Aryanism (fl. 1855-1945) is the belief that Aryans are genetically superior to the rest of the human species – the “master race” as Hitler put it. It is a White racism that is anti-Semitic, made infamous by Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust. It is the racism that the word “racism” was invented to talk about.
In 2014 “Aryans” has two main meanings in English:
- Hitler’s master race.
- The Indo-Europeans who brought Sanskrit and Hindu religion to India some 3,500 years ago.
To Hitler and other Aryanists they were the same people – because “Aryan” is the old word for Indo-European. Aryans were one of the two main branches of the Caucasian race, the other being Semites: Jews, Arabs, ancient Babylonians and so on. That mixes up language with race, but such confusion was common.
Common Aryanist beliefs:
- Racial purity: Keeping the Aryan race pure follows from the belief that what makes Aryans so special is, at root, genetic. The current state of India, Latin America and eastern Europe as compared to western Europe and North America shows what becomes of Aryans who mix with the darker races.
- Anti-Semitism: Since no one else is as good as Caucasians, it follows that Semites, as fellow Caucasians, are the biggest long-term threat to Aryans.
- Nordicism: Aryans are found in their purest form in Nordics, the white people from northern Europe: tall with long skulls, fair skin and light-coloured eyes and hair. The top people of ancient Greece, Rome and India were Nordic. So was Jesus.
- Slavs: Although Slavs are Aryan, because they live in eastern Europe they have become so mixed with Asian blood from Huns, Mongols, Turks and others that most are racially degenerate, screwed up. Hitler went so far as to call them subhuman.
- Progress: Only Aryans are capable of bringing human progress. Without them everyone else would either be stuck in the past or sunk in darkness.
Nordicism was a matter of dispute, especially in Italy, but it was not mere wishful thinking: based on what was known in the early 1900s, German scholars were able to seriously argue that the first Indo-Europeans – and therefore the early Greeks, Romans and Aryans #2 – were Nordic.
This Aryan stuff was not just some bizarro Nazi thing: It goes back to the 1800s, rooted in scholarship. Darwin talked about “Aryan stock”. As late as 1944 in the US, Rand McNally listed Aryans as one of the “races of mankind” (the 1932 map is pictured above).
Ancient Greece is still viewed through an Aryanist model created by scholars in the 1800s. That is why we think of the West as beginning with the Greeks, why they seem to have had such amazing minds.
Even Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” (1996) is not a far cry from Aryanism: update biological racism with cultural racism and Jews with Arabs and you are almost there. Aryanism makes better sense than he does of why he divides the Christian world into four separate “civilizations”.
See also:
- The Proto-Indo-Europeans
- Aryanists
- The clash of civilizations
- How white was Ancient Greece?
- Was Jesus white?
- Magical Progress
- Orientalism – fits in nicely with an Aryanism
- Non-Westerners in National Geographic – seems partly Aryanist
I think the Holocaust was the main catalyst to make Jews white in the US (and the rest of western Europe). This is just a hypothesis, one would have to look closely what the situation of Jews in the US and Western Europe was and compare the rethoric of the early Thirties with that of after the war.
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Some try to distinguish between Vedic religion and Hindu religion because of speculation that the PIE peoples not only brought their language but also their religion with them…….
here is some info about Vedic religion…?…….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Vedic_religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion
It might be interesting to see more updated research on this sort of stuff…….
from what I understood (from a non-euro-centric view) Aryan or Arya was a self designated name of a peoples that moved into Iran and India….?……..
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Im interested to see how this thread plays out, im kinda weak on my proto indo european migration history
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Speaking of Aryanism…
http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/07/11/racist-white-professor-tells-black-africans-their-intellectual-ability-is-not-good-enough-for-white-australia/
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An interesting angle to consider is the Basque. They are somewhat genetically unique from the rest of the European population. They are considered to descend from the small group of humans who remained in Europe during the Ice Age. Their language is one of the few languages in Europe that doesn’t originate from the Indo-European languages.
The Basque could be thought of as a non-Aryan indigenous population of Europeans. It is unclear how much genetic mixing they’ve experienced with the later Europeans, an issue that is debated.
An additional interesting factor is that the Irish descend from the Basque. The Irish aren’t genetically Celtic, although at some point they adopted the Celtic culture that had become dominant there because of trade relations. The English considered the Irish as a separate race and often associated them with Africans. The Irish were sometimes portrayed as white apes.
It turns out that the English were correct in the Irish not being part of their same genetic lineage. The English come from the Indo-Europeans and the Irish don’t or at least not to the same extent. There is always some mixing, but the two populations are relatively distinct.
Similarly, some Mediterranean Europeans have closer genetic ties to other Mediterranean people, including North Africans, than they do to other Europeans. Then there are some Northern European groups that also are relatively distinct genetically, culturally, and linguistically. Not all non-Indo-Europeans are from outside of Europe.
Many of those who argued for the Aryan race realized these population differences within Europe. There has always been an uneasy and conflict-ridden relationship between countries like Germany, Russia, etc and the rest of Europe.
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@ Benjamin
I want to see some sources on that, because it contradicts everything I read about the topic (but admittedly I’m not that learned in ancient history).
As far as I know the association of language with decent groups is highly dubious. That’s what historians thought in the 19th century but since then we learned that language barriers in the past were much lower and migration and intermixing much more common. There are certainly a few populations that remained isolated over a long period of time, but the idea that the Basques remeined isolated more than 2,500 years in a relativly densly populated area of the world without significant geographical barriers seems highly unlikly.
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@ anon
Right. The word “Iran” comes from the same root.
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@ Kartoffel
In the US I think Jews were helped hugely by the fact that there was already a Despised Other, a racial scapegoat: Blacks. The Immigration Act of 1924 was implicitly Aryanist, but by the 1930s there were plenty of native-born Jews who could vote and were politically active. By then there was more political gain in courting them as voters than in demonizing or dehumanizing them. The Holocaust helped too, of course, especially since it was carried out by an enemy of the US.
More:
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@ Brothawolf
Watched the video, wondered why the guy’s Aussie accent was off, hit Google to find out more about Drew Fraser. The professor, not the comedian.
Interesting background. Personally, I find the sight of a Canadian-born white guy arguing the “indigenousness” of white Australians to be rather amusing. At least it would be if it didn’t once again involve cutting actual Aboriginals out of the picture. Guy’s more than touched in the head.
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Abagond begins his post this way:
I have always been told that “Aryan” means noble in Sanskrit, and that this is why a man might have it as part of his name, like “Mr”, to mean gentleman.
It does not mean a “language” or a “race” (or even “blue-eyed blond” for that matter).
The idea that it does mean a language and race is an invention of Europeans (mainly Germans and Britons) to lend gravitas to their self-serving race theories: light-skinned people (like them) invaded India … not that Indo-Europeans and other Aryan peoples might’ve been migrants from India.
That would be un-thinkable!
That would be like putting the world the wrong way round…
But though quite wrong, it was nevertheless A Successful Idea:
in fact, it was an idea that fed upon itself.
So, what started out as a linguistic idea, in turn validated a concept that, in turn interpreted archaelogical findings, that in turn, was used to make sense of anthropolgicial information…and on and on, self-perpetuating
For the Indians themselves — a sidenote in all of this — this theory not only created a distortion of India’s past, but an identity crisis that caused division among its peoples, pervading to this day.
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There’s an increasing amount of discussion about this subject.
How much of the most popular information is verified by India’s dedicated research bodies — I don’t know.
Nonetheless, the theory of the supposedly light-skinned invader — the Indo-Aryan — who took up rule over the dark-skinned population, is no longer taken as true, history, aand authentic Ancient Scripture.
Instead this: a concoction to prove the superiority of Western culture and religion, simply a political tool, serving an economic purpose to subjugate.
According to one researcher on the Vedas and India who writes extensively about these subjects, David Frawley, the myth / lie of the Indo-Aryans Invasion into India did 4 things to the culture it took from:
1) it served to divide India into:
A. the northern Aryan, and,
B. southern Dravidian culture — which were made hostile (and very different) to each other.
This kept the Hindus divided and is still a source of social tension.
2) it gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India.
They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago.
3) it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures.
With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West. And, lastly,
4) it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis, as any Vedic basis was largely disqualified by the primitive nature of the Vedic culture.
^from: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley.html
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2.The Indo-Europeans who brought Sanskrit and Hindu religion to India some 3,500 years ago.
There are people in India who dispute this saying that Sanskrit and the Hindu religion are indegenous to the land and were not brought in by anybody from the outside.
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Anand said:
Agreed.
The argument goes: if the Aryans were indeed foreign invaders, why is it then, that they don’t name places outside of India as their religious sites?
Why aren’t their place names outside of India named after those sites
How come the Vedas exclusively glorify holy places WITHIN India?
Where is the evidence to show an Aryan ORIGIN outside of India?
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Bulanik
“not that Indo-Europeans and other Aryan peoples might’ve been migrants from India.
That would be un-thinkable!”
Actually, as far as I remember some european scientists did belief that. At least in Nazi-Germany there was a theory that the Aryans came from the Himayala, though I don’t know how widespread that theory was.
I wouldn’t to much stress that white culture/race supreamcy only were invented to oppress others. I rather think that they sincerely believed that back then and that those theories stemed from european dominance, not the other way around. That of course doesn’t mean that those supremacist theories weren’t use to justify oppression.
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@ Anand @ Bulanik
No one knows for sure where Indo-European languages came from. Some say India, some Anatolia or Central Asia, most say somewhere in or near Ukraine. A hundred years ago some said northern Europe. We do not currently know enough to nail it down any further than that. So, right, there may have been no “invasion” at all. Also, invasion is not the only way languages spread. They also spread through immigration, education, trade, etc.
I agree that the idea of “light-skinned” “invaders” caught on mainly because it served the ideological needs of Westerners, who were themselves light-skinned invaders. It helped to make it seem like the way of the world since the Mists o’ Time.
Ancient Greek history was also interpreted in an Aryanist way and then used to support the truth of Aryanism, and White racism more generally.
And, of course, Ancient Egypt too was seen as succeeding because of its light-skinned people. Etc, etc.
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@ Bulanik
My understanding is that Indo-Aryans (Aryans #2) called themselves what we anglicize as Aryans, which did mean “noble”. Since they were the oldest known Indo-Europeans, Western scholars in the 1800s applied the name to Indo-Europeans in general, later to be hijacked by racists. The term “Indo-European” itself did not start catching on till after 1900.
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In Germany the term “indo-european” is only used among scholars. Pop literature still uses the outdated term “indo-germanic”. Just for information.
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@ Kartoffel
I cannot remember anyone using “Indo-Germanic” in English, at least not on this side of 1980, though I can see why Germans might be partial to it. I have seen “Aryan”, though, used in the sense of “indo-European” as late as 1987 (in Colin Renfrew’s “Archaeology & Language”).
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“That is why we think of the West as beginning with the Greeks, why they seem to have had such amazing minds.”
I disagree with this statement. The Greeks have been considered the fathers of western civilization since Roman/Byzantine times, throughout the middle-ages and up to now. The Catholic Church itself is philosophically tied to the Greeks. The ‘Aryan Model’ as you describe it, may have used Ancient Greek accomplishment as a means justify the model, but that doesn’t change the fact that the philosophy and underpinnings of western civilization began with the Greeks.
Western/European civilization as a civilization of shared values, philosophy and outlook started with the Greeks/Hellenes. They spread their ideas though the Mediterranean before being conquered by the Romans who, as conquerors sometimes do, absorbed Greek learning and spread it even further into western Europe and eastward through the Byzantine empire. It was the Greeks that gave Europe rationalism, ethics, humanism, mathematics and so much more. After the fall of Rome, it was Greek philosophy (some re-acquired via the Arabs) and much of it transmitted through the Catholic Church that spurred the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, that created the Western/European scientific powerhouse we see today.
Even the basic idea of progress, so essential to Western civilization, the idea that advances in technology, science, and social organization will improve our lives was provided a significant contribution from Greeks like the Epicureans and Xenophanes (and also Judaism). Certainly Christianity played a part, but only as a distributor/molder of this idea rather than an originator.
There is no denying that the Ancient Greeks had excellent, educated minds. To stand against the evidence of their accomplishment and contribution, you’d have to willfully ignore the evidence. They had an amazing system of scholarship, of study and transmitting ideas in a logical process that stood the test of time. The very idea of the Catholic Church (a supremely important western institution) and its underlying philosophy was invented by the Greeks and Hellenized Jews via Constantine and Platonic philosophy. Heck, the best way to westernize your country is to let the Catholics in and soon will follow Greek ideas and then your toast.
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@Bulanik
“According to one researcher on the Vedas and India who writes extensively about these subjects, David Frawley, the myth / lie of the Indo-Aryans Invasion into India did 4 things to the culture it took from:
1) it served to divide India into:
A. the northern Aryan, and,
B. southern Dravidian culture — which were made hostile (and very different) to each other.
This kept the Hindus divided and is still a source of social tension.”
Wait a moment…
I’ve seen this or something similar before…
Ah… Tutsis versus Hutus or half-caucasoids versus pure-bantus, etc, whatever!
The West (or a part of it) seems always to be the master of half-truths or outright lies with the ultimate purpose of “divide et impera” of other parts of mankind.
And the seeds of hate, once planted, remain at the host soil for long…
Just a thought…
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@ biggiefriez
I think you misunderstood abagond. He didn’t deny the influence of the ancient Greek culture on the West, but said the idee that the ancient Greeks had to be Aryans is an example of Aryansim. It was a intellectual fallacy: 19th century Europeans’ expierence of white domination was rooted in white intellectual/racial/cultural supremacy, so every dominant civilization of the past had to been erected by whites. Whre that interpretation wasn’t possible, the accomplishments of the civilization was donwplayed.
@ munu
Such “divide et impera” ideas might have played a role, but i doubt they could have had much effect, if they weren’t already based on frictions in the societies themself and supportet from within. I also think that the division and classification of colonized people wasn’t manly due to such a machiavellian impule. I think the answer is much easier. 19th century Europeans just honestly used to think of human kind as divided in superior and inferior races. That’s something completly different from contemporary race realists or race supreamcists, who are intellectually dishonest.
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@ biggiefriez
The Torch of Civilization in the US goes like this:
Mesopotamian
Egyptian
Phoenician
Minoan
Greek*
Etruscan
Roman*
British*
American*
* known to speak an Aryan (Indo-European) language
Only the first two seem to have started civilization from scratch. The rest are contact civilizations. So why start with the Greeks? Because they are the first Aryans on the list.
Much of what we think of as “Greek” is Minoan, Phoenician, Egyptian or Mesopotamian. The Greeks sent their best and brightest to Egypt to study, just as Romans would later send their best students to Greece. Just as Rome openly acknowledged its debt to Greece, so the Greeks openly acknowledged their debt to Egypt.
The Aryan Model downplays the non-Aryan roots of Greek civilization, which makes the Greeks seem to be more amazing than they were, pulling cultural rabbits out of hats.
Greeks were not even the start of civilization in Greece, much less the West: writing appeared in Greece by 3000 BC, the earliest Greek writing not till about 1400 BC. Despite their supposedly amazing culture/brains, it took them roughly another thousand years to pass Egypt.
Sure, the Greeks are important, but so is everyone else on that list along with others, like Jews.
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I wouldn’t estimate the influence of the pre-greek civilization on the classic Greeks as too high. As far as I know the Dark Age between 1300 BC and 700 BC was such a deep cut that not much was handed down. But in general you’re right.
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Around 1500 BCE, India was invaded by a horde of light-skinned barbarians from the northwest. They called themselves “Aryans”. They were warlike and despised people with darker skins. They quickly conquered the dark skinned natives of the Indus valley, who moved down south. From one of my reference books Mythology Demystified. “Land of A Thousand Gods” Vedic Invaders.
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Hitler used the word “Aryan” to justify his aggressive racist policies toward minorities in Germany. He interpreted the Aryan race as ancient Greeks and Romans and modern day Germans and Scandinavians. HItler wrongly believed that the Aryans were a superior race that once ruled the world and were destined to do so again. “World History Demystified”
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11 million people were murdered because a mad man had wrong information. That is the horrific thing about wrong headed ideology and when people follow the individual who is insane and adapt his evil and insane ways.
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So this is how the demonic ideology of “white supremacy” was born?
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@Kartoffel,
The blog post says the white racist Aryan model is still the model we use today to view Ancient Greece, and that “is why we (implying “we today”) think of the West as beginning with the Greeks, why they seem to have had such amazing minds”. So you are talking about the the 19th century European experience, the past, and Abagond is talking about right now.
And I said, I disagree. Rather, the reason why “we think of the West as beginning with the Greeks, why they seem to have had such amazing minds” is because Western/European civilization as a unified culture founded upon philosophical principles did begin with the Greeks and they were amazing people. No Aryan model needed, at least none I’ve ever encountered in my zillion years of school and History Channel watching.
Who were the Ancient Greeks? Well, according to most modern scientists and DNA analysis, they followed the time honored pattern followed by most European tribes, like the Celts, Germans, Bulgarians, Magyars, Slavs who came out of the Caucasus or Central Asia, The Greeks most likely came from near the Black Sea and settled around the Aegean. Were they northern European German types? Who knows. I read that their DNA seems to be similar to modern Greek DNA. That seems to make the most sense.
Is Greek philosophy, the Greek ethos, still held up as preeminent by European white folk today. Yes it is, absolutely. We know that it is because we keep trying to impress it upon others. But that isn’t the reason for white ethnocentric behavior. Because the Greeks were European isn’t the reason whites think they are the shiznik. If white folk looked back in the past and saw only mud farmers they’d still think their way of life, their ethos was the best. Why? Because they have the most wealth and power. Wealth and power reinforces the natural chauvinism all groups hold for themselves.
For instance, China was once wealthy and powerful. It exported ideas. Europeans went to China and brought back many inventions. China wasn’t effected much by Europe, at first. The Chinese thought Europeans were barbarians. They thought the European ethos had nothing to offer. China had a Confucian philosophical model/ethos that detailed how society should function at all levels. It served them well for a long time. But times changed. Confucius philosophy isn’t taught in China today.
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“Much of what we think of as “Greek” is Minoan, Phoenician, Egyptian or Mesopotamian. The Greeks sent their best and brightest to Egypt to study, just as Romans would later send their best students to Greece. Just as Rome openly acknowledged its debt to Greece, so the Greeks openly acknowledged their debt to Egypt.”
There’s no doubt the Greeks learned from those around them. And any serious study of the Mediterranean world acknowledges trade and contacts between peoples. It is not quantifiable to whom all those debts of knowledge are owed. What is known, is that by the time of Classical Greece, which is the Greece most think of when talking about Ancient Greece, the Greeks had moved from a contact civilization (your words) into something else. They had developed something new. A new way thinking and studying the world around them.
Of course, that’s not how I was taught civilization began. I was taught that civilization started when the Pilgrims arrived, barely escaping from the brutal clutches of Britain (via Holland).
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There is a lot of conflicting information about this topic.
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@ Anand
“2.The Indo-Europeans who brought Sanskrit and Hindu religion to India some 3,500 years ago.”
@Mary Burrell
“Around 1500 BCE, India was invaded by a horde of light-skinned barbarians from the northwest. They called themselves “Aryans”.
I think you are working with an outdated theory. Genetics does not support an Aryan invasion. If we were to use HG R1a as a proxy for Aryans, the greatest diversity occurs in South Asia and is present in fairly significant frequencies among all castes. OTOH, its frequencies are much higher among Brahmins and upper castes. Secondly, the word Arya itself appears in very ancient texts that predate any Aryan invasion. There are multiple references to India as “Aryavarta” (meaning land of Aryans), etc.
The most extensive, large scale study done on the Indian population by Reich, et al. concluded that all Indian populations evolved from tribal groups in India that were quite ancient.
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In Mein Kampf, Hitler explains the superiority of Aryan reasoning and logic. He goes on to discuss the manner and style of Jewish arguing.
His disquisition of Jewish debating techniques boiled down to characterizing them in almost exactly the same way that posters here describe the process of derailing a discussion.
I don’t know if Hitler was the first to lay down the terms of Jewish debating/derailing, but it looked that way to me.
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Some people posit a link between the Vedas and the Northern European Eddas (stories of Thor and such)…..any ideas about this?
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@ Kartoffel – I’m sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I wasn’t ignoring your comment. I’ve been busy lately, but I have some time to respond.
“I want to see some sources on that, because it contradicts everything I read about the topic (but admittedly I’m not that learned in ancient history).”
I’m not an expert either, just curious. I’ve found the Basque people interesting as they kept coming up in books I was reading.
“As far as I know the association of language with decent groups is highly dubious.”
I don’t know too much about the language of the Basque. I did notice there are some very detailed Wikipedia articles about the topic of the Basque language, European languages, and various theories of their origins. I’m sure it would be fascinating to read about.
“That’s what historians thought in the 19th century but since then we learned that language barriers in the past were much lower and migration and intermixing much more common.”
I don’t disagree. There are very few isolated populations anywhere in the world. For example, there is only one tribe left in all of the world that doesn’t have any genetics from Neanderthals, Denisovens, etc. Humans have a tendency to mate with almost anything.
For example, take the Mediterranean peoples. We think of North Africans as being African, those in the Levant being Middle Eastern, and those in Southern Europe being European. But the reality is the Mediterranean peoples were mixing it up quite a bit. I know that certain populations in Southern Europe and North Africa have more common genetics than they do with the people of their respective continents.
Anyway, as for the Basque, they aren’t absolutely isolated in terms of genetics. But their unique history does show up in their genetics. They lack certain genetics that are common all across Europe. So, it is less about the genetics they have than the genetics they lack. From what I understand, it has to do with the migration patterns of later humans who came to Europe.
“There are certainly a few populations that remained isolated over a long period of time, but the idea that the Basques remeined isolated more than 2,500 years in a relativly densly populated area of the world without significant geographical barriers seems highly unlikly.”
What allowed the Basque to remain relatively isolated was geography. Their homeland is a mountainous area surrounded by marshes. It was their geography that allowed them hide from and fight off the armies of empires.
They weren’t living in a relatively densely populated area of Europe.
If you are truly curious, I recently gathered together all the information I have about the Basque and combined it into a single blog post for the sake of reference. Scrolling down the post, along with historical info, you’ll also find plenty of info about genetics and the Basque language.
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[…] associations with Hitler, eugenics, the “master race” concept, etc. as pointed out by Abagond and others. However, last year I became aware of another type of Aryanism, which I believe some […]
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