>Messsage du 01/12/2000 12:08
>De : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>A : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Copie à :
>Objet : Re: The Color of Money
>
> On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > What's the point of equating racism with anti-Semitism, though?
> > Specificities get lost in the equation, and we end up
> > misunderstanding both.
>
> Eh? Jews (and Bolsheviks, and gays, and lesbians, and Poles, and
> Russians, etc. etc.) were targeted for mass extermination because of
> Nazi Germany's bizarre fiction of a master Aryan race. No racial
> ideology, no Wehrmacht.
Thank you, gentlemen. this is a good example of how the term "racism" creates confusion.
first of all, the nazi's did not "create" any bizarre fictions of a master race (though the term "master race" itself seems to have been a nazi innovation). they elaborated on one that was created, and more publically discussed, among scientisct, intellectuals and the rest of the chattering classes, in the united states. hitler and his fascist homies learned quite a bit about race from american eugencists, as has been well documented. his masterstroke was to use what he learned to re-define an already despised religious minority, the jews, as comprising a lower racial order, then brilliantly demogogue an economically desperate german population into a racial frenzy tha swept him into power. not totally unlike the united states, racial nationalism played an important role in germany's rise to power.
now, oddly enough, despite the fact that we live in a post-nazi world, many people still casually think of jews as another race. but worse, and more ironic, than this, the jews, who were the targets of nazi's who learned much of their racial idealogy from the u.s., are now considered white in the u.s. and act accordingly. my,my.
but i digress: hitler was not a "rascist" and fascism is not "racism". unless one, as a writer or activist, wants to simply ignore the dictionary and commen sense meanings of these words--as confused as those can be--and willy nilly give them new meanings, the terms assume that the accuser is a racialist, that is, someone who believes that humans can be meaningfully slotted into different racial categories.
in fact, i think using these words to characterize nazi germany is a little silly. hitler was an aryan supremacist and his fascism (nationalism + an idealogy of racial supremacy)was an extension of his belief in aryan suprmacy. aryan supremacy is just a specialized version of white supremacy. few people these days think of anything good when they hear the term "aryan" or "fascist" but these phenomenah arise from the same logic that assumes the existance of a "white race". so one has to ask: why should a liberty-loving person anybody feel uncomfortable with a political attack against the idea of a white race and how that idea manifest itself idealogically, politically, and materially?
secondly, i think what yoshie is getting at it that the term "racism" has usually been used in reference to the white/black situation in the u.s.(?) i think, however, that because the term has a built in fuzziness (becasue any group of people who are apparently different can be easily made into another race) it is now being used to refer to almost any group of people who at anytime do nasty and oppressive things to another group of people who might be religiously, tribally, culturally, politically or physionagamically different.
chris niles
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