Doctrine that regards the racial origin of an individual or a community as the decisive factor determining ability, inclinations, state of mind, appearance, and behaviour, and that classifies humanity into "superior" and "inferior" races. The term "racism" is derived from "race," a word having different connotations to different people; it has been in use since the Renaissance to denote groups that have common traits, both humans and animals. The influence achieved by racism in modern times is the result of its becoming a secular religion based on science and history. Racism is a complete view of society and politics that is based on aesthetics, morality, science, and history.
Roots
The evolution of racism can be traced through various stages. Its theoretical foundations were laid in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. In the next phase, the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War I, racism gained in strength and acquired a clearer and better defined direction. In the inter-war period, it penetrated the policies of mass political movements in Europe, and especially those of National Socialism in Germany. Racist theories were successfully translated into the popular political vocabulary used in large parts of the European Continent. Racism continued to flourish following World War II, but its protagonists were subdued by the general reactions to the crimes that had been committed in its name.
Early Concepts
The reawakening of the romantic idea of history in the eighteenth century was of supreme importance for the development of the concept of race. This view was contested by the "organic" theory, which taught that an unlimited gap existed among individuals and among peoples, a gap that was not the result of socio-historical developments but had been ordained by nature and "providence." This idea, propounded by Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), was to arouse tremendous interest in Europe. Herder believed that the roots of a people represent an unspoiled genuineness of feeling, spontaneity, and force, and it is in these roots that a people's attributes and "character" are permanently anchored. A people's national language, songs, and mythology are the authentic expressions of its spirit; the individual is no more than a part of the Volk (people in the ethnic sense, as conceived by Herder). The emphasis on language as the expression of a shared past was common to a whole generation of philologists at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Most of them, however, did not share Herder's interest in the humanist aspects, and concentrated on scholarly research into the genetic affinity among various languages. On the premise that a people's language is the expression of its accumulated experience over the ages, these scholars claimed that the "Aryan" past reflected the superiority of contemporary Europe.
Gobineau and Language
Comte Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) was only repeating an accepted belief among the philologists of his time when he argued that the "pure" language of the "Aryans" was evidence of their ability to rise above the materialistic dimensions of life. Philology, in combination with the historical myth of "Aryan" strength of character and spirituality, led to various conclusions. One such conclusion was that fate had ordained that it would be the Anglo-Saxons who would put into practice the principle of maintaining liberty by means of free institutions of government.
The Anglo-Saxon Myth
The Anglo-Saxon myth was strong in the United States. It was an American, J.E. Homer, who in the late nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century claimed that the progress made by the European nations and by Japan was merely an imitation of the notions of true freedom as conceived by the Anglo-Saxons. This claim became part of British imperialism as well. Yet, imperialism and racism were never identical; their interrelationship was dependent on time and place. During the eighteenth century, for example, Europeans could entertain enlightened and even utopian views of some non-Europeans; the image of "darkest Africa," on the other hand, was a 19th-century construct. Both the Germans and the French dug into the past for their national roots.
Growth and Spread of Racist Ideology to World War I
Gobineau's "Essai sur l'in'galite des races humaines" ("Essay on the Inequality of Human Races"; 1853-1855) was based on anthropology and philosophy as they had developed by the middle of the nineteenth century. Gobineau added a distinct political and cultural dimension to the scientists' findings. His theory of racism had the purpose of explaining contemporary politics; the depravity of the modern age was the result of racial corruption. This assertion was a portent of the political exploitation of racism in days to come. Gobineau feared the emergence of a centralist government in which the masses would have too much influence. It was this combination, in Gobineau's view, that had destroyed true nobility as well as freedom itself; the key to this development was to be found in the existence in the world of superior and inferior races.
Gobineau's Classifications
Gobineau classified the races - black, yellow, and white - on the basis of the kind of social structure they had created. The yellow race had proved itself in commerce and trade, but was incapable of looking beyond these materialistic achievements. The blacks were incapable of establishing any form of stable society and had to be under permanent external control. Only the white race embodied all that was noble in Gobineau's eyes: a high degree of spirituality, love of freedom, and a code of personal conduct based on honour. This, no doubt, was a utopian vision. Gobineau himself believed that the Aryan race, having failed to stay pure, was gradually losing its age-old superiority and degenerating to the level of the other, inferior, races; bourgeois regimes, the modern state, and the rise of democracy confirmed the truth of this conclusion.
Anti-Semitism - a Breeding Ground for Racism
From the second half of the nineteenth century, it was not so much the existence of so-called black or yellow races but anti-Semitism that served as the breeding ground for racist views. The reason was simple: Jews were looked upon as the representatives of a foreign culture in the heart of Europe; they dressed differently, prayed differently. As long as they lived in ghettos, they had not aroused much interest, but this attitude changed in the wake of their emancipation at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Emancipation
Emancipation had been granted to the Jews on the assumption that they would divest themselves of their "peculiarities." But when the Jews were given full civil rights and were able to compete with their Christian neighbouirs in the economic and social spheres, their enemies accused them of remaining distinct, despite the Emancipation.
Social Darwinism and Racism
Anti-Jewish feelings did not necessarily lead to racism, since most people still believed that the "good Jew" was able to rid himself of his "Jewish" qualities. Those circles, however, who believed in racial differences and in the existence of a Jewish conspiracy tended to give their support to the idea of race war. It was Social-Darwinism that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, provided an apparently scientific basis for the inexorability of war and struggle. The principle of "the survival of the fittest" incited the races against one another and encouraged race war. The works of the zoologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, widely read at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, served to propagate the thesis that the biological history of an individual must, in abbreviated form, reflect the biological development of his ancestors (the so-called biogenetic law). Thus, the mythical continuity of the Volk coalesced with the Social-Darwinist view of the world.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
This was the central theme of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "Die Grundlagen dneunzehnten Jahrhunderts" ("Foundations of the Nineteenth Century"; 1899). The Germans are the saviours of mankind and the bearers of Western culture; all cultural achievements of the modern age are evidence of their indomitable soul, steeled in an unending struggle. The "Aryans" had preserved their purity in the "chaos of the races," but a bastard race, the Jews, had entered history at the same time as the Aryans and now face them in a fight to the finish. The Jews are the antithesis of the "Aryan." They are incapable of rising to superior levels of thought and culture. They have a lust for power that is devoid of all metaphysical depth. The struggle for survival between the races can end only in victory or extinction; the "Aryans" need a leader to overcome the Jews. Toward the end of his life, Chamberlain believed that such a leader had indeed been found in the person of Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain's book is one of the classics of racism. It had a wide circulation and was a compendium of 19th-century racism.
Catholicism and Racism
This form of racism met with greater success in Protestant than in Catholic areas. Catholic theology presented to its faithful a well-defined view of the world, and its authoritative hierarchy made sure that its doctrine remained intact.
Medicine and Racism
Medical theory also made important contributions to racism during the nineteenth century, apart from eugenics. The medical vocabulary of health and sickness was applied to the so-called inferior race, stereotyped through its lack of the strength, vigour, and manliness thought essential for progress. Medicine supported society's ideal of respectability, and anyone who differed from the norm was morally and medically suspect. Above all, so-called sexual normality and restraint became a symbol of society's health.
Racism and Sexuality
The association between racism and sexuality was direct: playing the protector of middle-class respectability, racism endowed so-called inferior races with dangerous sexual passions that seemed to threaten the stability and cohesion of the existing order. First blacks and then Jews were accused of knowing no love but only lust, directed against the women of the superior race.
Racism in the United States
The developments in racism during the latter half of the nineteenth century were also imported into America. At the end of the century, America witnessed the immigration of the huge numbers of people from central and Southern Europe, and the racist theories that were already being applied to blacks were now extended to include all peoples who were not of Anglo-Saxon descent. Typical of this trend was Madison Grant's "Passing of the Great Race"(1916), which was intended as a warning to the American nation that it was about to lose its Nordic character. The principles of racism were used, to some degree, to justify the imposition of restrictions on immigration from areas other than Northern Europe. Meanwhile, the American South enforced strict segregation of the black and white races. The physical segregation of the whites from the blacks was the most far-reaching measure introduced in the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) that followed the Civil War. In the South, segregation was meticulously observed, but it also existed in the North, where blacks were restricted to certain parts of the cities.
France
Racism gathered strength everywhere before World War I, perhaps most significantly in France, with its national socialist movements inspired by Drumont and others, which gathered an important following among the lower classes. Action Francais was not, properly speaking, a racist movement; its spiritual father, Charles Maurras, hated the Jews, the Germans, and the English, but his views were not based on racial premises.
Italy, Romania, Hungary, and Poland
In Italy, racist philosophy did not make a great impact. Both the Catholic Church and Giuseppe Mazzini's humanist nationalism served as effective brakes on the development of racism. Virulent Catholic anti-Semitism existed in Italy, as in France, but it could not support racism. It was in central and Eastern Europe that racism and nationalism formed the most effective alliance. In a number of these countries - Romania, Hungary, and Poland - the Jews were the "most visible" element of the commercial middle class. Furthermore, the presence of an urban ghetto civilisation encouraged the belief in difference based on race. Here, too, the strong Catholic Church put some restraint on the spread of racism.
Racism - From Ideology To Mass Movement: Racism And Politics
Prior to 1918, the ideas of racism found fertile ground among small sects that were competing with one another. These sects maintained the mystical, rather than the "scientific" tradition of racism. The doctrine of racism did not undergo any substantive change in the post-World War I period, but new factors were adduced in its support. Psychology, or some forms of it (not Freudian psychology), now emphasised the differences between the races. One was the school of psychology that in Europe was linked to Carl Gustav Jung and in the United States to William McDougall. McDougall found that the herd instinct was weak among the northern peoples and strong among the Mediterranean peoples. One American school of psychology even used IQ tests to prove its racist theories. Jungian psychology tended to slip into the realm of mystical symbolism; it placed an emphasis on immutable archetypes and found it easy to accept racist overtones. Jung himself for several years edited a leading journal of psychology published under the Nazi regime. Many scientists tried to differentiate between their work in the laboratory, where they adhered to the scientific method, and in the outside world, where they treated all sorts of irrational ideas with respect.
Bolshevism and Racism
The success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the revolutions in Germany and Eastern Europe added yet another dimension to the dynamics of racism. Russian refugees took pains to circulate the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all over Europe, and Bolshevism was depicted as an achievement of the Jewish conspiracy. Jews had always been charged with trying to undermine the stability of the Christian world, and now the Jewish-Communist conspiracy was added to the arsenal of the racist doctrine, encouraged by the presence of many Jews in the leadership of the revolution.
The Ku Klux Klan
After World War I, the ideas that Madison Grant had propounded in an academic setting were widely circulated in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan grew by leaps and bounds, and in 1923 estimates of its size ranged from 3-6 million. Contrary to what happened in Europe, however, no mass political movement based on racist principles was formed in the United States. In large part, racism was absorbed into the existing two-party political system, with opponents of racism found in both parties; there was no room left in which a separate, anti-establishment racist policy could operate. This was not so in Europe, where racism permeated mass politics after the war.
From Theory to Practice - between the World Wars
Following World War I, an attempt was made to put theory into practice. Political movements used racism in order to wage war against their enemies. In that respect, there was no difference between National Socialism in Germany, the Iron Guard in Romania, and the Ustasa in Croatia. In the nineteenth century, the racists had confined themselves to theory, but in the period after World War I, the leaders of racist movements took part in the political action of the time, resorting to violence, which most of the "respectable" racists of earlier generations had sought to avoid. Leaders of racist movements were no longer content with removing the Jews from economic or social life, but called for their destruction.
The Dehumanisation of theEnemy
The increased role and strength of violence also helped to dehumanise the enemy. It was Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's adviser in the early stage of his entry into politics, who said that no people would have left the Jews alive if had known what the Jews' true nature was and what goals had for themselves. In Eckart's case this was rhetoric, but Hitler believed it and declared that an inferior human specimen was closer to the apes than to the superior races of mankind. Heinrich Himmler, in order to reinforce his men's motivation for their part in the Holocaust, compared the Jews to fleas and mice - obnoxious forms of life that had to be destroyed. Visual "documentation" for these theories (see Films, Nazi Anti-Semitic) was a crucial part of the propaganda addressed to the masses.
Making Racism Respectable
For the policy of race war to succeed in a country suffused with bourgeois values, it had to be in the hands of a "respectable" movement. Such a movement could not present itself as advocating a policy of pogroms, as did the Iron Guard, or of lynching of the kind that took place from time to time in the United States. Fanatic actions of this sort against individuals were by now out of date. Instead, National Socialism set in motion a process of dehumanising the racial enemy, so that when the attacks were launched the designated targets no longer appeared as human beings but as the embodiment of evil.
Bureaucracy in the Service of Racism
Racism fully achieved its goal of genocide not through open violence but by means of a systematic, bureaucratic process. The tactics that Hitler employed consisted of the gradual removal of obstacles and of propaganda and indoctrination. The principal measures taken by the Nazis to erect the first racist state in Europe can be easily identified. Of decisive importance for the evolution of racism were the Nuremberg Laws (1935), which not only provided the legal basis for separating the Jews from the Christians, but also gave a precise definition of who was a Jew - something that the racist doctrine had failed to do up to that time. Under these laws, a Jew was someone with four, or at least three, Jewish grandparents; a person who had two Jewish grandparents was defined as a Mischling (a person of mixed blood; see Mischlinge). This category was doomed to extinction for lack of progeny, since Mischlinge were not allowed to have sexual relations with either Jews or "Aryans." The same laws also, for the first time, defined with legal precision who was an "Aryan": a person whose paternal and maternal grandparents all belonged to the "Aryan" race. In order to become a member of the elite SS corps, however, a person had to provide evidence of pure "Aryan" ancestry dating back to the period before the greater emancipation of the Jews (i.e., before 1850). Racism had become an integral part of the legal system of a major European State.
The Nazi Satellite States
The Nazi conquests during World War II tested the strength of racism in Europe as Germany sought co-operation from its Satellite States in implementing the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish question." The conservative-minded dictators in some of those States, however, resisted, or tried to resist, the Nazi demands to hand over their Jews. In Romania, Marshal Ion Antonescu at first issued orders for the deportation and extermination of Jews; but under the impact of the changing war situation, he reversed himself and tried to mitigate the outcome of his earlier decisions. In Hungary, Adm. Miklos Horthy held out against Nazi pressure until the German occupation of his country. In the West, Marshal Philippe Petain surrendered to the Germans the foreign Jews who had taken refuge in France, but tried to save the native French Jews from deportation.
Austria and Spain
Even before World War II, there was a clear difference between reactionary dictatorships and racism. Such men as Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and Francisco Franco in Spain may not have been overly fond of the Jews, but in their eyes, and in the eyes of similar autocrats who came to power during the war, racism was not a policy that they could accept. It was incompatible with the Catholic religion on which their regimes were based, and, more importantly, racism as a dynamic mass movement represented a threat to their own conservative regimes.
Italian Racism
The racism of the Italian fascist leaders was no more than opportunism, and even the veteran anti-Semite Roberto Farinacci did not really believe in the racist doctrine he was propagating. When racism became the official policy of the Italian regime, Mussolini coined the slogan "Rather discrimination than persecution." The fact is that while Italian Jewry went through difficult times and suffered many humiliations, the policy of genocide was carried out only under the German occupation. Italian public opinion never accepted racist ideas.
Racism in the Allied Countries
The nations that fought National Socialism in World War II were overtly united in their rejection of racism. Britain's racist inclination had traditionally found its expression in contacts with the empire's colonial population. At home in Britain, Oswald Mosley's fascist movement had never received widespread support even when it adopted racism in the hope of galvanising the movement. In Russia, anti-Semitism in the old style appeared sporadically during the war, but it was opposed by official Soviet policy. In the United States, where Nazi racism was strongly opposed, racism against blacks nonetheless persisted.
Racism after World War II
Racism continues to exist, if not overtly, then beneath the surface. Stereotypes continue to mould the attitudes of many people when faced with those who are foreign or different from the accepted norm. Mythical historical roots still play a vital role in modern nationalism. People still view with suspicion and fear the differences they perceive between their own community and the outside world.
