly admit that a group they had considered inferior does in fact have worthy people among them. Their beliefs might be a Tragic Flaw if they were drilled into them from a young age or they actually had to live in such a place were their views are justified. Compare Evilutionary Biologist, Evil Evolves, and Kill the Poor and Slobs Versus Snobs. Sometimes overlaps with Objectivism and the "bermensch" concept. There's a bit of this trope in the Satisfied Street Rat. Likewise, characters with a Darwinist Desire are usually only interested in applying social Darwinism on themselves and their offspring rather than imposing it on society, though both tropes can overlap in the same character. Compare and contrast Living Is More Than Surviving - Social Darwinist will variably put either survival or quality of life on top of others. Note that Charles Darwin himself would not be amused by all these people and the way they interpreted his works; he proposed nothing of the sort. (And while Darwin did believe that the Caucasian race had evolved further than other races, his racism was based not on arrogance or sociopathy; it was simply where the conclusions of his research led him.) You never see a social Darwinist treating societies in the same way a real Darwinist treats species: Darwinists are interested in maintaining biodiversity, and Darwinism is a description of the way species work, not a prescription for which species should live or die. See Appeal to Nature for the fallacy of using "nature" to prescribe any behaviour (moral, immoral or not), and also see the Analysis page for this trope for more information on that. This did not stop Social Darwinism from becoming a fairly mainstream philosophy from the Victorian era to WWII, when it became associated with the Nazis; this association contributed greatly to its loss of popularity. However, the emergence of culture war politics in the late 20th century appears to have won new adherents to the philosophy. Contrast Underdogs Always Win, which takes this concept and flips it completely on its head. A final note: despite the similarity in spelling, this trope has nothing to do with Socialism. Part of the problem comes from conflating socialism with atheism (the two do not always go together), and then reasoning that someone who does not believe in God (and, therefore, disavows the possibility of the existence of the soul) takes a crudely biological view of humanity, seeing them as animals with an instinct to dominate one another. But the fact is that the socialist's concern for and solidarity with all of humankind rules out - at least in theory - the prospect of him or her becoming so cynical, selfish and cruel.

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Rourke: Get off your soap box, Thatch. You've read Darwin. It's called 'natural selection'. We're just helping it along.

Aladar: (Concerning the elders in the back) But the others in the back! They'll never make it!

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