Who Was the `Father of Racism'?
Cerberus
Who Was the `Father of Racism'?
Thomas Jackson, American Renaissance, July 2007
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816 - 1882), to use his full name
and title, has been called the "father of racism," usually by people
who think he was the intellectual precursor to the Ku Klux Klan and
the Nazis. For a host of reasons, this is a silly way to think of him,
but he does deserve study--both because of his influence as a thinker
and for the inherent interest of what he wrote. As Gobineau
recognized, many people had written about race before he did--"The
idea of an original, clear-cut and permanent inequality among the
different races is one of the oldest and most widely held opinions in
the world."--but he was the first to study race seriously as an
important force in world history.
Gobineau was a French diplomat, journalist, novelist, Orientalist, and
poet as well as a race theorist. He was a confirmed elitist, and was
deeply annoyed that his birthday was Bastille Day, the commemoration
of what he thought was one of the most shameful movements in French
history.
Although anti-racists today try to pigeonhole Gobineau as a "racist"
and nothing more, he was a man of considerable parts. He was, for
example, a friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, who invited him to
collaborate on a history of moral attitudes. They never completed the
project, but some 80 letters remain from their correspondence. In
fact, Tocqueville had a large role in Gobineau's career. In 1849,
Tocqueville became foreign minister of France, and invited Gobineau to
become his private secretary. Tocqueville did not last long at the
ministry, but his friend spent the next 30 years as a diplomat,
deepening his understanding of the role of race. He had two postings
in Iran, and held near-ambassador ranks in Athens, Rio de Janeiro and
Stockholm. He was reported to be a man of great charm and an effective
diplomat.
Gobineau published his major work, Essay on the Inequality of the
Human Races, in four volumes, from 1853 to 1855. It did not attract
much notice, and only began to influence European thinking 20 years
later, after Gobineau became friends with Richard Wagner. The two men
died within a few
months of each other, and the Wagner/Bayreuth
movement promoted Gobineau along with Wagner. The Nazis later adopted
Gobineau as one of their own--thereby considerably damaging his
reputation--but as we will see, it was only with considerable
distortion that Gobineau could be claimed as an early National
Socialist.
Gobineau begins his famous essay by explaining how he discovered the
importance of race. He wanted to know why civilizations die, and found
all previous explanations inadequate. Bad governments, he decided, do
not kill off civilizations because bad government is everywhere:
"Thank heaven they [the people] have the power of soon becoming
accustomed to their sufferings." Decadence and effeminacy are not the
cause because some nations "have lived and grown fat on it." Nor does
loss of faith in a society's gods explain collapse because some
civilizations have died during times of religious fanaticism.
These studies led to what is Gobineau's most quoted insight:
"I was gradually penetrated by the conviction that the racial question
overshadows all other problems of history, that it holds the key to
them all . Everyone must have had some inkling of this colossal truth,
for everyone must have seen how certain agglomerations of men have
descended on some country, and utterly transformed its way of life ."
The rest of the essay is an extensive elaboration on this insight.
How Races Differ
Gobineau divided all men into three races: black, white, and yellow.
Although he put whites at the top, his orderings have a strange
resemblance to Philippe Rushton's well-known findings that blacks and
Asians are at the extremes on many traits, with whites somewhere in
between.
Blacks, wrote Gobineau, are dull-witted and have strong, crude
feelings. They do not care what they eat, since they consider all food
good. The "prognathous Negro" (a phrase Gobineau liked--"prognathous"
means having a jaw that juts forward) is at the same time capricious
in his feelings, and "kills willingly, for the sake of killing."
Blacks are incapable of civilization: "Ages have passed without their
doing anything to improve their conditions."
Gobineau describes the yellow race as "the exact opposite" of the
black:
"[H]e commits none of the strange excesses common among Negroes. His
desires are feeble, his will-power rather obstinate than violent; his
longing for material pleasures, though constant, is kept within
bounds. A rare glutton by nature, he shows far more discrimination in
his choice of food."
The Asian has a respect for order but "he does not dream or theorize;
he invents little, but can appreciate and take over what is useful to
him." Gobineau says the yellow races are the perfect middle class; one
could not have better, more useful masses. However, he writes, "no
civilized society could be created by them; they could not supply its
nerve force, or set in motion the springs of beauty and action."
It is whites who build civilizations because of their "love of
liberty" and their restless will to create and govern. They have an
"extraordinary attachment to life. They know how to use it and so, it
would seem, set a greater price on it ." Gobineau believed whites are
more sparing of the lives of others. "When they are cruel, they are
conscious of their cruelty; it is very doubtful whether such a
consciousness exists in the Negro."
Gobineau believed that whites are uniquely preoccupied with honor, and
are the only race that shows true physical beauty. They are also the
source of all civilization: "[E]verything great, noble and fruitful in
the works of man on this earth . belongs to one family alone, the
different branches of which have reigned in all the civilized
countries of the universe." Gobineau claimed that even Chinese
civilization arose when whites migrated east from India. For him, the
category that cannot rise above the primitive stage "includes the vast
majority of the pure-blooded yellow and black races."
As was common in his time, Gobineau saw sharp differences even among
national groups of the same race; he believed that the Napoleonic wars
showed that the French are physically tougher than Germans and other
Europeans. Seventy years later, however, the Nazis were pleased to
find that Gobineau often referred to the civilizing people as
"Germanic" or "Aryan."
Although he wrote in terms that today sound harsh, Gobineau was not
dismissive of any race, noting that some individual blacks are more
intelligent than European peasants or even average townspeople. He
even criticized anthropologists for criticizing blacks unfairly.
However, in the essay, he cared only about a race's ability to build a
civilization. Individuals could be exceptions to the general rules
that applied to races, but it was races, not individuals, who built
and destroyed civilizations.
Complete essay at
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/12/who_was_the_fat.php
Greatest Mining Pioneer of Australia of all Times
Quite correct article, still the answer is elsewhere :
I have four photos in one of my very special books outside the 1000s
on Geology, Earth History, Anthropology etc
It is dealing with Endocrinology and is a very rare books amongst the
rarest :
L. Langeron
Précis d'Endocrinologie Clinique.
It shows on page 33 four photos :
- at 26 a good looking Caucasian man
- at 29 the start of the disease
- one photo in between that one and the last
- at the 42 a pure bred Negro, and this of the same man as the one of
the first photo
M le Comte de Gobineau did not know these facts, and the Acromegalia
disease although seldom appearing in the white race, is the result of
mutilation of both male & female children in African populations..
Negro is not a colour, it is an endocrinal state with Hyper -
Hypophyse syndrome.
Incidentally the jump ahead of China & Chinese results directly from
Chairman Mao Tse Tung's interdiction under pain of death of the
Mutilation of little Chinese girls in 1949... 20 years later China was
steering itself to the top !
Endocrinology is incidentally the key to the understanding of the
Western Civilistation and the key indeed to the understanding of the
present JIC Sects occult working ( JIC judeo-islamo-christian sects)
Someone who I believe was a British Diplomat ( Antony Eden from
memory ) said once :
QUOTE
The Chinese are the Blessing of China as much as the Negroes the Curse
of Africa
UNQUOTE
With best regards
Sir Jean-Paul Turcaud
Australia Mining Pioneer
Discoverer of Telfer, Nifty & Kintyre mines in the Great Sandy Desert
Exploration Geologist & Offshore Consultant
Founder of the True Geology
~ Ignorance is the Cosmic Sin, the One never Forgiven ~
for background info.
http://www.tnet.com.au/~warrigal/grule.html
http://users.indigo.net.au/don/tel/index.html
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/turcaud.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s28534.htm
Duncan Patton
Cerberus <uyrav2...@hotblast.e4ward.com> wrote:
>
> Who Was the `Father of Racism'?
>
"Adam".
Dhu
Tani Jantsang©
"Duncan Patton" <camp...@neotext.ca> wrote in message
news:20080101192827.2...@neotext.ca...
> On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 14:10:48 -0800 (PST)
> Cerberus <uyrav2...@hotblast.e4ward.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Who Was the `Father of Racism'?
Juan Gines de Sepulveda is the Father of Modern Racism. Gobineau is often
called that. See below for info on both.
The idea of an original, clear-cut and permanent inequality among the
different races is one of the oldest and most widely held opinions in the
world.-but Gobineau was the first to study race seriously as an important
force in world history.
Although anti-racists today try to pigeonhole Gobineau as a "racist" and
nothing more, he was a man of considerable parts. He was, for example, a
friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, who invited him to collaborate on a history
of moral attitudes. They never completed the project, but some 80 letters
remain from their correspondence. In fact, Tocqueville had a large role in
Gobineau's career. In 1849, Tocqueville became foreign minister of France,
and invited Gobineau to become his private secretary. Tocqueville did not
last long at the ministry, but his friend spent the next 30 years as a
diplomat, deepening his understanding of the role of race. He had two
postings in Iran, and held near-ambassador ranks in Athens, Rio de Janeiro
and Stockholm. He was reported to be a man of great charm and an effective
diplomat.
Gobineau published his major work, Essay on the Inequality of the Human
Races, in four volumes, from 1853 to 1855. It did not attract much notice,
and only began to influence European thinking 20 years later, after Gobineau
became friends with Richard Wagner. The two men died within a few months of
each other, and the Wagner/Bayreuth movement promoted Gobineau along with
Wagner. The Nazis later adopted Gobineau as one of their own-thereby
considerably damaging his reputation-but as we will see, it was only with
considerable distortion that Gobineau could be claimed as an early National
Socialist.
Gobineau begins his famous essay by explaining how he discovered the
importance of race. He wanted to know why civilizations die, and found all
previous explanations inadequate. Bad governments, he decided, do not kill
off civilizations because bad government is everywhere: "Thank heaven they
[the people] have the power of soon becoming accustomed to their
sufferings." Decadence and effeminacy are not the cause because some
nations "have lived and grown fat on it." Nor does loss of faith in a
society's gods explain collapse because some civilizations have died during
times of religious fanaticism.
These studies led to what is Gobineau's most quoted insight: "I was
gradually penetrated by the conviction that the racial question overshadows
all other problems of history, that it holds the key to them all . Everyone
must have had some inkling of this colossal truth, for everyone must have
seen how certain agglomerations of men have descended on some country, and
utterly transformed its way of life ." The rest of the essay is an extensive
elaboration on this insight.
Here - about Sepulveda:
Juan Gines de Sepulveda, the ''Father of Modern Racism'' and apologist for
Spanish wars against Natives of ''the Indies,'' requires more than one
editorial, or book. So do his great antagonist Bartolome de Las Casas, the
passionate defender of American Indians, and the great debate over the
humanity of Indians at Valladolid in 1550. Continuing discussion is
necessary because the positions of that 500-year-old debate, not yet
settled, continue to haunt Indian nations.
De las Casas could claim a moral victory, simply for the fact that the
Spanish King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V were troubled enough by his
protests to summon the debate. But Sepulveda's many fans maintained that he
carried the day in the practical upshot and the continuing influence of his
doctrine of ''natural slavery.'' There's a strong case that Sepulveda is the
dark force behind Supreme Court holdings of tribal dependency, which live on
today in the extra-constitutional doctrine of congressional ''plenary
power'' over Indian affairs.
The dispute between Sepulveda and de las Casas had actually gone on for a
decade before the royal commission convened at Valladolid. Sepulveda wrote a
treatise in 1533 called ''Democrates Primus,'' or the conformity of military
doctrine to the Christian religion, justifying the wars of Charles V. De las
Casas and his fellow Dominicans actually living in the Americas protested
that the Spanish conquests there, far from just, were tyrannically cruel.
(As bishop of Chiapas, de las Casas had infinitely more ''field experience''
than Sepulveda, who had never been to America and possibly never even met an
Indian.) Greatly annoyed by de las Casas' ''scandalous and diabolical''
attacks, Sepulveda responded in 1544 by writing a dialogue in Latin called
''Democrates Secundus,'' or ''The Just Causes of the War against the
Indians.'' Both men were summoned to make their case to the Commission at
Valladolid.
Sepulveda repeated the main points of his dialogue, and the point that
concerns us is his assertion that Spaniards had a natural right to rule over
Indians because in nature, superior entities had dominion over inferior
ones. ''For the same reason, the husband holds dominion over his wife, the
adult over the infant, the father over his son,'' his character Democrates
told his incredulous interlocutor. Sepulveda bolstered his case with
extensive defamation of the ''rude nature'' of the Indians, including
accusations of cannibalism and equally implausible assertions of Spanish
gentility. (Historian Lewis Hanke notes with amazement that Sepulveda cited
the Spanish army's sack of Rome in 1527 as an example of its benevolence;
the rest of Europe considered it an atrocity worse than the attacks of the
Visigoths.)
This argument was a self-interested excuse for economic exploitation, and
Sepulveda shares responsibility for the subsequent evil history of racial
slavery. But in Sepulveda's terms, it had a flip side. The allegedly
superior master was supposed to rule for the benefit of the slave. (The
dialogue used the example of domestic animals.) The greater prudence and
wisdom of the Spaniard was to be used for the welfare of the Indian, to
provide him with the implements of civilization and the benefits of
Christianity.
In rebuttal, de las Casas presented the Valladolid Commission a massive
brief on the achievements of the Indian civilization, which he said compared
favorably with classical antiquity and even with Spain. But subsequent
generations paid more attention to Sepulveda.
The idea of the Indian as ward of the superior European took root in Supreme
Court doctrine with Chief Justice John Marshall's famous definition of
tribes as ''dependent domestic sovereigns.'' The word ''dependent'' could
have two meanings. It could refer to the relation between a smaller
sovereign and a dominant ally, a common situation which international
lawyers held did not diminish the sovereign rights of the smaller party. Or
it could mean a sort of welfare dependency. Marshall himself used the term
both ways. In Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, he elaborated that the
tribes ''are in a state of pupillage. Their relation to the United States
resembles that of a ward to his guardians.''
''They look to our government for protection; rely upon its kindness and its
power; appeal to it for relief to their wants; and address the president as
their great father.''
Chief Justice Roger Taney, Marshall's successor and later author of the
disastrous Dred Scott decision upholding slavery, continued the theme in his
1846 decision United States v. Rogers. The federal government ruled ''over
this unfortunate race'' in ''a spirit of humanity and justice,'' endeavoring
''by every means in its power to enlighten their minds and increase their
comforts, and to save them if possible from the consequences of their own
vices.''
This language might seem an artifact of the Andrew Jackson era, but it was
extended some 40 years later in a way that has a continued, and in fact
expanding, impact on federal law. The 1886 case of United States v. Kagama
upheld federal jurisdiction over Indian territory, even though a state
government had been established around it. But Justice Samuel Miller
acknowledged that he could cite no written provision of the Constitution to
support this ruling. Instead, he derived it from Marshall's ''state of
pupillage.''
''The Indian tribes are the wards of the nation,'' Miller wrote. ''They are
communities dependent on the United States, dependent largely for their
daily food, dependent for their political rights. ... From their very
weakness and helplessness, so largely due to the course of dealing of the
federal government with them, and the treaties in which it has been
promised, there arises the duty of protection, and with it power.''
This power of protection, Miller concluded, resided in the federal
government because it was necessary and because it didn't reside anywhere
else, not because it was provided in the Constitution. His argument might
seem nebulous, not to say circular, but it is the source for the Supreme
Court's current approach to Indian law. Tribal sovereignty is fine up to a
point, says the court, but Congress has the final say. If Congress ordains
that states can tax a reservation's economy or take jurisdiction on its
territory, then that's the law. Why is this so? Because the tribes are wards
of the government.
It might come as a shock that this assertion of practically unlimited
federal power has no basis in the Constitution, treaty relations or any
coherent political theory. Professor Frank Pommersheim calls it ''a blatant
contradiction of the Lockean notion of limited government sovereignty.'' He
continues that the high court's use of the doctrine seems ''especially
crabbed and destabilizing, and of questionable constitutional validity.''
The true origin of this alleged power harks back to ''the White Man's
Burden,'' as defined by Marshall and Taney. They in turn present the
paternalistic face of Gines de Sepulveda. The authority of the European over
the Indian has its ultimate source in his distorted version of Aristotle's
doctrine of natural slavery.
Sepulveda's tendentious and ignorant argument was stoutly attacked in his
own time, in the name of universal humanity and Indian sovereignty. It would
seem totally untenable in our own day. Yet it lives on in Supreme Court
rulings. Just as the ''doctrine of discovery'' is actually a doctrine of
Christian discovery, congressional ''plenary power'' is disguised version of
the power of the guardian over the ward, that is, of the master over the
''Natural Slave.''
.
>>
>
> "Adam".
>
> Dhu