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Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people should have supreme authority over all others. [1] The presumed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nationality, culture, generation or belong to any other part of a particular population.
Some feminist theorists [2] have argued that in patriarchy, a standard of male "supremacism" is enforced through a variety of cultural, political, religious, sexual, and interpersonal strategies. [2] [3] Since the 19th century there have been a number of feminist movements opposed to male supremacism, usually aimed at achieving equal legal rights and protections for women in all cultural, political and interpersonal relations. [4] [5] [6]
Centuries of European colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Australia, Oceania, and Asia were sometimes justified by white supremacist attitudes. [9] White Americans who participated in the Atlantic slave trade tried to justify their economic exploitation of African Americans by creating a scientific theory of white superiority and black inferiority. [10] Thomas Jefferson, believer in scientific racism and enslaver of over 600 African Americans (regarded as property under the Articles of Confederation), [11] wrote that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." [12]
A justification for the conquest of American Indian tribes emanated from their dehumanized perception as the "merciless Indian savages", as described in the United States Declaration of Independence. [13] [14]
During the 19th century, "The White Man's Burden", the phrase which refers to the thought that whites have the obligation to make the societies of the other peoples more 'civilized', was widely used to justify imperialist policies as a noble enterprise. [15] [16] Thomas Carlyle, known for his historical account of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: A History, argued that European supremacist policies were justified on the grounds that they provided the greatest benefit to "inferior" native peoples. [17] However, even at the time of its publication in 1849, Carlyle's main work on the subject, the Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, was poorly received by his contemporaries. [18]
Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America was founded with a constitution that contained clauses which restricted the government's ability to limit or interfere with the institution of "negro" slavery. [19] In the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declared that one of the Confederacy's foundational tenets was white supremacy over African American slaves. [20] Following the war, a secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, was founded in the American South. Its purpose was to maintain white, Protestant supremacy in the US after the Reconstruction period, which it did so through violence and intimidation. [21]
According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism can be distinguished from racial antisemitism which is based on racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion ... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear." [22]
One of the first typologies which was used to classify various human races was invented by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a theoretician of eugenics, who published L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899 – "The Aryan and his social role") in 1899. In his book, he divides humanity into various, hierarchical races, starting with the highest race which is the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", and ending with the lowest race which is the "brachycephalic", "mediocre and inert" race, that race is best represented by Southern European, Catholic peasants". [23] Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the " Homo europaeus " (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the " Homo alpinus " (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the " Homo mediterraneus " (Neapolitan, Andalus, etc.) Jews were brachycephalic just like the Aryans were, according to Lapouge; but he considered them dangerous for this exact reason; they were the only group, he thought, which was threatening to displace the Aryan aristocracy. [24] Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirations of Nazi antisemitism and Nazi racist ideology. [25]
The Anti-Defamation League [26] (ADL) and Southern Poverty Law Center [27] condemn writings about "Jewish Supremacism" by Holocaust-denier, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, and conspiracy theorist David Duke as antisemitic – in particular, his book Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question. [28] Kevin B. MacDonald, known for his theory of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy", has also been accused of being "antisemitic" and white supremacist in his writings on the subject by the ADL [29] and his own university psychology department. [30]
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, promoted the belief in the existence of a superior, Aryan Herrenvolk , or master race. The state's propaganda advocated the belief that Germanic peoples, whom they called "Aryans", were a master race or a Herrenvolk whose members were superior to the Jews, Slavs, and Romani people, so-called "gypsies". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial intermixing, which he believed had destroyed the purity of the Nordic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a large and strong following in Germany, emphasized the belief in the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan and Jewish cultures. [31]
Cornel West, an African-American philosopher, writes that black supremacist religious views arose in America as a part of black Muslim theology in response to white supremacism. [32]
In Africa, black Southern Sudanese allege that they are being subjected to a racist form of Arab supremacy, which they equate with the historic white supremacism of South Africa's apartheid. [34] The alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing in the ongoing War in Darfur has been described as an example of Arab racism. [35] For example, in their analysis of the sources of the conflict, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal say that Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, sponsored "Arab supremacism" across the Sahara during the 1970s. Gaddafi supported the "Islamic Legion" and the Sudanese opposition "National Front, including the Muslim Brothers and the Ansar, the Umma Party's military wing." Gaddafi tried to use such forces to annex Chad from 1979–81. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government's war in the South during the early 1980s, and in return, he was allowed to use the Darfur region as a "back door to Chad". As a result, the first signs of an "Arab racist political platform" appeared in Darfur in the early 1980s. [36]
In Asia, Indians in Ancient India considered all foreigners barbarians. The Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians called foreigners impure. [37] A few centuries later, Dubois observes that "Hindus look upon Europeans as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good breeding... In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcaste) and a European are on the same level." [37] The Chinese also considered the Europeans repulsive, ghost-like creatures, and they even considered them devils. Chinese writers also referred to foreigners as barbarians. [38]
Academics Carol Lansing and Edward D. English argue that Christian supremacism was a motivation for the Crusades in the Holy Land, as well as a motivation for crusades against Muslims and pagans throughout Europe. [41] The blood libel is a widespread European conspiracy theory which led to centuries of pogroms and massacres of European Jewish minorities because it alleged that Jews required the pure blood of a Christian child in order to make matzah for Passover. Thomas of Cantimpré writes of the blood curse which the Jews put upon themselves and all of their generations at the court of Pontius Pilate where Jesus was sentenced to death: "A very learned Jew, who in our day has been converted to the (Christian) faith, informs us that one enjoying the reputation of a prophet among them, toward the close of his life, made the following prediction: 'Be assured that relief from this secret ailment, to which you are exposed, can only be obtained through Christian blood ("solo sanguine Christiano")." [42] The Atlantic slave trade has also been partially attributed to Christian supremacism. [43] The Ku Klux Klan has been described as a white supremacist Christian organization, as are many other white supremacist groups, such as the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity and Positive Christianity movements. [44] [45]
Academics Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ian Lague, and Joshua Cone note that, while the Quran and other Islamic scriptures express tolerant beliefs, such as Al-Baqara 256 "there is no compulsion in religion", [46] there have also been numerous instances of Muslim or Islamic supremacism. [47] Examples of how supremacists have interpreted Islam include the history of slavery in the Muslim world, Caliphate, [48] Ottoman Empire, the early-20th-century pan-Islamism promoted by Abdul Hamid II, [49] the jizya and supremacy of Sharia law, such as rules of marriage in Muslim countries being imposed on non-Muslims. [50]
While non-violent proselytism of Islam (Dawah) is not Islamic supremacism, forced conversion to Islam is Islamic supremacism. [51] [52] Death penalty for apostasy in Islam is a sign of Islamic supremacism. [53]
Numerous massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jews, Christians and non-Muslims [54] occurred in some Muslim-majority countries including in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria, where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos. [55] Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted during the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. [56] At certain times in Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face the Islamic death penalty. [57] While there were antisemitic incidents before the 20th century, antisemitism increased after the Arab–Israeli conflict. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, the creation of the State of Israel and Israeli victories during the wars of 1956 and 1967 were a severe humiliation to Israel's opponents –primarily Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. [58] However, by the mid-1970s the vast majority of Jews had left Muslim-majority countries, moving primarily to Israel, France, and the United States. [59] The reasons for the Jewish exodus are varied and disputed. [59]
Ilan Pappé, an expatriate Israeli historian, writes that the First Aliyah to Israel "established a society based on Jewish supremacy" within "settlement-cooperatives" that were Jewish owned and operated. [60] Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab studies, holds that "Jewish supremacism" has always been a "dominating principle" in religious and secular Zionism. [61] [62]
Patriarchal beliefs assert the "natural" superiority of men with a right to leadership in family and public life.
...imperialist editors came out in favor of retaining the entire archipelago (using) higher-sounding justifications related to the "white man's burden.
Whereas the First Aliya established a society based on Jewish supremacy, the Second Aliya's method of colonization was separation from Palestinians.
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Racism is discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena. Racism refers to violation of racial equality based on equal opportunities or based on equality of outcomes for different races or ethnicities, also called substantive equality.
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism.
Black supremacy or black supremacism is a racial supremacist belief which maintains that black people are inherently superior to people of other races.
The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented in Nazi Germany under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, based on pseudoscientific and racist doctrines asserting the superiority of the putative "Aryan race", which claimed scientific legitimacy. This was combined with a eugenics program that aimed for "racial hygiene" by compulsory sterilization and extermination of those who they saw as Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), which culminated in the Holocaust.
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization actively controls international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
Aryanism, is an ideology of German racial supremacy which views the supposed Aryan race as a distinct and superior racial group which is entitled to rule the rest of humanity. Initially promoted by racial theorists such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Aryanism reached its peak of influence in Nazi Germany. In the 1930s and 40s, the regime applied the ideology with full force, sparking World War II with the 1939 invasion of Poland in pursuit of Lebensraum, or living space, for the Aryan people. The racial policies which were implemented by the Nazis during the 1930s came to a head during their conquest of Europe and the Soviet Union, culminating in the industrial mass murder of six million Jews and eleven million other victims in what is now known as the Holocaust.
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, published between 1853 and 1855, is a racialist work of French diplomat and writer Arthur de Gobineau.
Joseph Andoni Massad is a Jordanian academic specializing in Middle Eastern studies, who serves as Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. His academic work has focused on Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli nationalism.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century is a racialist book by the British-German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In the book, Chamberlain advances various racialist and especially völkisch antisemitic theories on how he saw the Aryan race as superior to others, and the Teutonic peoples as a positive force in European civilization and the Jews as a negative one. The book was his best-selling work.
Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are "sensational reports, misrepresentations or fabrications" about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion.
Esoteric Neo-Nazism, also known as Esoteric Nazism, Esoteric Fascism or Esoteric Hitlerism, represents a fusion of Nazi ideology with mystical, occult, and esoteric traditions. This belief system emerged in the aftermath of World War II, as adherents sought to reinterpret and adapt the ideas of the Third Reich within the context of a new religious movement. Esoteric Nazism is characterized by its emphasis on the mythical and spiritual dimensions of Aryan supremacy, drawing from a range of sources including Theosophy, Ariosophy, and Gnostic dualism. These beliefs have evolved into a complex and often contradictory body of thought that seeks to justify and perpetuate racist and supremacist ideologies under the guise of spiritual enlightenment.
Kenneth S. Stern is an American attorney and an author. He is the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, a program of the Human Rights Project at Bard College. From 2014 to 2018 he was the executive director of the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation. From 1989 to 2014 he was the director of antisemitism, hate studies and extremism for the American Jewish Committee. In 2000, Stern was a special advisor to the defense in the David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt trial. His 2020 book, The Conflict Over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate, examines attempts of partisans of each side to censor the other, and the resulting damage to the academy.
The concept of Jewish supremacy accompanies discourse pertaining to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, asserting that the ethno-nationalist views, policies, and identity politics of some Israeli Jews arise to the level of a form of supremacism vis-à-vis the Palestinians, who are an Arab people. The term has been used by a variety of critics of Israeli policies, with some arguing that it reflects a broader pattern of discrimination against non-Jews in Israel.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
Racism and xenophobia have been reported and investigated in Sweden. Sweden has the most segregated labor market of people with foreign background in Europe, when measured against both high and low educational level by OECD statistics. According to the European Network Against Racism, skin color and ethnic/religious background have significant impact on an individual's opportunities in the labor market.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Racism in Jewish communities is a source of concern for people of color, particularly for Jews of color. Black Jews, Indigenous Jews, and other Jews of color report that they experience racism from white Jews in many countries, including Canada, France, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews also report experiences with racism by Ashkenazi Jews. The centering of Ashkenazi Jews is sometimes known as Ashkenormativity. In historically white-dominated countries with a legacy of anti-Black racism, such as the United States and South Africa, racism within the Jewish community often manifests itself as anti-Blackness. In Israel, racism among Israeli Jews often manifests itself as discrimination and prejudice against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, African immigrants, and Palestinians. Some critics describe Zionism as racist or settler colonial in nature.
Zionist antisemitism or antisemitic Zionism refers to a phenomenon in which antisemites express support for Zionism and the State of Israel. In some cases, this support may be promoted for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Historically, this type of antisemitism has been most notable among Christian Zionists, who may perpetrate religious antisemitism while being outspoken in their support for Jewish sovereignty in Israel due to their interpretation of Christian eschatology. Similarly, people who identify with the political far-right, particularly in Europe and the United States, may support the Zionist movement because they seek to expel Jews from their country and see Zionism as the least complicated method of achieving this goal and satisfying their racial antisemitism.
Christian supremacy is the belief that Christianity is superior to other religions or referring to a form of identity politics that asserts that Christians are superior and are better suited to rule thus marginalising religious minorities. Christian supremacy overlaps with and can be considered a core tenet of Christian nationalism. The New Apostolic Reformation, a dominionist political movement, is described by The Washington Post and scholar Bradley Onishi as promoting Christian supremacy through a mix of hard-right politics and prophecy. Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon of the Southern Poverty Law Center and religion scholar Matthew D. Taylor points to the Seven Mountain Mandate as the plan for Christian dominance and supremacy.
