Some feminist theorists[2] have argued that in patriarchy, a standard of male "supremacism" is enforced through a variety of cultural, political, religious, sexual, and interpersonal strategies.[2][3] Since the 19th century there have been a number of feminist movements opposed to male supremacism, usually aimed at achieving equal legal rights and protections for women in all cultural, political and interpersonal relations.[4][5][6]
During the 19th century, "The White Man's Burden", the phrase which refers to the thought that whites have the obligation to make the societies of the other peoples more 'civilized', was widely used to justify imperialist policies as a noble enterprise.[13][14]Thomas Carlyle, known for his historical account of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: A History, argued that European supremacist policies were justified on the grounds that they provided the greatest benefit to "inferior" native peoples.[15] However, even at the time of its publication in 1849, Carlyle's main work on the subject, the Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, was poorly received by his contemporaries.[16]
Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America was founded with a constitution that contained clauses which restricted the government's ability to limit or interfere with the institution of "negro" slavery.[17] In the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declared that one of the Confederacy's foundational tenets was white supremacy over black slaves.[18] Following the war, a secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed in the South. Its purpose was to maintain white, Protestant supremacy after the Reconstruction period, which it did so through violence and intimidation.[19]
According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism can be distinguished from modern antisemitism which is based on racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion ... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."[20]
One of the first typologies which was used to classify various human races was invented by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a theoretician of eugenics, who published L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899 – "The Aryan and his social role") in 1899. In his book, he divides humanity into various, hierarchical races, starting with the highest race which is the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", and ending with the lowest race which is the "brachycephalic", "mediocre and inert" race, that race is best represented by Southern European, Catholic peasants".[21] Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "Homo europaeus" (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Neapolitan, Andalus, etc.) Jews were brachycephalic just like the Aryans were, according to Lapouge; but he considered them dangerous for this exact reason; they were the only group, he thought, which was threatening to displace the Aryan aristocracy.[22] Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirations of Naziantisemitism and Nazi racist ideology.[23]
Cornel West, an African-American philosopher, writes that black supremacist religious views arose in America as a part of black Muslim theology in response to white supremacism.[29]
In Africa, black Southern Sudanese allege that they are being subjected to a racist form of Arab supremacy, which they equate with the historic white supremacism of South African apartheid.[30] The alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing in the ongoing War in Darfur has been described as an example of Arabracism.[31]
For example, in their analysis of the sources of the conflict, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal say that Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, sponsored "Arab supremacism" across the Sahara during the 1970s. Gaddafi supported the "Islamic Legion" and the Sudanese opposition "National Front, including the Muslim Brothers and the Ansar, the Umma Party's military wing." Gaddafi tried to use such forces to annex Chad from 1979–81. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government's war in the South during the early 1980s, and in return, he was allowed to use the Darfur region as a "back door to Chad". As a result, the first signs of an "Arab racist political platform" appeared in Darfur in the early 1980s.[32]
In Asia, ancient Indians considered all foreigners barbarians. The Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians called foreigners impure.[33] A few centuries later, Dubois observes that "Hindus look upon Europeans as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good breeding... In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcaste) and a European are on the same level."[33] The Chinese considered the Europeans repulsive, ghost-like creatures, and they even considered them devils. Chinese writers also referred to foreigners as barbarians.[34]
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, promoted the belief in the existence of a superior, AryanHerrenvolk, or master race. The state's propaganda advocated the belief that Germanic peoples, whom they called "Aryans", were a master race or a Herrenvolk whose members were superior to the Jews, Slavs, and Romani people, so-called "gypsies". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial intermixing, which he believed had destroyed the purity of the Nordic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a large and strong following in Germany, emphasized the belief in the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan and Jewish cultures.[35]
Religious
Christian
Academics Carol Lansing and Edward D. English argue that Christian supremacism was a motivation for the Crusades in the Holy Land, as well as a motivation for crusades against Muslims and pagans throughout Europe.[36] The blood libel is a widespread European conspiracy theory which led to centuries of pogroms and massacres of European Jewish minorities because it alleged that Jews required the pure blood of a Christian child in order to make matzah for Passover. Thomas of Cantimpré writes of the blood curse which the Jews put upon themselves and all of their generations at the court of Pontius Pilate where Jesus was sentenced to death: "A very learned Jew, who in our day has been converted to the (Christian) faith, informs us that one enjoying the reputation of a prophet among them, toward the close of his life, made the following prediction: 'Be assured that relief from this secret ailment, to which you are exposed, can only be obtained through Christian blood ("solo sanguine Christiano")."[37] The Atlantic slave trade has also been partially attributed to Christian supremacism.[38] The Ku Klux Klan has been described as a white supremacist Christian organization, as are many other white supremacist groups, such as the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity and Positive Christianity movements.[39][40]
Academics Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ian Lague, and Joshua Cone note that, while the Quran and other Islamic scriptures express tolerant beliefs, there have also been numerous instances of Muslim or Islamic supremacism.[41] Examples of how supremacists have interpreted Islam include the Muslim participation in the African slave trade, the early-20th-century pan-Islamism promoted by Abdul Hamid II,[42] the jizya and rules of marriage in Muslim countries being imposed on non-Muslims,[43] and the majority Muslim interpretations of the rules of pluralism in Malaysia. According to scholar Bernard Lewis, classical Islamic jurisprudence imposes an open-ended duty on Muslims to expand Muslim rule and Islamic law to all non-Muslims throughout the world.[44]
Ilan Pappé, an expatriate Israeli historian, writes that the First Aliyah to Israel "established a society based on Jewish supremacy" within "settlement-cooperatives" that were Jewish owned and operated.[51]Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab studies, holds that "Jewish supremacism" has always been a "dominating principle" in religious and secular Zionism.[52][53] Zionism was established with the goal of creating a sovereign Jewish state, where Jews could be the majority, rather than the minority. Theodor Herzl, the ideological father of Zionism, considered antisemitism as an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as minorities, and as a result, he believed that only a separation could allow Jews to escape eternal persecution. "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest!"[54]
^Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female power and male dominance: on the origins of sexual inequality, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 6–8, 113–114, 174, 182. ISBN978-0-521-28075-4
^Out West. University of Nebraska Press. 2000. p. 96.
^Miller, Stuart Creighton (1982). Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903. Yale University Press. p. 5. ISBN978-0-300-03081-5. ...imperialist editors came out in favor of retaining the entire archipelago (using) higher-sounding justifications related to the "white man's burden.
^"Constitution of the Confederate States". March 11, 1861.: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
^Alexander Stephens (March 21, 1861). "'Corner Stone' Speech".: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."
^Nichols, William: Christian Antisemitism, A History of Hate (1993) p. 314.
^Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2003). The end of the soul: scientific modernity, atheism, and anthropology in France. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 171. ISBN978-0231128469. OCLC53118940.
^Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2003). The end of the soul : scientific modernity, atheism, and anthropology in France. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 171–172. ISBN978-0231128469. OCLC53118940.
^See Pierre-André Taguieff, La couleur et le sang – Doctrines racistes à la française ("Colour and Blood – Racist doctrines à la française"), Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2002, 203 pages, and La Force du préjugé – Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles, Tel Gallimard, La Découverte, 1987, 644 pages
^Cornel West, Race Matters, Beacon Press, 1993, p. 99: "The basic aim of black Muslim theology – with its distinct black supremacist account of the origins of white people – was to counter white supremacy."
^Flint and de Waal, Darfur: A New History of a Long War, rev. ed. (London and New York: Zed Books, 2008), pp. 47–49.
^ abThe First Spring: The Golden Age of India by Abraham Eraly p. 313
^The Haunting Past: Politics, Economics and Race in Caribbean Life by Alvin O. Thompson p. 210
^Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia: Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 62.
^Carol Lansing; Edward D. English, A companion to the medieval world, Vol. 7, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, p. 457, ISBN978-1405109222
^Albert Ehrman, "The Origins of the Ritual Murder Accusation and Blood Libel", Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Spring 1976): 86
^Mary E. Hunt, Diann L. Neu, New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views, SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2010, p. 122, ISBN978-1594732850
^R. Scott Appleby, The ambivalence of the sacred: religion, violence, and reconciliation, Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict series, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p. 103, ISBN978-0847685554
^Ilan Pappé (1999). The Israel/Palestine question. Psychology Press. p. 89. ISBN978-0415169479. Whereas the First Aliya established a society based on Jewish supremacy, the Second Aliya's method of colonization was separation from Palestinians.
^Herzl, Theodor (1896). "Palästina oder Argentinien?". Der Judenstaat (in German). sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de. p. 29 [31]. Retrieved May 27, 2016.
^ abcdefgFeldman, Rachel Z. (October 8, 2017). "The Bnei Noah (Children of Noah)". World Religions and Spirituality Project. Archived from the original on January 21, 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2020.