A socialist named Zohran Mamdani is trending in the headlines as the underdog who is giving Andrew Cuomo a run for his money in the New York City Mayoral election. His star is rising on populist issues like ‘rent freezes’ and a nominally ‘pro-Palestine’ message. But perhaps there is a more pressing issue flying under the radar of public opinion; one that Mamdani and his Democratic Socialist of America cronies are forcing on New York, and the American nation at large. A bill calling for “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD) is quickly and quietly passing through the legislative halls in Albany. Most people have no idea, but New York state is on the verge of following in the footsteps of the Third Reich.
Life Unworthy of Life
In 1939 Hitler signed a document authorizing the Nazi euthanasia program known as Aktion T4, enabling doctors to legally murder the incurably ill. Framed as mercy, it launched the mass murder of disabled people deemed “unworthy of life.” However, this idea did not originate with the Nazi party. 13 years before Hitler came to power, laws that were supposedly about “compassionate, mercy killing” for the terminally ill—just like the one New York State is about to pass—were setting the stage for the Aktion T4.
In 1920, two Germans, Jurist Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published the title: Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, arguing in favor of euthanasia for certain populations.
It can in no way be doubted that there are living human beings whose death would be a deliverance both for themselves and society, and especially for the state, which would be liberated from a burden that fulfills absolutely no purpose, other than that of serving as an example of the utmost selflessness.
They labeled the mentally ill, the physically disabled, and others, as genetically dangerous and financially burdensome to society. They offered a legal basis for permission to kill innocent people with the caveat that only in these dire circumstances would assisted suicide be deemed acceptable.
Thus, the only persons who come under consideration for permissible killing are the incurably sick, and incurability must always be joined by the longing for death or the acquiescence to it – or would be joined if the sick person had not fallen into unconsciousness at the crucial moment, or if the sick person could have ever arrived at an awareness of his condition.
In hindsight, we know that this was the slippery slope that led to the systematic genocide of millions of people under Nazi Germany’s Holocaust. But we don’t even have to look as far back as the last century to see how the modern euthanasia bill is playing out in the same horrific manner. Our neighbors to the north have already implemented MAiD and tragedy is unfolding as we speak.
Canada’s Alarming Shift
Canadian euthanasia policy, originally justified as an act of mercy, has morphed into a mechanism for managing scarcity. When dying becomes cheaper than living, and when the state subtly steers vulnerable people toward that outcome, we are forced to ask: what ideology is driving these choices?
Recent stories have exposed the disturbing trajectory of MAiD. One particularly shocking case involved a woman featured in a glamorized pro-euthanasia clothing advertisement. Her friends later revealed she had wanted to live but turned to assisted suicide after years of failing to secure necessary medical care.
Jennyfer Hatch, 37, suffering from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, was approved for MAiD while living in poverty and without a family doctor. She had hoped the application would trigger more support, but instead, it opened the door to state-sanctioned death. Her case highlights a grotesque inversion of priorities: when care is inaccessible, death is streamlined.
MAiD was originally limited to the terminally ill. Now, under expanded legislation, individuals with chronic illnesses or mental health conditions can qualify. Soon, mental illness alone will be enough. This is not a theoretical risk. Veterans Affairs Canada has been caught offering assisted suicide to former soldiers instead of fulfilling basic requests like installing wheelchair lifts. These offers are not isolated errors; they reflect a systemic ethos that views the sick, disabled, or poor as burdens.
According to a Canadian Medical Association report, assisted suicide could save the healthcare system between $34.7 million and $136.8 million annually. This staggering figure is not incidental—it is part of the rationale. When budgets dominate moral judgment, patients are assessed not for their needs but for their cost. Once again, this economic framing echoes one of history’s darkest precedents of Nazi Germany’s euthanasia programs, which eliminated the “unfit” under the banner of economic efficiency and public health.
Author of the report, Aaron Trachtenberg justifies his ideological conclusion based on the idea that, “it’s just the reality of working in a system of finite resources.” It is no coincidence that this axiom is identical to the one underlying the degrowth movement. Degrowth’s most famous influencer, Jason Hickel states that
We can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. We’re already overshooting our planet’s biocapacity by nearly 60% … This crisis is due almost entirely to overconsumption in rich countries. They use more than three times their fair share of biocapacity.
Anyone with a modicum of common sense is quick to realize that degrowth is a suicidal idea, but this doesn’t stop its ideological proponents from pushing legislation in line with ‘hard degrowth’ — in other words, a planned, deliberate reduction in the scale of a society’s economy (in both production and consumption). Even if that means deliberately deceiving the people they are elected to represent.
Degrowth is a Death Cult
Currently, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) holds ten seats in the New York State government; three in the Senate and seven in the Assembly. In addition to promoting ‘rent freezes’ as the cure-all solution to the housing crisis, their flagship initiative is climate change activism.
Charlie Heller is a campaign manager and lead organizer of several DSA outfits including the Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha campaign, Ecosocialist Working Group of New York City and Public Power New York. Heller is also Communications Director at the anti-nuclear energy NGO ‘Alliance for a Green Economy.’ In a recent Twitter/X thread, while gushing over Mamdani, Heller reveals the driving motivation behind the DSA’s electoral pursuits. Ultimately they are trying to pass the “Green New Deal,” but instead of trying to promote legislation itself, they are winning legislative seats to then vote for their extremely unpopular and destabilizing programs.
… Zohran had been running all over Albany fighting to get the last few sponsors needed to pass the Build Public Renewables Act.
… it didn’t pass that year. But we hadn’t expected it to. That was why I was up in the Hudson Valley in the first place. We knew we didn’t have enough strength in Albany to pass the first statewide Green New Deal program ever.
So candidates like Sarahana ran to get us closer. Which happened fast!
Zohran was key in developing this strategy. Our SIO’s helped us analyze how we could move a stuck bill by taking a huge pivot: turning our legislative campaign into electoral campaigns.
In order to get a foot in the door, they ran candidates with deep green ecological beliefs, placing one within a district that just happened to have a deep green Malthusian philanthropist. This worked out well because the philanthropist just happened to be pumping money into an army of media and NGO activists that could strongarm a carpetbagger candidate, without a resume, into office. The shortcut around what is supposed to be a representative government is simple: you don’t have to win public support for your unpopular laws, if you can get your own lawmakers into office.
All ten of DSA’s New York electeds co-sponsored the MAiD bill. On the surface, it may seem like a separate issue. But imposing an austere energy program with lowered standards of living grimly fits hand-in-glove with a state-sanctioned suicide program. In 2021, Robert Jensen and Wes Jackson write about this very transparently, linking both energy consumption and euthanasia to their Malthusian outlook:
Rapid population growth that is underwritten by industrial agriculture, along with lifespans extended by energy-intensive high-tech medicine, should make us nervous.
…
Is the current 8 billion people at the current level of aggregate consumption sustainable? Is an even larger population, continuing to consume at current levels, sustainable? Given the rapidly declining health (from the human point of view) of virtually every ecosystem on Earth, I do not believe either of those possibilities is plausible. That means that we need to act today to make possible a future with fewer and less. Fewer people consuming less.
How many fewer? How much less? Again, no one knows or can know for certain. But as we make choices today, we have to make our best guess. For purposes of starting honest conversations about public policy, I assume the answer is no more than half the current population consuming no more than half the resources used today. That likely won’t be enough, but it’s a start.1
…
The other side of the population equation—the death rate—is even more vexing. The twentieth century saw declines in infant, child, and maternal mortality, along with the invention of medical technology that could extend people’s lives. The question about population reduction requires talking not just about how many kids are born but about how long each person lives, and even fewer people want to talk about that side of the population problem. In the 2009 debate about health insurance and the 2012 presidential election, conservatives whipped up hysteria over “death panels,” the argument that moving toward universal health care would result in bureaucrats making decisions about who lives and who dies. The ease with which some politicians were able to scare people with such claims indicates how far the United States is from an honest discussion on the subject of the appropriate level of intervention to prevent death, especially as we age. We need such a debate about setting policy, not only on when to withdraw care from the terminally ill, but also on the wisdom of using a range of life-extending medical procedures (e.g., heart bypasses, organ transplants).2
These excerpts are from a book, An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, which is promoted with a blurb:
“Wes Jackson and Bob Jensen have written Common Sense for our time. This book might be the spark that catalyzes the American Evolution.”
Peter Buffett, co-president of the NoVo Foundation
The NoVo foundation is not only based in the district where Shrestha won an outsider upset victory, but it has massive financial ties to the NGO network that made it happen. Perhaps Buffett’s network pressed its thumb on the scale to gain a Malthusian Green New Deal legislator in Albany.
Regardless of their electoral strategy, green energy groups have long been promoting insane policy, calling for the end of not just fossil fuels, but emissionless nuclear and hydro-power as well. If their mission really was to ‘reduce emissions’ they wouldn’t be fighting emissionless nuclear and hydroelectric power plants. Clearly their mission is guided by a different goal—reducing population. This massive coalition of well-funded climate NGOs are the muscle behind DSA’s slate of electeds, and their strategic initiative—if it ever was—is no longer a secret.
FDR vs. the Grim Reapers of Degrowth
Contrary to what the Degrowth Socialists of America believe, increasing, not decreasing energy consumption is a fundamental factor for promoting the general welfare. In fact, this was the basis of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that euthanasia-loving socialists have misappropriated as their Malthusian “Green New Deal.” In a 1932 campaign address to the people of Portland, Oregon, Roosevelt’s explicit goal was to radically increase energy production and consumption by building out every form of energy available to us, and in doing so, lower the price of energy:
Electricity is no longer a luxury. It is a definite necessity. It lights our homes, our places of work and our streets. It turns the wheels of most of our transportation and our factories. In our homes it serves not only for light, but it can become the willing servant of the family in countless ways. It can relieve the drudgery of the housewife and lift the great burden off the shoulders of the hardworking farmer.
I say “can become” because we are most certainly backward in the use of electricity in our American homes and on our farms. In Canada the average home uses twice as much electric power per family as we do in the United States.
What prevents our American people from taking full advantage of this great economic and human agency? The answer is simple. It is not because we lack undeveloped water power or unclaimed supplies of coal and oil.
The reason is that we cannot take advantage of our own possibilities. The reason is frankly and definitely that many selfish interests in control of light and power industries have not been sufficiently far-sighted to establish rates low enough to encourage widespread public use. I wish that every community in the United States could have rates as low as you have them here in Portland. The price you pay for your utility service is a determining factor in the amount you use of it.
Low prices to domestic consumers will result in their using far more electrical appliances than they do today.
FDR, a committed Christian who upheld the sanctity of human life, not only fought the euthanasia-loving Nazis in World War 2, he himself was disabled, wheelchair bound from Polio. Would the MAiD program consider FDR, one of the greatest American presidents, a “life unworthy of life?” On the contrary, Roosevelt was living proof that human life is not measured by ‘eugenic’ value, or ability to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
The far left DSA are the ideological foot soldiers of the Malthusian elite that would like to cap our lives short, degrow our economy and ‘cull the human herd’ to ‘save the planet.’ A glance at their branding strategy reveals this death cult mentality. Assemblymember Shreshtha’s campaign featured a trendy, Brooklynite aesthetic of the grim reaper, surrounded by a threatening slogan “Green New Deal Before It Deals with You.”
The socialist left has already argued in favor of nationalizing the fossil fuel industry in order to shut it down. Are they hoping that once healthcare is nationalized, a la Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All, they can reduce healthcare costs in the same fashion as Canada? Or perhaps, even worse, they don’t realize it is a call back to 1939 Germany.
- https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-08-25/restless-and-relentless-minds-thinking-as-a-species-out-of-context/
- Jackson, Wes., Jensen, Robert. An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. United States: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/
