Hitler, WTF.

Reading Hitler’s claims about the merits of the Aryan race over other races was reminiscent of reading about pseudo-sciences that arose during the same era, one in particular being the “science” of phrenology, which tried to quantify the intangible aspects of man, like personality and character, through “scientific” evaluations of the brain. Claims that things such as “racial unity” are built into the blood, and that if a specimen of a certain race were to mix blood with that of another race, its “unity of will-power and determination to live” would somehow be weakened, has within it a slight implication of scientific backing, but never actually ventures to quantify what it seeks to prove as quantifiable (Mein Kampf 400). His statement that “If an influx of further blood from the highest race were prevented entirely, the bastards, if they continued mutually to cross, would either die out because their power of resistance had been wisely diminished by Nature” (400) harkens to the notions of Social Darwinism, that Nature (with a capital N) would somehow select the race that was most fit for survival, and would dominate over all other races. With Hitler in particular, but as was characteristic of the far right in general, there seems to be a pattern of latching onto beliefs and philosophies that suited his particular agenda at the time (philosophies that also happened to require the least amount of personal change on his part). By that point, it was logical that volkisch philosophy and Social Darwinism would be his weapons of choice, because belief in them maintained the hierarchy of power desirable to his party, taking power away from those he wanted to rid the German state of. And when such philosophies didn’t quite fit his agenda, he would mold and construe it enough so that it did. An example of this comes earlier when he, in defense of why the great German people had not achieved world domination yet, states, “Culturally and creatively gifted nations, or rather races, bear these useful qualities latent within them, even if at the moment unfavorable outward conditions do not permit a realization of these latent tendencies.” (p392-3) The hypocrisy in this statement is apparent in that he ignores the argument that this notion of “unfavorable outward conditions” could just as easily be applied to any other race currently existing in an oppressive environment.

This week’s readings were quite enlightening in that up till this point in time, I hadn’t really grasped what the concrete rationale of racism was. I had a sense that the source of racists’ hatred towards other races were rooted in a hostility towards any race that was different from them, but I had always wondered what their logic was, how they actually rationalized their hatred for ‘inferior’ races. The kind of deep-seeded racism that we might see in America never really made sense to me. After reading this section of Mein Kampf though, I am beginning to understand that there is a kind of logic inherent in racism. Being raised in a culture that more or less was rooted in an idea of equality (it’s obviously debatable as to whether that is a reality), I was always trying to judge racism from the perspective of an equality culture, failing to recognize that at the core of racism is quite the opposite: NO race is equal; there will always exist a hierarchy in which one is better than the other. Once this fact is accepted as truth, the ensuing logic is actually quite logical.