Racism, Nationalism, and Political Ideologies: A Historical Analysis
Gobineau’s Racist Doctrine
Gobineau: A racist doctrine proposed by Count Gobineau in his book Essay sur L’inégalités des Races Humaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races), published in 1853. It had enormous influence, despite the absurd and even ridiculous theses contained therein. Hannah Arendt, the great author of German origin, fled racism and settled in the U.S., dedicating her life to studying human cruelty.
Influence of Gobineau in Brazil
The existence of a long process of miscegenation and a majority black population were determinants of the generation in Brazil of an unprecedented and typically Brazilian race theory: The Whitening Theory. Two policies were undertaken since the War of Paraguay:
- Gradual reduction of the black population
- Progressive increase of the white population (immigration)
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought that follow or refer to Hegel’s philosophy, which can be summarized by the maxim that “the rational alone is real,” meaning that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories. Their aim was to reduce reality to a more synthetic unity within the system of transcendental idealism.
The Commune of Paris was part of the Age of Revolution, which began with the Great French Revolution of 1789 and ended in 1848. Fourteen revolutions happened in 1848 in Europe. All the heroes of the French Revolution were killed by their compatriots. The revolution swallowed its own children. Napoleon Bonaparte established a colonial period in France. The old regime, the monarchy, was restored in France. Its consequences were three measures for the destruction of the old bourgeois apparatus:
- Establishment of the general arming of the people
- Fusion of powers in one body, which prepares and executes the laws
- End of the privileges of officials with the adoption of compensation equivalent to workers’ salaries
Zionism
Zionism, an ethnic and political ideology systematized by Theodor Herzl, argued for the emergence of an independent Jewish state. The movement, promoted by Jews with the aim of establishing a state and a Jewish national home in their old home, Palestine, emerged in the late 19th century as a form of nationalism then recorded in Europe. It represented an attempt to give the Jewish nation a political entity as a basis for national life, to preserve a sense of corporate life among Jews. At roughly the same time, the nationalist concept began to sprout among the Arabs, a sense of separate identity that had been asleep during Ottoman domination.
Left and Right-Wing Systems
Left-Wing System
The left-wing system is influenced by Marx. It is a communist current that wanted a world equal for everyone, and it is from this revolution of the proletariat that, with collective ownership, a state of equal economic, political, etc., could be achieved.
Right-Wing System
The right-wing is the idea of totalitarianism, which did the worst things in humanity. Fascism is within the right-wing; it is the idea that the best should be in control. The Nazi regime is an example of a right-wing system.
Racism and Nationalism
Racism
We can say that racism is an ideological construct. It is motivated more by ignorance than by knowledge. It is a term used universally but not always understood. The essence of racism is prejudice. Racist ideology emerged among whites, historically speaking, although we have, for reasons of struggle for survival, conflicts among human groups in history that were more about survival than rivalries, which have always existed.
Nationalism
Nationalism is generally associated with alleged rivalries with other countries or real threats. The idea of an external enemy is extremely powerful and functional for uniting society against the “common enemy.” The fear of an external enemy is socially functional for people who until recently did not identify themselves as one nation, as was the case with countries unified only in the 19th century (Germany and Italy). As Freud demonstrated, the need for artificial creation of identity in social groups can lead to the forced homogenization of these groups, and the existence of different members of the group is destabilizing, leading the group to try to eliminate them. This explanation is relevant to understanding the phenomenon of fascism and Nazism. Freud’s works were among the first to be burned in the famous book burnings organized by the Nazi Party in 1933 and 1934. However, it took more than just the fear of an external enemy to achieve ultra-nationalism and totalitarianism. It was functional for creating “enemies” inside: sneaky, underground, conspiratorial. This paper intends to approach the enemy of communism and communist ideology as a whole in fascism. Nazism added to the list of “enemies,” in which communism was included, ethnic and religious minorities as “enemies”: Jews at first, then Gypsies and Slavs (as during World War II). From this, it becomes central to the second pillar of Nazism: the ideology of Aryan racial superiority.
Racial Mixing and Inferiority
Among humans, there is no superior or inferior race, as the Nazis claimed towards the Jews or even Caucasians compared to Africans or Native Americans. The differences are miserably apparent: skin color due to the higher incidence of sunlight on certain points of the planet caused natural selection to benefit the better-suited, those who have a greater amount of melanin in the skin. Those who live in regions with a higher incidence of storms and strong winds saw the best adapted, with stronger and more resilient eyes, have better success in their adjustment, and so on. Physical strength and intellectual capacity are exactly the same in all species of the human race.
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, sociology, then groping in the dark, considered the existence of different races among humans and reported that degeneration is in the mix, in the melting pot. Any pure breed can be strong; only the mixture causes weakening of the species. This was the crux of their arguments, which disappeared from the different academic settings of the period. The Nazis took this madness to the point that they created a hierarchy among human beings. Aryans would be the pure Caucasians—as if there were such a thing—and therefore destined to be the masters of the world. The Latins (Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Latin Americans) would be good at most for menial labor. The Jews were a plague that plagued mankind. Only their destruction could lead to an improvement of the human species.
Gobineau said that the decadence of a people resulted from the mixture of races, and thanks to slavery, Brazil had more blacks than whites, so the idea was to “whiten” the population. They ended up with many blacks, sending them to war and changing labor for European immigrants. Biologically speaking, miscegenation is even healthier. To claim that a race is inferior is racism, and that is how racism manifested in Brazil.