by Aaron Warner

Except to scholars of the history of communist Russia, the name Trofim Lysenko means nothing. But his story needs to be told. It’s about the suffering that happens when leftist academics and government deny science.

Lysenko was born and raised in the Ukraine where his family owned a farm.  He learned the basics from his father then went on to study at the University of Kiev. There he was mediocre, weak in math and lacking ingenuity. 

But he became radicalized by Marxism, which he then applied to his anemic understanding of agriculture.  

Lysenko learned of the two types of wheat grown in those parts, summer and winter wheat.  Confusing plagiarism with genius, he claimed the “discovery” of making summer wheat hardier by exposing it to extreme cold, and making winter wheat hardier by exposing it to extreme heat.  This method had already been employed by reputable agronomists in the 1800s as well as likely any of a number of farmer’s throughout human history.  

Human nature being what it is, Lysenko turned agronomical plagiarism into opportunity.  Lysenko used his “discovery” to curry favor with Russian dictator Stalin, who made him director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940. A handful of Russian scientists at the time saw the irony in this appointment: Lysenko rejected the proven science of Mendelian genetics. 

As a result of his appointment, Lysenko had power over both Russia’s agricultural practices and the scientists who might speak out against him. This would prove to be disastrous for both. 

Lysenko, peasant and lifelong proletarian, developed scientific theories based on his ideology over science. Adapting communistic thinking to plant life he surmised plants behaved in a Marxian solidarity that led to a type of utopia of the soil. His theories included plants having a sacrificial nature and that proximity bred cooperation among them rather than competition for nutrients. 

Other Soviet ideologues were enchanted by his synchretizing theories. Major media like Pravda shaped the cult of Lysenko.  

With his newfound fame and power he was also able to imprison his critics and even have some killed.  This included those who, by the 1930’s, had placed Soviet genetics at the top of the global scientific community. 

In enforced practice, his agricultural theories led to famines in both Russia and later in Mao’s China.  Lysendo’s pseudoscience caused the death by starvation of millions of Russians. Similar measures imposed by Mao, also an adherent to Communist science, cost between 15-55 million during the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1962. 

What Stalin and Lysenko had touted as a communist victory that would lead to annual harvest booms and year-round work delivered the opposite. Lysenko’s critics increased and would ultimately have him removed from his directorship to live out his days in shame for his failures. 

Lysenkoism lives among today’s progressives. Those who called out, even panic-yelled, “follow the science” actually follow pseudoscience based on bad ideology. Is the “woke” movement a cornucopia of pseudo-scientific theories being pushed as social rights? If science is based on testable, repeatable, reliable models that offer universal truth about the natural order, the answer is – yes they are. 

Pick from any one of the MRNA-vaccine, fat-shaming, gender theory, queer theory, or even climate change hot topics, and discerning and scientific students will discover the incongruous of their “scientific” claims. Aside from weak and even backwards thinking, these popular ideas share Lysenko’s political affinity for Marxist communism. 

Which brings us to Jonas Salk.

Unless you have $600-$1000 lying around to buy a copy of ‘Survival of the Wisest’ by Jonas Salk, the same Jonas Salk who developed a polio vaccine, you probably haven’t read it. I was fortunate enough to get a copy from the Dartmouth College Library. 

Despite parting ways with Lysenko on genetic theory, Salk shares his communist-globalist leanings with some eugenics to boot. Salk in 1973 explains how we can use MRNA vaccines to essentially hack human beings and create a superior race of “wise” people. This highly engineered race would also need to leave the troglodytes from what he referred to as Epoch A behind since Epoch B would be for the ascended masters who moved on from traditional values in favor of super science values that mirror such Marxists as Marcuse and Foucault’s vision of a sexually liberated illuminati. Seriously. 

As we look out our windows we can see the effects of his pandemic theory and, like Lysenko’s, they are disastrous. 

As a fitness expert I am stunned by the ignoring of established science regarding healthy body weight metrics to avoid “fat shaming.”  I can only assume the champions of this new counter-fat craze never bothered to look up the etymology for abdomen.  Ab is to “go away from” and domeni is Latin for “God”.  It’s named that because the fatter the tummy, the clearer the gluttony. These days, the more ripped the abs, the clearer their vanity.  

Yet obesity doesn’t add to quality of life in any health metric. Furthermore, obesity disqualifies you from many joys of life, like with the 240 pound Tik Tok star recently denied her horse-riding adventure thanks to her excess body fat. Singer Adele was shamed for actually losing weight. Excessive fat is exactly that – excessive, as in unhealthy. We know this, thanks to exercise science and modern medicine. 

Gender theory is yet another farcical “science” based on the philosophical notions of Dr. John Money who simply borrowed sex grammar and applied them to people in order to validate his quackish attempt to change two boys into girls.  At the expense of both of their lives ending in suicide, Money urged them and their parents to play along under the guise of his credentialed theory, which lacked any scientific merit.  The loss of life is eerily reminiscent of Lysenkoism, and the rise in this practice among progressives seems to offer the Marxist Utopia that never comes, while leaving destruction in its wake. 

Gender theory is outdone by queer theory, ostensibly beginning in 1984 with Gayle Rubin’s essay “Thinking Sex” where she defends all manner of perversity, her words even, up to and including sado masochism and even pedophilia which she euphemizes as “cross generational attraction”.  Dr. James Lindsay, Peter Boghosian and Helen Pluckrose caught on to this. With the rise in pseudo-academic journals they exposed with their Grievance Studies Affair made famous by revising the thirteenth chapter of Mein Kampf for a Women’s Studies Journal only to have them rave at the excellence of its aims (namely to subjugate men).  

Queer theory now openly states its aim is to queer everything to create a new normal – where boys can be girls, men can swim against women and animals can be married to humans.  The new normal seems to fit the Biblical warning of calling evil good and good evil. 

Lastly, knowing Vermonters take Climate Change more seriously than they do murdering babies, this pseudo-science has been debunked numerous times by scientific experts unafraid to point out the climate kings have no clothes on. I’m no climatologist but I can see the polar bear population has doubled rather than died off per Al Gore’s warning.  The ice caps contract and expand, which expose another of his threats to mankind.  Parts of the earth have seen the coldest temperatures in years and warming is not occurring, hence the name change to “climate change” from global warming.  Manhatten is still above sea level, and with any luck the carbon dioxide will continue to create greater amounts of greenery leading to more arable land and the ability to sustain our desperately needed population growth.  Yet the climate crazies would rather halt development in the third world by curbing their fossil fuel use, which will also cost millions of lives and the hope of prosperity. 

One begins to wonder if this universal incompetence is even that, or if they have destroying human flourishing down to a science. 

The author is a fitness expert living in Hartford.