---
# System prepended metadata

title: Modern Racism caused by Nazis

---

# Modern Racism caused by Nazis

so basically anthropology as a "science" (not really fulfilling any modern scientific standards) came around the late 18th century
this lead to a loooot of very... weird publications which are all more or less contradict each other or themselves (kinda good to know that racism doesn't make any sense)
From the beginning on, anthropology used pseudo-biological methods, such as the term "race", which actually does not come from biology but from animal keeping (this is why Wizards of the Coast wants to replace the term "race" with the biologically correct "species" in coming publications)
while most associate racism nowadays with the discrimination based on skin colour, this has not been the case for most of history. one of the key methodologies was craniometry (which is scientifically bs in a loooot of ways) and was still taught in "Rassenlehre" ("Race Studies") classes in Nazi German schools (like even in elementary schools, teachers would give "practical" example how like one students was "racially inferior" and which was "racially superior")
The founder of this "science" basically divided humanity into the three main groups "Caucasian" (especially Americans use it nowadays for white but it is neither a synonym for this or European, don't use the term), "Negroid" and "Mongoloid"
basically a lot of outlandish race theories developed based on this, usually social-Darwinist (the belief that human society follows the law of nature that the stronger prevails (which is not what Darwin said), meaning that "stronger" society have the right to subjugate, exploit and take resources from "weaker" societies) or biological-deterministic (the belief that the structure of human society mirrors biological attributes, for example "Europeans should rule the world because they are smarter than Africans" which is statistically speaking correct, but only true because Africans are excluded from education and the findings being used to justify African exclusion
basically an argument that goes full circle) in nature

--
Houston Chamberlain (who there are some historical oddities about) and Mauras (or some other French asshat, I can't really tell them apart) basically took in the later half of the 19th century the theory to another level
although widely contrasting, the theories would have the following scheme "stinky bad people" (usually jews) "middle / bastardised people / primitive people" (the result of "cool people"  "interbreeding" with "stinky bad people" or, in the latter case, for example Africans) and of course, "cool people", which conveniently come from the own cultural sphere
the above mentioned assholes also warned of the "cool people" being undermined and losing their strength by interbreeding with "lesser" people, with some French wanker coining the term "Judification of the occident" (which sounds awfully similar to "Islamisierung des Abendlandes"), which I guess was also due to a rising Jewish middle class
Chamberlain for example said that the "cool people" "breed" was the "purest" in the "Teutonic" peoples (he was kinda a weeb but with Germans)
At the time anthropologists made the very surprising discovery that more or less all cultures shared at some point the swastika as a symbol
while the meaning of the swastika differed, it was a positive symbol and usually connected to good luck (and in that context used until the twenties)
it was really found everywhere, Europe, Asia (especially Buddhist), middle east, Ethiopia and even American natives had something that one might interpret as a swastika
however, there was one culture one could not find swastikas with (idk if still or if there are modern finds) and that was (you may guess it)
Jews
because of this, the swastika developed at the end of the 19th century into an anti-Semite symbol, and, as Jews were very "stinky bad people" and Germans especially "cool people", it developed into a symbol for Germanism
cue some bloke named Adolf Hitler
he basically took the existing theories (he was friends with Houston Chamberlain) and amalgamated them with historical half-knowledge and with help from Alfred Rosenberg (yes, really, a Rosenberg was main Nazi philosopher) into a diffuse race-theory as told in "Mein Kampf":

--
basically, there was a migratory people called "Aryans" (which were super cool ofc) that had the swastika as their symbol and, as this was how things were back then, cruised around the world
as the "Aryans" were super fucking superior, they always conquered the peoples they interacted with, and this is where all the ancient grand cultures come from (Egypt, Babylon, Rome, etc.) and eventually got to the Indus river valley were they kinda faded out (Indo-Aryans)
but they made one mistake: they always interbred with the people they conquered, which is why eventually all the grand civilisations fell
so Germany, as the last torchlight of humanity, must "purify" itself and conquer the resources it deserves
most importantly, to live a 1000 years long, it must never, ever interbreed with "inferior races", which is why "mixed marriages", people with birth defects or "degenerate" behaviour, Slavs and of course Jews had to be isolated, and if, threatening to consume resources their "Masters" needed themselves, to be exterminated (which radically sets apart Nazi anti-semitism from historic anti-judaism and xenophobia)
although even inside Germany there were never consistent criteria, the coolness chart of people was more or less this:
Category One (the cool people):
1. Teutons (Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch)
2. Romans (the "brethren" of the Teutons, French, Italian, etc.)
Category Two
3. Asians (the Soviet Union was typically compared to the Mongols, "Asian Hordes" trying to overrun Europe)
4. Africans (primitive, strong but stupid "Urmenschen", contrary to modern American depictions in popular culture, Owens winning in the 1936 Olympics didn't really mess with Nazis, they were like "makes sense, Ape goes fast")
Category Three
5. Slavs
6. Jews (weak, pests and somehow still manage to control the world, also accused of inventing Communism, "Jewish Bolshevism")
of course this ideology was often twisted to fit political needs
this of course is overly simplified...
TL;DR pseudo-anthropologists made with historical half-knowledge and pseudo-biological arguments the commonly found swastika into a symbol for anti-semitism, eventually adopted by far-right extremists such as Adolf Hitler