Purity In Perspective

In Hitler’s seemingly “eloquent” rationale behind the Folkish state, it’s clear he’s obsessed with the “aristocratic idea of nature,” not only because it represents the key element in the advancement of humanity (racial hierarchy) but that the very root for this element is organic—inherent in the purity of the race itself (Hitler 383). What’s interesting though within this argument of hybridity is that as much as the state needs to ensure the preservation of a native, pure, and fit race of Aryans within a German population that has been intermixed and in effect, ‘contaminated,’ Hitler’s entire logic rests on an expectation that the individuals themselves will cultivate cultural excellence. His entire argument puts faith into creating a society made for cultural progress with the inherent assumption that progress will occur. Cleverly, Hitler takes blame away from the state to emphasize that the it is simply a shell, and that it can only be held accountable as the “premise for the formation of a higher human culture, but not its cause” (391).

Yet in this expectation that a pure race, a race filled with “German super-individualism” will take the reigns of humanity on its own is the flaw that an endless struggle is bound to ensue (390). Almost as Marx creates a formula for the proletariat to resist the bourgeoisie until it seizes controls of the means of production, here Hitler justifies an endless, never-ending pursuit at purity. The only difference here is that rather than a bottom-up perspective, Hitler justifies an internal suppression, one that weeds out hybridity to yield purity until that purity can extend to all of humanity. Additionally, for Hitler, that the pursuit and/or maintenance of purity never stabilizes in theory, unlike in Marxism where there’s an end to the proletariat’s resistance. What Hitler’s modeling calls for is an internal struggle, that isn’t so much a struggle as it is a top-down eradication of elements that may cause bastardization. What’s base in this logic is not only the extent of internal ‘extermination’ needed to achieve such a purity, i.e. inevitability of violence, but that to justify the action of the state against the social conditions of Germany or the twentieth century is hardly valid. Hitler claims that the current era is one of procreation, but simultaneously, one where the poor sells the means of contraception to the healthy. And so arguing against the institutionalization of racial purity within marriage is unjust. Again the flaw isn’t in delegating who can marry whom or vice versa, but in the premise that the state’s loose regulations will cultivate a society of the fittest men and women no matter the mean, the ruthlessness to which hybridity is exterminated to leave behind a pure race.