Arthur Graf J. Gobineau’s Racial-Racist Political Theory

Arthur Graf J. Gobineau (1818-1882) can be considered the founder of modern racial and racist theory, which influenced later racial theories in the following century, especially those of Nazi origin. Gobineau and his racial-racist political theory were a product of the reactionary period of France during the reign of Napoleon III Bonaparte (President of the Second Republic, 1850-1852; Emperor of the Second Empire, 1850-1870) and the centuries-old colonial experience of Western European countries in North and South America, Africa, and Asia. All political theories based on racial-racist backgrounds are products of Western European civilization.

In the first half of the 19th century, racial theory was ineffective in Europe. However, during the Second Empire in France, which disillusioned the legitimate feudal structures and which, during the anti-feudal revolutionary crisis of 1848-1849, allowed Napoleon III to come to power to defend the old order, there was a renaissance of racial feudal ideology, which soon took the form of modern colonial-racist political theory. A.G.J. Gobineau represented the main turning point in this ideological transition. He was able to renew feudal racial theory and infuse it with a new modernist spirit of racism because it became the combat ideology of the reactionary bourgeoisie against the old feudal nobility.

Gobineau’s racial-racist theory

The main point of Gobineau’s racial-racist theory and ideology was the struggle against democracy, against the demand for equality of people at all levels, including racial. He considered such a demand as unscientific and unnatural. For Gobineau, all evil in history stemmed from the idea of ??equality. For him, this idea was an “atomic bomb” that destroyed all the values ??of human civilization in a historical perspective. Thus, Gobineau added a modernist bourgeois form to the medieval feudal perception of the “natural” inequality of human races, which in many cases corresponded to the capitalist system.

For Gobineau, the idea, or at least the scientific hypothesis of the equality of people, is only a symptom of the bastardization of the impurity of blood. For him, in so-called “normal times”, inequality is accepted as a phenomenon that is understandable in itself. One of Gobineau’s theses can be reduced to the following: If mixed blood flows in the veins of the majority of citizens of a state, these same citizens, due to their large numbers, feel called upon to proclaim as a universally valid principle that for them all people are equal.

Due to his racist theory of the primacy of the White race over all other races, Gobineau, unlike his later followers, fell into pessimism regaarding the inevitable collapse of White culture and civilization as a result of blood mixing. According to this historical process, the originally purest and highest race of the White man was gradually replaced by members of“colored” races, which ultimately led to the so-called “bastardization” of the White “Superman” (in Nazi ideology, German Überman). However, unlike his later (Nazi) supporters and like-minded people, Gobineau did not offer any methods or goals to “correct” this “racial” situation on a global scale.

According to Gobineau, all the misfortune of humanity stems from the view of the equality of people. He supports the natural-racial inequality of people, essentially on genetic grounds. Gobineau argued that in “normal” times, inequality is accepted as natural and understandable in a rational sense. However, if mixed blood flows in the veins of the majority of citizens of a political community (state), they feel obliged to proclaim equality as a universally valid truth. This is one of the basic examples of “bastardization” of the higher (White) race in relation to the lower (non-White) races, within the framework of the will of the (democratic) majority. Gobineau simply transfers social contradictions based on socio-professional differences to the field of racial differences and thus creates an excellent basis for the further development of racist theories and ideologies.

Unlike most of his later ideological followers, Gobineau expresses extremely pessimistic hypotheses regarding the collapse of the culture and civilization of the White race due to mixing with“lower” races (“bastards”). He does not offer any combat goals or methods to “return to normal” state of affairs.

The racial theory of Gobineau, presented in his work on the inequality of human races (Die Ungleichkeit der Menschenrassen, Berlin 1935), reflected at a given historical moment the position of the French feudal aristocratic opposition, which was largely losing its social and political position after the revolutionary events of 1848-1849, and which viewed the past as a socio-political state that needed to be re-established (feudal inequality).

This feudal inequality was historically based on purely socio-economic inequality within the same local society that possessed largely the same racial characteristics, but Gobineau transformed this inequality into racial inequality on a global level. In other words, the old feudal aristocracy did not like the idea of ??social equality because it would lose its dominant position in society. Consequently, the aristocracy fought by all means, even racial theories, to maintain its “natural” (God-given) privileged position in society against the democratic ideas of the lower social classes about social equality and equal political rights in the same society.

Gobineau, after a somewhat longer historical pause, revived racial theory in France and opened new horizons for the later racist theory that grew between the two world wars. Gobineau attempted to build a new history of the world, and of racial relations on a global level, on a racial basis. The basis of his history is the feudal-aristocratic tradition, which he tries to harmonize with the Old Testament.

Gobineau correctly observed that the majority of human races have historically lived in a state of mixing with other races, so that historically known peoples are the product of racial mixing. According to him, mixing with an inferior race (non-White) represents the bastardization of a superior (White) race, the inevitable consequence of which is the downfall of the civilized world and the victory of anti-civilization.

However, there are significant contradictions in his political theory. A French orthodox Roman Catholic, he claims that art can only arise as a product of mixing with the lowest race on his scale – Blacks. He accepts the thesis of a single origin of all human races. But in another place, he replaces this thesis with the Biblical trinity of the origin of races stem from Noah’s sons, Ham, Shem, and Japhet. For him, there is a physiological and psychological inequality of races, which in turn has direct links to religion, because for Gobineau, Christianity is the highest level of culture. The lower races cannot adapt to the culture of higher races, so they can only serve them in one form or another.

Gobineau was certainly one of the pioneers of modern pseudo-scientific positions against democracy, by linking the fundamental principles of democracy with racial mixing, as it is the lower races that accept the democratic principle of equality on the global level and equality in the same society. The French bourgeois revolution (1789-1794) emphasized the principle of equality, a consequence of the constant increase in racial mixing.

For Gobineau, the diversity of blood causes differences in views and attitudes on many issues in society. Otherwise, the mixing of races ultimately leads to the corruption, laxity, and confusion of advanced races. The white race is the purest race and surpasses all other races in all characteristics, intellectual and aesthetics. It values ??life and time. The white race is the center of intellectual life on a global scale.

Gobineau is known for using racial and even racist theory as a basis for constructing the entire history of the world. He reduces all historical crises and social conflicts to a racial basis, which is far from the real state of affairs and from historical truth. In any case, according to him, any change in the social structure is unnatural, it leads to the degradation of humanity and can in no way represent progress in human history.

Regarding the ideal original state, he argued that every social order is based on three original classes, each of which is a racial variation: 1) The nobility (aristocracy), which is generally an accurate reflection of the victorious race; 2) The citizenry, composed of mixed types close to the master race; and 3) The people (plebs), who live enslaved or in a very oppressed position and belong to an inferior race that arose in the south by mixing with Blacks and in the north with Finno-Ugric peoples. For Gobineau, the ideal racial form can be seen in Indian castes (a misunderstanding of indian jatis-Ed) and in European feudalism, and this ideal racial form was achieved only by the ‘Aryans’.

Gobineau clearly emphasized the inequality of people as a natural state, so that advocating for equality led to blocking progress and reason. For him, only the the White race is capable of building civilization. All other races are ahistorical, uncivilized. For Gobineau, differences in cultural levels do not mean developmental stages through which one and the same people (society) pass, but each level is equated identified with certain races and their characteristics. Some races always remain barbaric, others have never been like the White race.

The racial-racist ideology of Arthur Graf J. Gobineau is a classic product of the racial superiority of Western European colonizers vis-à-vis the non-White indigenous populations of both Americas, Africa, and Asia, which Whites considered as non-historical races incapable of developing civilization. It served as the basis for later Nazi racial ideology, with certain significant modifications.

Gobineau and German Nazism

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was familiar with anti-Semitic literature, which after 1890 was completely under the ideological influence of that branch of Western European political theory on the doctrine of races, or as an anthropological understanding of history, as Ernst Nolte argued in his famous work on fascism (Der Faschismus in Seiner Epoche). Hitler did not develop the racial ideology of A.G.J. Gobineau or Houston Steward Chamberlain (1855-1927).

Hitler knew these doctrines only superficially, but it was enough for him to develop them with the help of Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) to propaganda perfection. For fascism and National Socialism, only what the leader (Führer, Duce) accepted and approved as the relative truth was relevant for the rest of the population.

Among German Nazis, Gobineau’s ideology represented the basis of their racist ideology: the inequality of human races, which even meant incomparability between them, because the blood of the White race allegedly has a monopoly on creative power. All existing inequalities stem from the varying extent to which the White racial core, creating history and culture, is connected with lower races. In many later cases, the Western European Right accepted Gobineau’s ideological racial teaching that social class is equal to race, so that the nobility, bourgeoisie, and people differ from each other primarily by the amount of ‘Aryan’ blood in their veins, which cannot be measured in a purely technological sense. For Gobineau, as German Nazis heartily accepted, the enemy of Germanism was French absolutism, which had deprived the feudal nobility of power and independence and thus led the fight against the remnants of Germanism in France.

For Gobineau, Germanism is characterized by its proud individualism and repulsive attitude towards the Romas and Slavs. Gobineau despised the Slavs as a non-warlike people, an idea that the German Nazis embraced wholeheartedly. The tendency towards despotism was explained by Semitic blood, and therefore this enemy of the White race was put on the list of moral destruction. According to Gobineau, the ‘Aryan’ (White) race was in historical degradation due to the mixing of blood with (non-White) races. The German Nazis built on the racial-racist ideology of Gobineau in a “positive” sense.

German Nazis wholeheartedly accepted Gobineau’s teaching that everything that did not join the Germanic (not only German) civilization and its way of thinking should be eliminated. For him, Germanic civilization possesses this power of extermination, but he does not think that this very property of the Germanic race and civilization leads to anti-Semitism (anti-Jews). Anti-Semitism is present in Gobineau in rudimentary beginnings, but which the German Nazis later transformed into the foundations of their world policy. What the ideologists of German Nazism did not say about Gobineau’s ideology is that he considered the mass of Germans to be non-Germanic due to the mixing of races. His racial preferences were the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians.

In short, the ideologists of German Nazi racial ideology accepted from Gobineau and other ideologists of racial theories the parts that suited them to achieve their purely political goals of reconstructing Europe in a “New World Order.” Everything else was not taken into account. Thus, Gobineau, like others, remained “stripped” by Nazi ideologists.