Just for the benefit of Jorge, a lecture on Arthur de Gobineau

[FreezBee]

In the thread Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ... Come see us, please, we'll pay you!, Jorge writes:

Try a bit harder to understand what I'm saying when I brought up the "a rose by any other name is still a rose" phrase. The numerous barbaric acts committed by the Nazi regime had "scientific" support as per evolutionary 'logic'. Whether or not we mention Darwin in that context is irrelevant -- it's the logical consequence of thinking a la evolution that provides that "scientific" support.

For example, it's a well known fact that Darwin was heavily influenced by Malthus. Limited resources and expanding populations means one thing : life and death competition for those resources. In this struggle for survival, the better-adapted "superior" species will displace (a nice way of saying 'vanquish') the less-adapted "inferior" species. Ergo, if you belong to the top-of-the-hill (a.k.a. The Master Aryan Race) then you get to vanquish all others.

We'll wait with this and look at the below quoted part of that same post:

To carry this further, did you know that Haeckel divided humans into 12 'species'? Find this at Wiki under Ernst Haeckel :

Haeckel's writings and lectures were later used to provide scientific justifications for racism, nationalism, and social Darwinism. Haeckel's statement that "politics is applied biology", has been quoted in support of various Nazi philosophies. The Nazi Party used not only Haeckel's quotations, but also Haeckel's broader philosophy of "Monism," which they used as justification for racism, nationalism and social Darwinism. Haeckel extrapolated a new religion or philosophy called monism from evolutionary science.

Haeckel, as you probably know, was as much 'Darwin's Bulldog' as was Thomas Huxley. Evolutionary thinking is the key here.

It is correct that Haeckel divided humans into 12 'species', but do you know how many 'species' Charles Darwin didvided humans into? ONE!

And as for the Wikipedia quote, it gives this page as source, and all it says about Haeckel and the Nazis is:

www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

On the other hand, Haeckel also stated that "politics is applied biology", a quote used by Nazi propagandists. The Nazi party, rather unfortunately, used not only Haeckel's quotes, but also Haeckel's justifications for racism, nationalism and social darwinism.

© source where applicable

Isn't the Wikipedia article pushing the interpretation of that a bit too much out of control?

But, of course, Jorge doesn't bother to check the validity of his sources. If they write, what suits him, why destroy the good fun?


Ok, now back to business. That about "The Master Aryan Race". But, oh, why don't we take Reverend Thomas Malthus first? A conservative Christian who was the major inspiration for Charles Darwin and apparently the real culprit of the flaws in Darwinism, My, my, what nasty fellows those conservative Christians must be. But isn't it just a blessing that Jorge is here to tell us the truth and prevent us from falling prey to the evilness of Conservative Christians?

Now, over to "The Master Aryan Race".

In his book Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines, the French diplomat Arthur de Gobineau writes about the importance of the right mixture of races in a country. More specifically, he writes that the inequality of races that make up a nation is sufficient to explain how the destinies of peoples are linked together.

And de Gobineau divides humans into three major races: the white, the black, and the yellow.

And in Vol I, chapter 11, "Les différences ethniques sont permantes" ("The ethnic differences are permanent"), Gobineau writes:

Arthur de Gobineau

Qu’Adam soit l’auteur de notre espèce blanche, il faut l’admettre certainement. Il est bien claire que les Ecritures veulent qu’on l’entendre ainsi, puisque de lui descendent des générations qui incontestablement ont été blanches. Ceci posé, rien ne prouve que, dans la pensée des premiers rédacteurs des généalogies adamites, les créatures qui n’appartenaient pas à la race blanche aient passé pour faire partie de l’espèce.

© source where applicable

That is, "Adam is the originator of our white species", and creatures not part of the white race are not part of that species. The biblical division into Hamites, Semites, and Japhetites is for Gobineau a division within the white race. Actually, Gobineau argues that Hamites were not black, which at the time was the common assumption.

Now, who is this Adam? Some guy that atheistic materialistic naturalistic humanistic 'Darwinists' believe in? No, he figures in the first books of the Bible and is supposed together with Eve to make up the first human (well, white, apparently) couple.

So, Jorge, we are here dealing with a biblical literalist, who claims that only white people are the descendants of Adam and therefore, we must assume, real human beings.

Those who want to know the rest of the story may have a peek at the thread Arthur de Gobineau: Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines , in which I show that de Gobineau had some rather weird ideas about the importance of the Aryans. Ideas that you simply do not find in Darwin's writings.


FreezBee

[rogue06]

Nice post. Too bad you have to keep explaining it to Jorge over and over for he seems very determined not to listen.

[FreezBee]

Nice post. Too bad you have to keep explaining it to Jorge over and over for he seems very determined not to listen.

Yes, it's sad, isn't it? But if only it was Jorge -- however, it is the entire choir at AiG, ICR, and the DI

- FreezBee

[wattsr1]

Yes, it's sad, isn't it? But if only it was Jorge -- however, it is the entire choir at AiG, ICR, and the DI

- FreezBee

Great post FB.

Yes - "know the truth and it will set you free.". They know the lie so they continually need to have it explained to them. When they understand the truth, that need will be no more.


Regards, Roland

[Kelp]

Ok, I can understand the Nazis using Haeckel and that Darwin didn't really have racist ideas like that.

But where is the link between de Gobineau and Nazi ideas? Did Hitler or Goebbels or someone ever quote or mention de Gobineau?

[FreezBee]

Ok, I can understand the Nazis using Haeckel and that Darwin didn't really have racist ideas like that.

But where is the link between de Gobineau and Nazi ideas? Did Hitler or Goebbels or someone ever quote or mention de Gobineau?

Hitler was very fond of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was influenced by de Gobineau.

- FreezBee

[FreezBee]

Hitler was very fond of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was influenced by de Gobineau.

Just to back this up, a quote from Chamberlain's The Foundations of the 19th Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts), Chapter 4:

The Foundations of the 19th Century

If the men who should be the most competent to pronounce an opinion on the essence and significance of Race show such an incredible lack of judgment — if in dealing with a subject where wide experience is necessary for sure perception, they bring to bear upon it nothing but hollow political phrases — how can we wonder that the unlearned should talk nonsense even when their instinct points out the true path? For the subject has in these days aroused interest in widely various strata of society, and where the learned refuse to teach, the unlearned must shift for themselves. When in the fifties Count Gobineau published his brilliant work on the inequality of the races of mankind, it passed unnoticed: no one seemed to know what it all meant. Like poor Virchow men stood puzzled before a riddle. Now that the Century has come to an end things have changed: the more passionate, more impulsive element in the nations pays great and direct attention to this question.

© source where applicable

It should be noted, though that Chamberlain deviates in many respects from de Gobineau, and that he also mixed some 'Darwinism' into his racial theories.


- FreezBee

[Kelp]

I see. Thanks.

[Dr.GH]

In 1938 the Nazi "Office of Racial Policy" publication Inromationsdienst Martin Luther’s advice on the “proper” treatment of Jews was given prominent display:

... to put their synagogues and schools to fire, and what will not burn, to cover with earth and rubble so that no-one will ever again see anything there but cinders ... Second, one should tear down and destroy their houses, for they do also in there what they do in their schools and synagogues ... And third, one should confiscate their prayer books and Talmud, in which idolatry and lies, slander and blasphemy is taught” From Proctor 1988: 88.

The founder of Protestant Christianity was a far greater inspiration to the Nazis than any scientist. Science, politicized by the same conditions that radicalized both Left, and Right, was used as justification for actions long advocated as “Christian.” The political philosophy called Social Darwinism through the efforts of Alfred Poletz and to a lesser degree Ernst Haeckel and others was infuential in the organization of the Society for Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene). Poletz was a believer in Nordic superiority, and he quickly formed a secret group of racists active within the Society who were strongly influenced by the racial theories of Arthur Comte de Gobineau published in the early 1850s (well before Darwin's books). This followed the creationist theories of the "pre-Adamites" who went so far as to claim that Negroes had been created on the Genesis fifth day with "other beasts of the field."

Finding 19th century American racists is not hard. Finding American fascists is not hard, even today. Showing that they owe their bigotry to evolutionary biology is a fallacy. For example, as Küehl (2002) himself observed, the 1936 Nazi Party recommended reading list on human heredity, (Rassenkunde: Eine Auswahl des wichtigsten Scrifttums aus dem Gebit der Rassenkunde, Vererbungslehre, Rassenpflege und Bevölkerunspolitik) mentioned only two non-German authors: American Madison Grant's Passing of the Great Race (translated into German in 1925, and French Arthur Comte de Gobineau's The inequality of Human Races (1853-1855). Gobineau had a strong influence on Grant's work and was very influencial with German, American, and British racists for that matter, and published his book well before Darwin's works became public. Robert N. Proctor's 1988 book Racial Hygene:Medicine Under the Nazis (Boston: Harvard University Press) has a much better analysis of not only the connections between international racists, but the intellectual associations of the Nazi death machine including Social Darwinists.

Die Bucherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, published these collection evaluation "guidelines" during the second round of "purifications" (saüberung).

From the official Nazi Party library guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279
6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).
Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279
6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

The books of Darwin and Häckel were burned by the Nazis, not followed as recent creationist propaganda claims,

The Nazi Office of Racial Policy held thousands of public meetings a month promoting anti-semitism and attacking “muddle-headed humanitarianism” (Humanitätsduselei) or, what we call “liberalism” today.

However, there is an excellent passage in Evans pg. 92-93:

"The minutes [taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt] for the second day's meeting, on 17 April 1943, recorded a statement by Ribbentrop, in Hitler's presence, to a point made by Horthy: "On Horthy's retort, what should he do with the Jews then, after he had pretty well taken all means of living from them-- he surely couldn't beat them to death-- the Reich Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] replied that the Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There is no other way."

Hitler almost immediately confirmed Ribbentrop's explicitly murderous statement at some length: Hitler: "Where the Jews were left to themselves, as for example in Poland, gruesome poverty and degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in Poland. If the Jews there didn't want to work [in Third Reich concentration camps], they were shot. If they couldn't work they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body could be infected. That was not cruel, if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished." (references and footnotes are found in Evans, 2001:92-93)

Here we have Hitler, in his argument to Hungary's Admiral Horthy, invoking not an übermench racist position, but an anti-Bolshevik, and nationalist one. If Hitler tried to draw rhetorical support from Social Darwinism arguing in Mein Kampf, it is not evident from the text, and in any event was at most merely a twig on the trunk of his anti-Semitism. His opposition is to what he considered a Marxist threat, not drawn from Darwin, which was more a rationalization of his hatred than its origin. Further, the theoretical models and dominant metaphors Hitler drew from did not include evolution at any event, but the Germ Theory of Disease, and Christianity.


Evans, Richard J.
2001 Lying about Hitler New York:Basic Books.

Hitler, Adolf
1999 (orig. 1925) Mien Kampf Ralph Manheim, translator. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Küehl, Stefan
2002 The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism Oxford:Oxford University Press

Proctor, Robert N.
1988 Racial Hygiene:Medicine Under the Nazis Boston: Harvard University Press.

[rogue06]

Thanks Dr.GH. Interesting to discover that Darwin's books were being burned by the Nazis.