Anche
quest’anno l’edizione di Spiritualità e Arte di gennaio è dedicata interamente
alla giornata della memoria. Ha scritto Albert Einstein ‘I crimini di cui gli
ebrei sono stati incolpati nel corso della storia – crimini intesi a
giustificare le atrocità perpetrate contro di essi – sono mutati in rapida
successione […] Le accuse contro di loro, accuse della cui falsità gli
istigatori erano ogni volta perfettamente consapevoli, superavano ogni
immaginazione, ma hanno influenzato ripetutamente le masse. […] In questo caso,
si può parlare di antisemitismo latente.’ In proposito, un’Americana a Venezia
si sofferma criticamente su alcune teorie che hanno fatto tracimare i limiti
intellettivi degli uomini, limiti che spesso si esprimono in forma collettiva: queste teorie infatti sono
state in grado di muovere le masse, che facilmente si sono coalizzate contro il diverso, dopo aver assunto la consapevolezza della sua non infrequente pericolosa superiorità culturale: anche in questi casi, come
direbbe Goya, ' El sueño de la razón produce monstruos', il sonno della ragione genera mostri. RR
When organized violence is committed within the
confines of civilized society, sooner or later rational people wonder how and
why it could have taken place. Blame for
the Holocaust is normally placed squarely on the Fuhrer and his obedient Nazi
regime. Given the ferocity with which
they ordered so much pain upon so many, it does not occur to us to stop for a
moment 
and analyze the fountain they were drinking from when they began
planning their takeover of Europe. It
will shock many to learn that they were inspired by the pseudoscientific
theories of influential Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen whose fanatical
notions about race were fast becoming popular at the beginning of the 20th
century. By 1896, for the first time in
U.S. history, the "new immigrants" outnumbered the country's original
Northern European population. Between
1900 and 1908, over six million more "new immigrants" arrived, mainly
from Eastern and Southern Europe. Among
them were a large number of Jews.
Despite Israel Zangwill's term "Melting Pot," used in 1908 to
describe this ongoing phenomenon, the reaction by many established Americans to
radical demographic transition was hostile.
"Scientific Racism" soon reared its ugly head, the mindset
that inspired Hitler to want to eradicate those he considered
"unfit." Unfortunately, the
Fuhrer and his lieutenants were not the only self-appointed guards of the human
gene pool. The very book that Hitler
called "my Bible" was written by a wealthy American named Madison
Grant who often walked to his law office through what was then known as
"Jewtown," one of New York's most crowded neighborhoods. Annoyed by the presence of so many lower class
Jews, as opposed to New York's longstanding upper class Jewish families,
Grant's pseudoscientific The Passing of the Great Race (1916) would inspire
Hitler's Mein Kampf (1924). Grant
himself had been overwhelmed by the affirmations of a certain William Z. Ripley,
an American economist and professor at Columbia University, M.I.T., and
Harvard, who wrote in The Races of Europe (1899) that Europe's white population
was divided into three distinct groups, one superior to the next, with the
"Teutons" being at the top.
Ripley was capable of disparaging Jews based on stereotypical physical
characteristics. Grant, who all but
memorized Ripley, later changed "Teutons" to "Nordics,"
meaning people of Northern European ancestry, which he then labelled as
"the master race." Ripley
himself had been inspired by other writers as well as by General Francis A.
Walker, another economist from M.I.T. and Yale, who held that
"Teutons" were an endangered American species. Aryanism, as it had always been called, was
the belief that Aryans (Teutons or Nordics) were superior to all other ethnic
groups. Aryanists who inspired Ripley
and Grant were: 1) the Frenchman Arthur
de Gobineau (1816-1882) who wrote The Inequality of Human Races and was recognized
by the Nazis as a founding father of their platform; 2) Englishman Houston
Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), a Nazi favorite, who added anti-Semitism and
biology to the mix, likening the Jews to "an agricultural pest" that
had to be eliminated before it spread.
Chamberlain adhered to "craniometry," as if a person's genetic
makeup could be measured in his skull, and claimed without shame that
"Equality is a foolish humanitarian daydream!" Among his fans were George Bernard Shaw,
Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Hitler who made a point of attending his funeral. Then there was 3) Georges Vacher, Comte de
Lepouge, who despaired that the Aryans in France were being overrun by the
inferior Alpine stock in league with the Jews.
The arrival of Moroccans, Senegalese, and Indo-Chinese in France also
disturbed him; he called it "colonization in reverse." Like Chamberlain, Lepouge advocated the
destruction of weak and deformed infants.
Hitler's American idol, Madison Grant, was not only a popular racist but
also a proponent of new immigration laws as well as eugenics. Eugenics was a term invented by Charles
Darwin's half-cousin Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) whose founding document was
Hereditary Talent and Character (1865), which led to another book, Hereditary
Genius. Galton advised selective
breeding in humans, either positively, by promoting breeding in the
"talented," or negatively, by discouraging propagation of the
"unfit." Eugenics caught on in
a big way in the United States between the turn of the century and the end of
World War II. Arch American eugenicist
Harry H. Laughlin had proposed a federally mandated "Model Eugenical
Sterilization Law" in 1922, but it never passed. However, promoted by individuals behind
organizations with ominous names, the eugenics movement in the United States
resulted in the forced sterilization of over 60,000 individuals in over 30
states, including many poor African American and Native American women. California's program was by far the most
active. The "California Sterilization
Law Model" served the Nazis both during their reign of terror as well as
at the Nuremberg trials where they easily showed that their policies were based
on the California program as laid out in print by E.S. Gosney and Paul B.
Popenoe. In 1936, California raceologist
C. M. Goethe said, himself encouraged, "California has led all the world
in sterilization operations. Today, even
California's quarter century has, in two years, been outdistanced by
Germany." By the end of WWII, over
400,000 individuals had been sterilized under German laws while the last forced
sterilization in the U.S. took place in Oregon in 1981. If Madison Grant were alive today, there is
no doubt that he would be pushing to revive the practice, and possibly to do
much worse. Like many of his colleagues
mentioned in this article, he left no heirs.
Grant left only a zoological park, the Bronx Zoo, where he once felt
comfortable keeping a human being, an African pygmy, in a cage in the Primates
Section, this until public outrage expressed mostly by African Americans forced
Grant to stop the show. Considering that
the current President of the U.S. has black as well as white blood, we can
conclude that the U.S. has indeed come a long way since the days of Madison
Grant. And yet, following the President's re-election in 2012, this writer heard white citizens with Anglo
Saxon roots complaining, "They finally outnumber us." Were they referring to political
parties? To liberals as opposed to
conservatives? No. In an election where policy was the only real
issue, a surprising number of people reduced the outcome to a question of
ethnicity. Perhaps the long shadows of
the people mentioned in this article are still hanging over the civilized world. The most we can do is be aware of such
shadows and chase them away with the light of true reason. UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA
and analyze the fountain they were drinking from when they began
planning their takeover of Europe. It
will shock many to learn that they were inspired by the pseudoscientific
theories of influential Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen whose fanatical
notions about race were fast becoming popular at the beginning of the 20th
century. By 1896, for the first time in
U.S. history, the "new immigrants" outnumbered the country's original
Northern European population. Between
1900 and 1908, over six million more "new immigrants" arrived, mainly
from Eastern and Southern Europe. Among
them were a large number of Jews.
Despite Israel Zangwill's term "Melting Pot," used in 1908 to
describe this ongoing phenomenon, the reaction by many established Americans to
radical demographic transition was hostile.
"Scientific Racism" soon reared its ugly head, the mindset
that inspired Hitler to want to eradicate those he considered
"unfit." Unfortunately, the
Fuhrer and his lieutenants were not the only self-appointed guards of the human
gene pool. The very book that Hitler
called "my Bible" was written by a wealthy American named Madison
Grant who often walked to his law office through what was then known as
"Jewtown," one of New York's most crowded neighborhoods. Annoyed by the presence of so many lower class
Jews, as opposed to New York's longstanding upper class Jewish families,
Grant's pseudoscientific The Passing of the Great Race (1916) would inspire
Hitler's Mein Kampf (1924). Grant
himself had been overwhelmed by the affirmations of a certain William Z. Ripley,
an American economist and professor at Columbia University, M.I.T., and
Harvard, who wrote in The Races of Europe (1899) that Europe's white population
was divided into three distinct groups, one superior to the next, with the
"Teutons" being at the top.
Ripley was capable of disparaging Jews based on stereotypical physical
characteristics. Grant, who all but
memorized Ripley, later changed "Teutons" to "Nordics,"
meaning people of Northern European ancestry, which he then labelled as
"the master race." Ripley
himself had been inspired by other writers as well as by General Francis A.
Walker, another economist from M.I.T. and Yale, who held that
"Teutons" were an endangered American species. Aryanism, as it had always been called, was
the belief that Aryans (Teutons or Nordics) were superior to all other ethnic
groups. Aryanists who inspired Ripley
and Grant were: 1) the Frenchman Arthur
de Gobineau (1816-1882) who wrote The Inequality of Human Races and was recognized
by the Nazis as a founding father of their platform; 2) Englishman Houston
Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), a Nazi favorite, who added anti-Semitism and
biology to the mix, likening the Jews to "an agricultural pest" that
had to be eliminated before it spread.
Chamberlain adhered to "craniometry," as if a person's genetic
makeup could be measured in his skull, and claimed without shame that
"Equality is a foolish humanitarian daydream!" Among his fans were George Bernard Shaw,
Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Hitler who made a point of attending his funeral. Then there was 3) Georges Vacher, Comte de
Lepouge, who despaired that the Aryans in France were being overrun by the
inferior Alpine stock in league with the Jews.
The arrival of Moroccans, Senegalese, and Indo-Chinese in France also
disturbed him; he called it "colonization in reverse." Like Chamberlain, Lepouge advocated the
destruction of weak and deformed infants.
Hitler's American idol, Madison Grant, was not only a popular racist but
also a proponent of new immigration laws as well as eugenics. Eugenics was a term invented by Charles
Darwin's half-cousin Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) whose founding document was
Hereditary Talent and Character (1865), which led to another book, Hereditary
Genius. Galton advised selective
breeding in humans, either positively, by promoting breeding in the
"talented," or negatively, by discouraging propagation of the
"unfit." Eugenics caught on in
a big way in the United States between the turn of the century and the end of
World War II. Arch American eugenicist
Harry H. Laughlin had proposed a federally mandated "Model Eugenical
Sterilization Law" in 1922, but it never passed. However, promoted by individuals behind
organizations with ominous names, the eugenics movement in the United States
resulted in the forced sterilization of over 60,000 individuals in over 30
states, including many poor African American and Native American women. California's program was by far the most
active. The "California Sterilization
Law Model" served the Nazis both during their reign of terror as well as
at the Nuremberg trials where they easily showed that their policies were based
on the California program as laid out in print by E.S. Gosney and Paul B.
Popenoe. In 1936, California raceologist
C. M. Goethe said, himself encouraged, "California has led all the world
in sterilization operations. Today, even
California's quarter century has, in two years, been outdistanced by
Germany." By the end of WWII, over
400,000 individuals had been sterilized under German laws while the last forced
sterilization in the U.S. took place in Oregon in 1981. If Madison Grant were alive today, there is
no doubt that he would be pushing to revive the practice, and possibly to do
much worse. Like many of his colleagues
mentioned in this article, he left no heirs.
Grant left only a zoological park, the Bronx Zoo, where he once felt
comfortable keeping a human being, an African pygmy, in a cage in the Primates
Section, this until public outrage expressed mostly by African Americans forced
Grant to stop the show. Considering that
the current President of the U.S. has black as well as white blood, we can
conclude that the U.S. has indeed come a long way since the days of Madison
Grant. And yet, following the President's re-election in 2012, this writer heard white citizens with Anglo
Saxon roots complaining, "They finally outnumber us." Were they referring to political
parties? To liberals as opposed to
conservatives? No. In an election where policy was the only real
issue, a surprising number of people reduced the outcome to a question of
ethnicity. Perhaps the long shadows of
the people mentioned in this article are still hanging over the civilized world. The most we can do is be aware of such
shadows and chase them away with the light of true reason. UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA
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