I visited the Holocaust museum last weekend (second visit in 11 years) and the new exhibit Deadly Medicine was about how the Nazis used scientists to come up with a justification for their hatred of both Jews, Roma, the mentally retarded, the mentally ill...etc
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/I have a few observations...
The Nazis has posters that depicted strong healthy Aryans carrying the burden of the mentally ill, and retarded/alcoholics on their shoulders...protraying those individuals as an economic burden to society... I couldn't help but think of how Reagan and the current neocon bunch like to paint welfare recipients in the same light...cuz once you start to treat a group of people like a burden it becomes much easier to convince people that they are worthless and therefore why not take the next step...(shudder)
The other observation I had was an overall scary feeling about how easy it is for lunatics to manipulate science to project an entirely racist or idiotic point of view. (similar to how Dobson and his ilk push creationism as a valid theory). It is also scary because people seem to be easily swayed to believe in this stuff..especially when times are tough or they are looking for something to reach for or blame for problems.