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D xjrino the last few years Americans and
Europeans have been hearing a vast
amount of talk about race and “race
purity.” At the same time, they liave been
hearing of and witnessing terrible and ugly
deeds which arc perpetrated in the name of a
fierce passion known as race hatred. News
papers have been full of accounts of violence
and blood-shed, economic boycott, and even
threats of war, excused by the pretext of racial
differences. In Germany, Jews have been per
secuted by economic boycott, by cruel and
sometimes murderous attacks, by enforced
exile, and by confinement in concentration
camps, on the theory that they are the natural
enemies, the “corrupters,” of t heir so-called
Aryan fellow-citizens. In America, the per
secution and lynching of Negroes by members
of the white race is no new story. In the < )rient,
the Japanese have been made to suffer humilia
tion, both as a nation and as a race, because
of legislation by the United States designed to
keep them out of this country on racial grounds;
they make no secret of their resentment at this
treatment, which is one of the excuses for llieir
warlike policy today. From many quarters
of this distracted world the cry of race hatred
is raised. It serves as an excuse for terrible
deeds. It divides people who should be able
to work together in peace and amity. It makes
enemies of those who should be brothers; it
kindles the vilest and most brutal passions by
meuns of empty, often meaningless words;
it is one of the ugliest and most inhuman of
the hatreds which mar the relationship of
peoples today.
Since there is so much wildly irresponsible
talk about superior and inferior races, and
especially about the Aryans, it is important
to discover what these words really mean.
The very word “Aryan” has become hateful
now by its associations. Anyone who under
stands the real causes of race hatred and race
persecution must wish to fight against them.
But to do so, he must know better than those
people who are deceived into hatred. He must
be able to refute lies and misstatements; he
must be able to tell what the words reallv mean
He must be able to use the words “race” and
"Aryan” intelligently, instead of being blinded
by passion and prejudice. Often words merely
cover up ignorance. When you begin to talk
about race coolly and dispassionately, you are
forced very soon to admit that there is very
much about the subject which we do not know
and can never know. After explaining the facts
so far as we know them, it is much easier to
explain also the real reason for race hatred in
the world today: the attempt to divert the
flaming indignation of starved and exploited
Peoples throughout the world away from those
who are responsible, by victimizing those who
are innocent.
THE
ARYAN MYTH
Tracking Down the Cause
of Race Hatred
By Margaret Schlauch
Decent dispatches from He
planniny to aband,<n Ur ,
(irrmon citizenship on,/ to
A on-Aryan With (irrmon
arhrlr, based on excerpls
dm report I hot the \azie ore
l cyan label a.> a yardstick of
re/dace the terms Aryan ami
and Jen', respect ice ty. This
from a pamphlet called " lb ho
Are l he Aryans ’", /mbl.shed by the Anli/.iscid Lilera-
tnre Lommdlee, is therefore parltcul irly limrh) because
it deals with the oriym oj the Aryan mylf'.
it
—Humorstlcke. Llsty, Prague
'The Aryan is Created to be Master"
With so much loose talk current about Vryans
as a race (when, as wc have seen, there reallv
is no such race), it is no wonder that there is also
much foolish talk about “Aryan superiorilv.”
This highly unscientific phrase, whatever it
may mean, used to justify political actions of the
greatest cruelty. The idea which it represents
is entirely false, of course. The myth of “Aryan
superiority” has had a curious history. A tost
often the phrase “Aryan superiority” is used
as if it meant the superiority of the Northern
European peoples—the Germanic group alone—
not of all peoples speaking an Indo-European
language.
Strangely enough, it was a Frenchman who
first .advanced the theory of Aryan (and Ger-
mnnic) superiority, using the phrase in its
narrower sense. The Comte de Gohineau pub
lished a book in lSot (“ailed hssm sur f'/nc-
g<i/ih’ Acs lidccs Ihnnaincs (Essay Coneern-
ing the Inequality of the Human Races),
dedicated by the way, to King George the
J, th uf Hanover, Germany. In it lie claimed
that the races of white men were naturally
n gher than all others, and among this chosen
group the “Nordic Aryans” were supreme. In
the north, he said, the virtues
‘>f masculine activity predomi
nated; in the south' they were
lost m mi excessively feminine
element. Gohineau placed the
black races at the bottom of the
human scale, next the yellow
mid on the top the white. He
listed ten chief civilizations of the
past, and tried to prove that they
were all “Aryan” but one, the
Assyrian, which (he claimed)
owed its rebirth to the Aryan
I ersians. Yet in his list he omit
ted the Judaic and Arabic civili
zations! W hen he came to de-
smb f the “Aryan” Germanic
people his admiration knew no
bounds. He even went so far as
to argue that the Frank h (Ger
manic) element in Northern
French made it superior to other
trench dialects. Here is a typical
ADOLF HITLER
"Beaulijul in looks, warlike in
spirit ’—the Aryan Myth.
quotation:
1 he Aryan is, therefore, superior to other
men, chiefly in the measure of his intelligence
and energy; and it is because of these two
faculties that once he has subdued his pas
sions and his natural needs he is privileged
to attain a much higher morality . . . This
same Aryan appears before us in the western
branch of his (racial) family, as vigorously
endowed, as beautiful in looks, and as war
like in spirit as he appeared to our admiring
gaze in India, in Persia, and in Homeric
(■recce. . . Mounted thus on a sort of
pedestal, standing out sharply against his
background, the German Aryan is a creature
of gTeat power.”
I he flowery language of Gobineau, and his
completely false doctrines, were all too influen
tial, especially in Germany. The Essai was
reprinted in 1884. Its doctrines were received
with enthusiasm in many quarters. They are
partly responsible for such chauvinistic books
as Probleme ties I!) Jahrhundorts (Problems
of the Nineteenth Century) by Houston Stew
art ( hamberlain, an Englishman who became
a German citizen more fanatically patriotic
than the natives. His book justified Germany s
claims to a world empire on the basis of racial
superiority. Gobineaus doctrines have also
contributed indirectly to the fantastic and in
credible claims of National-Socialist writers
on the basis of non-existent “Aryan purity.’
Another Frenchman, Yacher de Lapouce,
contributed to the same general result by his
extravagant statements such as this:
By his inflexible will-power, the Aryan
proves that lie is created to be master
Ihis quality is strongly contrasted with the
character of the peaceful round-head hra-
chycephal), the patient servitor of the blond
long-head, the slave race constantly in quest
of masters . . .” (From L'Aryen, son J
social, 1899.)
*****
These most unscientific quotations were
written before 1933. (Please turn to Podc h )
* THE SOUTHERN ISRAE IT £