Scientific racism in Germany/Hannah Arendt/The Origins of Totalitarism

The Origins of Totalitarianism is a work published by Hannah Arendt in 1951. General A fundamental thesis that Arendt advances throughout the book is that the idea of ​​race, despite the appearance of scientific rigor and intellectual relevance that its proponents have given it, has in all cases emerged as a weapon in political struggles, often no more than a source of ideas with which one could give a new and usually aggravating turn to the most diverse political conflicts.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 103 Arendt sees the introduction of the concept of race as being linked to the expansionist policy of the imperialist era, where it has since played a role in the internal political organization of peoples who had previously considered themselves nations and who now used racial ideology to ensure the oppression of the subjugated peoples through regulated decree-making and the means of bureaucracy.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 121 In contrast to later authors, Arendt still assumed in her book, published in 1951/1955, that human "races" actually exist. However, she assumes that they only exist in Africa and Australia, i.e., in regions where nature is particularly hostile to humans and where they have been able to assert themselves as survivors of a great catastrophe, because they are closer to nature than white people.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 105 Because of such statements, some authors later accused Arendt of occasionally following racist patterns in her own writings.https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/rassismus-bei-hannah-arendt-blind-fuer-den-widerstand-der-100.html Rassismus bei Hannah Arendt: Blind für den Widerstand der Kolonisierten 2020-11-22 Deutschlandfunk Kultur 2025-05-08 The beginnings of racism in France Arendt sees the beginnings of racism in the early 18th century, and she sees it fully developed in almost all countries of the Western world in the 19th century.Arendt Hannah 1962 The Origins of Totalitarianism https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism Cleveland, New York Meridian Books 7 158 According to Arendt, racism first became visible in the era of the French Revolution, as a reaction to this Revolution, in publications by aristocratic authors in France and in exile. They argued that the French people had originally been victoriously subjugated by a noble class whose origins lay in the German-speaking world. Arendt cites Henri de BoulainvilliersHenri de Boulainvilliers: Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie française dans les Gaules (1734); put forward the thesis that the (ethnically Gallic) French were colonized and culturally influenced by (Frisian-Germanic) foreigners who became their aristocratic leadership class., Louis-Gabriel Du Buat-NançayLouis-Gabriel Du Buat-Nançay: Les Origines, ou l’Ancien gouvernement de la France, de l’Allemagne, de l’Italie, etc. (1757); proposed an International of the Aristocracy; the fact that he, like Boulainvilliers, assumed the origins of the European aristocracy to be in the German-speaking world had a lot to do with the fact that in his time – that is, shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution – any nobility other than the German one was out of the question., and François Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier.François Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier: De la nécessité d’une contre-révolution en France (1791); the nobleman exiled from France was one of the first French authors who considered the French people (subjugated by the aristocratic conquering people) to be a regrettable inferior racial mixture. Between 1749 and 1804, the Comte de Buffon published the first racial taxonomy – his - not yet judgmental - Histoire naturelle. Arendt points out the paradox that the anti-French racial doctrine, which later became so widespread in Europe, was first formulated neither by English nor by German, but by French authors.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 74f, 90 She does not consider it a coincidence that it was the Frenchman Gobineau who later developed the first fully developed theory of history on a racist basis. The racial theory, including the claim of the superiority of the Germanic peoples, was already a widely held opinion at this time, at least among the aristocracy of France.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 75 The function of racism in Germany A first characteristic element of German racism, which is missing in the French racism, for example, is the Völkism. While racism in France served to divide the aristocratic ruling class from the population, the Prussian patriots after the defeat of 1806, like political Romanticism, incorporated the concept of race into a worldview that was intended to unite the people across all social classes. The aim was to mobilize the people to an awareness of their common origins against French foreign rule. The idea of ​​national "blood ties" only emerged in German-speaking countries after the Wars of Liberation when frustration spread among some intellectuals (for example Joseph Görres, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn) that the German people were not yet ready to establish a nation.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 76f Until the founding of the German Empire in 1871, "Germany" was - unlike France or Great Britain - not a united state but a loose confederation of states that included four kingdoms as well as various duchies and free cities. For national emancipation, the Germans lacked a genuinely historically based national consciousness, and for nation-state organization, they lacked a clearly recognizable geographical boundary of their territory.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 82 Unlike in France, the struggle between the nobility and the bourgeoisie in Germany was never fought in the political sphere. A peculiarity of the thinking of the German nationalist bourgeoisie was to label other peoples with the same predicates that the German nobility labeled the German bourgeoisie: first the French and English and again and again the Jews. To itself, the bourgeoisie attributed the great qualities of innate personality to which the German nobility had long claimed.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 80, 82 A second characteristic element of German racism stems from the cult of personality and genius, with which the German bourgeoisie and philistine sought to overcome their originally political feelings of inferiority. From this developed the idea that nature itself had assigned the Germanic "Übermensch" the task of dominating and oppressing the entire world.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 83 In the 18th and 19th century, however, Herder, Goethe and the anthropologist Gustav Klemm (Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, 1843–52) either refused to speak of human races or still respected the idea of ​​a unified humanity. Gobineau It was the French nobleman Arthur de Gobineau who combined both elements – Völkism and the cult of personality and genius – and thus created the theoretical basis for German racial ideology. Gobineau's Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines was published in 1853; for half a century, however, no historian has taken it seriously. It was not until the turn of the 20th century that the essay became a standard work for all historiography.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 83, 89 It was the first consistent formulation of a racially based conception of history.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 86 Arendt points out that all racial doctrines have a strong affinity to doctrines of doom. Gobineau was the first to think of interpreting all of history as an ever-repeating story of decay and ruin — a history that follows a single discoverable law. His central concern was to find this law according to which nations perish.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 84 Arendt points out that Gobineau completely lacks the sense of complexity evident, for example, in Baudelaire, Swinburne, Nietzsche, and Wagner; she sees him, a disappointed nobleman and romantic intellectual, as a belated heir to Boulainvilliers, who simply identified the decline of the aristocracy with the end of the world.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 85f She interprets the fact that his essay, which seemed out of date at the time it was written, gained enormous popularity at the turn of the century as a result of its compatibility with the vulgar doomsday mood of the fin de siecle.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 86 While his predecessors had attempted to explain why the strongest and best (the nobility) prevailed and ruled, Gobineau found himself in the precarious position of also having to explain why the French nobility had nevertheless declined. He resolved this dilemma by equating the decline of the nobility with the beginning of the decline of humanity and by postulating a racial degeneration that preceded the decline of civilization and in which the worst infallibly triumphed. To explain racial degeneration, he invented the idea that in racial mixing, the "inferior" blood always prevails. This latter idea, however, remained unpopular at first and only gained acceptance after the First World War.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 86f To counteract the decline of civilization, Gobineau proposed replacing the declining aristocracy with a newly created "elite" recruited from a "princely race" - the Aryans. He did not believe in pure races, but assumed that a different racial mixture prevailed in every individual; thus, he made it possible to arbitrarily declare a given person as racially superior or inferior, without regard to national or social origin.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 87 As Arendt emphasizes, Gobineau had no interest in patriotic feelings, but rather – opportunistically – always saw superiority in the victorious and successful.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 88f Penetration of racism into science Arendt notes that racial theorists were only taken seriously as scientists from the end of the 19th century onwards, and that only since then have their theories been treated as the result of scientific research or purely intellectual development.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 66 Arendt sees the origins of the so-called science of eugenics in England, although she shows that the theories that emerged there – unlike those that later emerged in Germany – were due to genuine national needs.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 92, 100 . Similar to Germany, there was no pronounced class conflict between the nobility and the bourgeoisie; the people remained closely connected across all levels.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 92 But as a colonial power, the British needed a concept of nationhood that was no longer territorially bound, but could unite a people scattered across the world. They also strongly believed that England was the best guarantee for the existence of humanity.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 102 Moreover, the English, more than other nations, were faced with the vast, purely physical differences between European and non-European peoples. This was a challenge to the biblical myth of the origin of the human race, and even modern slavery, although not necessarily dependent on the idea of ​​racial difference, received a certain justification through racial doctrines.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 93 Political racial problems existed in the 19th century, particularly in the United States and Great Britain, which, after the abolition of slavery in their territory and in their colonies, had to solve political and practical problems of coexistence.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 94 The founder of conservatism, Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790), had a strong influence here. In the late 18th century, he taught that social inequality was part of the English national character and that inherited rights were a political characteristic of the English, while rejecting the idea of ​​human rights defended by the French Revolution.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 90f As a result, the nation-building of Great Britain was not accompanied by a constitutional reformulation of human rights, and for several decades England's public opinion provided the most fertile ground for a multitude of nonsensical biological worldviews, all of which were oriented towards racial doctrines. In England, racial theories were more dominated than elsewhere by ideas of breeding and biological inheritance. Arendt then lists two naturalistic ideologies that have all entered the public eye "with a massive pseudo-scientific apparatus": The proponents of Polygenism, in an open struggle against the "lies" of the Bible, denied any kinship between races; since they denied a pre-existing connection between all people, they were also bitter opponents of natural law. The polygenists provided the English colonial officials with their worldview, according to which there was no greater misfortune and no greater sin than intermarriage.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 94f Polygenism was soon pushed back and replaced by Darwinian ideologies. A characteristic of Darwin's theory of heredity was its political indeterminacy; on its basis, history could be viewed as a struggle of races as well as a struggle of classes. The contribution of eugenicists in this context was to reassure the ruling classes of England about their status by assuming, like Darwin, that humans have an animal origin, but that nature needed a little help in its work of selecting the fittest, namely through breeding and the elimination of the obviously "unfit".Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 95-97 Although in England it was not noblemen but commoners who formulated such theories, their aim was to breed geniuses that were also aristocracy, and thereby to impart standards of aristocratic living to all classes of the nation. Carlyle, whose hero and genius worship was unprecedented in England, had a considerable influence here.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 98f The "Scramble for Africa" According to Arendt, the disastrous impact of the concept of race in the 20th century can only be understood if one also understands the distress from which it arose. The decisive factor was the experiences Europeans had in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the context of the Scramble for Africa.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 106 Arendt describes this struggle as the starting point of expansion imperialism.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 110 thumb|Boer family (1886) She emphasizes that no area on earth could have been more favorable to the emergence of modern mob mentality and the racial madness that goes with it than the Cape Colony. The concept of race was particularly prevalent among the Boers who were horrified by the indigenous peoples of Africa with whom they were forced to live. They absolutely did not want to belong to the same species of living beings, and they repeatedly made desperate efforts to exterminate them.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 106f The only livelihood the region provided was extensive livestock farming, and the only resource available to the Boers in abundance was the nomadic native population. Slavery proved to be the only economic model that allowed them to cope with both the barren soils and their fear of the black population.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 114f They were only able to assert themselves as masters of the natives because they adopted their tribal thinking and acted as their gods.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 120 Because of their geographical isolation, their extremely dispersed settlement pattern, and their nomadic way of life, the Boers had neither a state nor even a local organization, nor any ties to a particular territory; as a result, they recognized no bond between people other than the family and no solidarity other than that in the face of common danger.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 115, 119 Unlike slave owners in North America, for example, they did not use the parasitic exploitation of the natives to free themselves—as the master class—for other, "higher" activities, but only to relieve themselves of any work. They increasingly adapted the ways of the natives, especially their nomadic life and their tribal ties, distinguishing themselves from them by little other than their skin color.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 116f, 119 This made them particularly susceptible to fanatical racial theories.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 117 As Christians and members of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Boers believed in the Bible, but denied the oneness of human origins proclaimed in Genesis. However, they took the Old Testament teaching of God's chosen people literally; for them, there were only "whites" and "blacks," of whom the former, according to God's will, were condemned to idleness and indolent rule, and the latter to serfdom and equally indolent servitude.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 118 In this respect, the only new element the Boers added to the tribal consciousness they shared with the natives was their sense of racial superiority.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 119 Arendt emphasizes that these early racial feelings already prefigured everything that would later unfold: the lack of understanding of the "patria" the genuine lack of "soil" the contempt for all evaluations that arise from what has been earned and achieved, and against which the natural-physical givenness predetermined by birth is set as the only absolute.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 119f thumb|Workers in a washing plant at the De Beers diamond mine. The mentality of the Boers had a decisive influence on the adventurers and desperadoes who flocked to South Africa in large numbers after diamond (1871) and gold deposits (1884) were discovered there.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 114 Unlike during the California gold rush, unlimited quantities of cheap (native) human labor were available in South Africa, enabling the emergence of a permanently operating gold and diamond industry in which miners, financed by European banks, could become rich without having to work themselves.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 123f The two Boer Wars led by England (1880/1881, 1899-1902) ended with a military defeat for the Boers, but with a political victory in that from then on the anarchic lawlessness of their racial society remained undisturbed. Neither membership in the Commonwealth nor the apparent capitalist development could disturb the unity that existed among all social classes of the white population in South Africa on the racial question.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 126 thumb|The German-born Alfred Beit was, along with Otto Beit, Barney Barnato, Sammy Marks, and others, one of the Jewish financiers whom the Boers hated so much. Another important element in Boer ideology was their hatred of the (often Jewish) financiers, who played a key role in transforming the fleeting gold rush into a permanent, regular business. The latter was a thorn in their side because it created the first need in South Africa to establish state-military structures to protect invested capital. The British did this as part of a new imperialist policy.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 126f Although the financiers had little influence on this policy and although they were only able to maintain their presence in the country’s economic life for a short time (Cecil Rhodes soon united England's investments in his own hands), the Boers, who stereotypically identified them as Jews, saw them as the true people responsible for and representatives of all the activities they hated.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 127, 129f Arendt emphasizes at this point that South Africa played a significant role in the history of modern racial anti-Semitism, because it was here that the Jews were thrown into a racial society for the first time, and the Boer racial worldview became the first to include anti-Semitism.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 128f The Boers saw the Jews as "white Negroes" and foreigners as potential "white Jews."Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 129 Even after England provided imperialist protection to the foreign capital invested in South Africa, the Boers managed to remain the undisputed masters of the country and maintain their racial society.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 131 When the supply of black labor became scarce, large numbers of Indians and Chinese were imported into South Africa, who were immediately treated equally to the "racially inferior" native blacks.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 132 Another lesson that Arendt draws from the South African racial society is that here, for the first time, it was shown that a social system can be entirely geared to maintaining the dominant position of the white race, while the calculation of profit is not an iron law, but can be ignored without catastrophic economic consequences.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 132f Racism in the bureaucracy in the English overseas colonies Another topic that Arendt deals with in this book is the racism of the administrative officers that imperialist England sent to its colonies. These followed a founding legend of the English Empire which included the idea that the English were destined to be the masters of the world, a legend that Rudyard Kipling had told in his works in an exemplary manner.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 134ff The work of these officials was characterized by their disinterest in the fate of the indigenous peoples, their isolation from them, their evasion of the control of the mother country and all legal restrictions, their autocratic conduct, and their use of secret agents and spies. Because their domination of foreign peoples was not determined by clearly identifiable, tangible interests, but only followed the law of expansion, it had to be ideologically justified with supposedly broader interests and higher goals.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 140 Arendt cites Lord Cromer's essay On the Government of Subject Races (1913) as an example of the latter.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 143 In southern Africa, Cecil Rhodes, based on similar convictions, planned to establish a secret society supported by members of the "Nordic race" whose goal was to "govern" all the peoples of the earth.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 144f In this section of her book, Arendt shows how the actions of the imperialist British colonial officials contained all the elements that only needed to be melted together to establish a totalitarian regime based on a racial doctrine.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 154 Unlike later in Germany, however, a minimum of human rights was always respected in the English sphere of influence.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 155 Pan-nationalism In some European countries, including Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, which believed that they had been short-changed in the redistribution of the earth in the imperialist era, an imperialism emerged that aimed at annexing territories in countries directly adjacent to their own.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 164 These attempts were less successful than the efforts of England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to annex territories in other parts of the world. However, this continental imperialism contributed all the more to conveying to the Central European peoples the hostility to the state (inherent in all imperialism) and to organize them into anti-party, non-partisan movements.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 156f The Pan-movements found the most fertile ground in the two countries that both saw themselves as losers in the redistribution of territories and had failed in their attempt to form a nation-state: Austria-Hungary and Stalinist Russia.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 156f, 164 The fact that the programs of both – Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism – had the goal of total world conquest was largely misunderstood by contemporaries. The Pan-Germans proposed "condemning the Europeans of foreign stock living among us, i.e., the Poles, Czechs, Jews, and Italians, etc., to the helot status that overseas imperialism had intended for the natives in foreign parts of the world," or, failing that, importing slave populations into Europe. In any case, the "German master race" had to be able to distinguish itself from oppressed races in its own country.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 158 The Pan-German movement in Austria-Hungary preceded that in Germany and, as early as 1913, demanded the "establishment of a [...] unified state on an Aryan basis."Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 165 Arendt emphasizes that it was reserved for continental imperialism to directly translate racial ideology into politics and to apodictically assert: "Germany's future lies in its blood." Continental imperialism was oriented from the outset towards racial concepts and adopted the racial worldviews that the nineteenth century had provided much more enthusiastically and consciously than had been the case in England, for example.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 159 From the very beginning, the Pan movements claimed that their people were chosen. They taught the divine origin of their peoples, thus opposing the traditional Judeo-Christian belief in a divine origin of humanity.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 173f The Pan-movements had a special relationship with anti-Semitism. Oppressed minorities such as the Slavs in Austria and the Poles in Tsarist Russia saw the Jews as agents of the state apparatus and as representatives of a foreign oppressor. However, in the context of the Pan-movements, anti-Semitism went far beyond anything that could be seen as even remotely rational. In Austria, Schönerer saw "anti-Semitism as a cornerstone of the national idea, as the main means of promoting genuine popular sentiment, and thus as the greatest achievement of the century." Unlike in contemporary Germany, for the Austro-Hungarian and Russian pan-movements, anti-Semitism was not just a political tool, but the center of an overall worldview.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 166 Here, anti-Semitism was completely emancipated from all real experiences with Jews and was bound to nothing more than the logic inherent in ideologies.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 167 The Völkisch nationalism Economic motives, Arendt points out, played hardly any role in the Pan-movements; they were politically and ideologically driven movements.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 160 Due to their radicalism and hostility to the state, the Pan-movements were never used by the governments of the respective countries, but they paved the way for the new "Völkisch" sentiment that characterized Nazi and Bolshevik rule, creating an aura of transpolitical holiness and evoking beliefs in "Holy Russia" and the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation"—keywords that unleashed entire chains of superstitious associations among Russian and German intellectuals, ultimately culminating in a frenzy that was infinitely superior to simple nationalism in depth and richness.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 162, 165 The Völkisch nationalism was the driving force behind continental imperialism and Pan-movements and arose in countries like Austria-Hungary and Bolshevik Russia, that had not, or had not sufficiently, succeeded in forming a nation-state because their peoples did not see themselves as historical and cultural entities.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 164, 167 While pan-movements emerged only in German- and Russian-speaking areas, Völkisch nationalism had also spread among the oppressed nationalities in Eastern and Southern Europe.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 172 The Völkisch nationalism differed fundamentally from chauvinism of the French variety, for example; although French chauvinism also romanticized the past and invented an incredible vocabulary of boasting, it never claimed that people of French descent were tribal French only because of the mysterious qualities of their "blood."Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 162f The Völkisch tribal consciousness clung to non-existent, fictitious ideas insofar as it relied on inner, immeasurable qualities.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 163 The Völkisch nationalism also always claimed that its own people were unique and that their existence was incompatible with the equal existence of other peoples.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 163f In multi-ethnic states such as Austria-Hungary and Bolshevik Russia, where the fact that everyone lived in the same territory under the same rule did not create a sense of community, nationality could only appear as a characteristic independent of the territory and innate to certain individuals, and portable everywhere.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up?view=theater Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 171 Racism in National Socialism In this book, Arendt states that "the Jewish question and antisemitism [became] the catalytic agent for first, the Nazi movement, then a world war, and finally the establishment of death factories."Arendt Hannah 1962 The Origins of Totalitarianism https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism Cleveland, New York Meridian Books 7 viii She contradicts the view of many of her contemporaries who "consider it an accident that Nazi ideology centered around antisemitism". "What the Nazis themselves claimed to be their chief discovery – the role of the Jewish people in world politics – and their chief interest – persecution of Jews all over the world – have been regarded by public opinion as a pretext for winning the masses or an interesting device of demagogy." But what the Nazis themselves said, should have been taken seriously.Arendt Hannah 1962 The Origins of Totalitarianism https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism Cleveland, New York Meridian Books 7 3 "Strengthened by the experiences of almost two decades in the various capitals, the Nazis were confident that their best 'propaganda' would be their racial policy itself, from which, despite many other compromises and broken promises, they had never swerved for expediency's sake. Racism was neither a new nor a secret weapon, thou never before had it been used with this thoroughgoing consistency."Arendt Hannah 1962 The Origins of Totalitarianism https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism Cleveland, New York Meridian Books 7 158 Arendt's understanding of racism According to Arendt, the social theoretical opinions that were able to prevail in the 19th century "in the tough competition of free opinions" include in particular "the doctrine of a racial struggle prescribed by nature, from which the historical process, especially the rise and decline of peoples, can be derived, inspired by Darwin and in some respects related to the Marxist class conflict."Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 66f Racism then became the "political weapon of imperialism". Arendt contradicts the view that racism is a "variant of nationalism". Rather, it is opposed to nationalism and patriotism and undermines both.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 69 Nevertheless, Arendt links the emergence of racism as a political action to the emergence of European nation-states; the racial theorists were indeed those who denied the principle of equality and solidarity of nations guaranteed by the idea of ​​equality.Arendt Hannah 1975 Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Band 2: Imperialismus https://archive.org/details/elementeundurspr00aren/mode/2up Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Wien Ullstein 3-548-13182-4 69f Arendt distinguishes between antisemitism and hatred of Jews, the former being a special case of the latter.Arendt Hannah 1962 The Origins of Totalitarianism https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism Cleveland, New York Meridian Books 7 ix Sources Category:Book:Scientific racism in Germany