Aryans, Jews, Brahmins : theorizing authority through myths of identity
Explores the construction of the Aryan myth and how it was used in India and Europe in the 18th-20th centuries. Ch. 4 (pp. 64-88), "Loose Can[n]ons", deals with the Aryan myth in Europe, where early racist thinkers began to seek their national origins in an Aryan people in order to minimize their indebtedness to the Jews' ancestors, the Hebrews. Fichte introduced antisemitism into the "völkisch" worldview by ranking peoples, with the Germans on top and the Jews on the bottom. Gobineau's racism stressed the Germans' "Aryan purity" and the importance of breeding. Houston Stewart Chamberlain also opposed racial mixing, and presented the Aryan as a foil to vilify the Jew. The Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg combined the ideas of his predecessors, including that Jesus was an Aryan, and provided the lethal ideology of Nazism that justified extermination of the Jews. Concludes that the Aryan of these racists remained an object of pure fancy, but with dire consequences. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism)
Print Book, English, ©2002
State University of New York Press, Albany, ©2002
Criticism, interpretation, etc
viii, 205 pages ; 23 cm.
9780791455319, 9780791455326, 0791455319, 0791455327
49226323