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{{short description|Hypothetical racial grouping}}
{{two other uses|the racial theory|the full range of meanings of "Aryan"|Aryan|Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Jain spiritual interpretations|Arya}}
{{pp-semi-indef}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2021}}
{{race}}


The '''Aryan race''' is a pseudoscientific ] that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the ] as a ].<ref>{{cite journal | title=The Great Aryan Myth|author=]|volume=59|number=4|date=October 1944|journal=]|publisher=]|url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/18253|pages=296–300|jstor=18253|bibcode=1944SciMo..59..296D}}</ref>{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|pp=13–50}} The terminology derives from the historical usage of ], used by modern ] as an epithet of "noble". ], ], and ] evidence does not support the validity of this concept.{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=45}}<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ramaswamy|first=Sumathi|date=June 2001|title=Remains of the race: Archaeology, nationalism, and the yearning for civilisation in the Indus valley|journal=The Indian Economic & Social History Review|volume=38|issue=2|pages=105–145|doi=10.1177/001946460103800201|s2cid=145756604|issn=0019-4646|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001946460103800201}}</ref>
The "'''Aryan race'''" is a concept in ]an culture that was influential in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the ] and their descendents up to the present day constitute a distinctive ]. In its best-known incarnation, under ], it was argued that the earliest Aryans were identical to ]. Belief in the superiority of the "Aryan race" is sometimes referred to as ''Aryanism''. This should not be confused with the unrelated Christian religious belief known as ].


The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of the ] were distinct progenitors of a superior specimen of humankind,{{sfn|Pereltsvaig|Lewis|2015|p=11}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=2}} and that their descendants up to the present day constitute either a distinctive race or a sub-race of the ], alongside the ] and the ].<ref>Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief ''Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary'' Springfield, Massachusetts. 1994 – Merriam-Webster See original definition (definition #1) of "Aryan" in English. 0. 66</ref><ref>'']'', 4th edition, 1885–90, T11, p.&nbsp;476.</ref> This ] approach to categorizing human population groups is now considered to be misguided and biologically meaningless due to the ].<ref name="yu16">{{Cite book|author=Templeton, A.|title=How Evolution Shapes Our Lives: Essays on Biology and Society|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2016|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7h0s6j|editor1=Losos, J.|place=Princeton; Oxford|pages=346–361|chapter=Evolution and Notions of Human Race|doi=10.2307/j.ctv7h0s6j.26|jstor=j.ctv7h0s6j |isbn=9780691170398 |quote=... the answer to the question whether races exist in humans is clear and unambiguous: no.|editor2=Lenski, R.}}</ref><ref name="royal17">{{Cite journal|last1=Wagner|first1=Jennifer K.|last2=Yu|first2=Joon-Ho|last3=Ifekwunigwe|first3=Jayne O.|last4=Harrell|first4=Tanya M.|last5=Bamshad|first5=Michael J.|last6=Royal|first6=Charmaine D.|date=February 2017|title=Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics|journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology|volume=162|issue=2|pages=318–327|doi=10.1002/ajpa.23120|pmc=5299519|pmid=27874171}}</ref><ref name="aapa20">{{Cite web|author=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|author-link=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|date=27 March 2019|title=AAPA Statement on Race and Racism|url=https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/|access-date=19 June 2020|website=American Association of Physical Anthropologists}}</ref>
== Origin and background of the concept ==
] and his son, ]. It is used both as a linguistic and a racial designation. Darius refers to these meanings in the ] (DBiv.89), which is written in a language known as ''airyan'', ].]]] showing ] figure ] (521-486 BCE), Darius , states in ], I am Persian son of a ] an Aryan having Aryan lineage.]]


The term was adopted by various ] and ] writers during the 19th century, including ], ], and ],<ref name="Rich983">{{cite journal |author=Paul B. Rich |year=1998 |title=Racial ideas and the impact of imperialism in Europe |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10848779808579862 |journal=] |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=30–33 |doi=10.1080/10848779808579862}}</ref> whose ] influenced later ].{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=13–40}} By the 1930s, the concept had been associated with both ] and ],<ref>{{cite journal| last = Gregor| first = A James | title = Nordicism Revisited | journal = Phylon | volume = 22| issue = 4 | pages = 352–360| year = 1961 |jstor= 273538 | doi =10.2307/273538}}</ref> and used to support the ] ideology of ] that portrayed the Aryan race as a "]",{{sfn|Bryant|2001|pp=33–50}} with non-Aryans regarded as ] ('']'', {{Literal translation|subhuman}}) and an existential threat that was ].<ref name="longerich10">{{cite book |last=Longerich |first=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rLy80aq8tR8C |title=Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0191613470 |author-link=Peter Longerich}}</ref> In ], these ideas formed an essential part of the state ideology that led to the ].<ref name=":7"/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aryan-1|publisher=], ]|title=Aryan|access-date=25 February 2022}}</ref>
In its original meaning, in Indo-Iranian languages of the 3rd or 4th millennium BC, "Aryan" may or may not have had any racial meaning,
certainly
not
in the sense that the concept of race is distorted today. Rather the term more likely grew from a tribalist self-identity, until more recent racialist distortions, attempting to justify eugenics policies, such as colonialism and genocide in which the concept of the Aryan race was redefined to mean a "master race" of people of northern European descent.<ref> http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Aryan_race</ref>


== History ==
The Aryan race is a notion mentioned in the Old Persian inscriptions and other Persian sources from c. 500 BC onwards. The word "Aryan", originally (and legitimately) applied to the ] culture, became tied in nineteenth century linguistics to Indo-European culture as a whole as ] and ] speculated that Europeans descended from an ancient people called the Aryans. The idea of the "Aryan race" also arose when linguists identified the ] and ] (ancient languages of ] and Northern ], respectively) as the oldest known relatives of all the major European languages. These hypothetical ancestors were given the name Aryans, from the ] and ] word Arya, which means "noble, free, spiritual or skillful person".
=== Debates on linguistic homeland ===
In the late 18th century, ] (PIE) was constructed as the hypothesized common ] of the ].{{sfn|Bryant|2001|p=20}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=4–5}} ], who was acclaimed as the "most respected linguist in Europe" for his ''Grammar of the Persian Language'' (1771), was appointed one of the three justices of the ].{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=6}} Jones, who arrived in ] and began his study of Sanskrit and the ], was astonished by the ] between ] and other Indo-European languages such as ], ], ], and ], and concluded that Sanskrit—as a ]—belonged to the same proto- or parent-language in the ]—that is PIE, as the other Indo-European languages,{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=7}} in his ''Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus'' (1786).{{sfn|Santucci|2008|p=40}} However, the ] of the ] of Proto-Indo-European was a politicized debate among the archaeologists and ] since the start, entangling in ] causes.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=4–5}}{{sfn|Zvelebil|1995|p=34}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=10}} Some European ] and ]s, most notably the Nazis, later attempted to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland in their country or region as racially superior.<ref name="colin89">{{cite journal|journal=]|volume=261|number=4|date=October 1989|title=The Origins of Indo-European Languages|first=Colin|location=]|last=Renfrew|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24987446|page=108|doi=10.1038/scientificamerican1089-106 |jstor=24987446 |bibcode=1989SciAm.261d.106R }}</ref>{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=5}}


According to ], the concept of the Aryan race was deeply rooted in philology, based on the work of Sir William Jones' claiming that Sanskrit was related to Greco-Roman (European) languages. Other thinkers invented secularized origins for European civilization that were not based on the biblical genealogies from which Europe's aristocracy had long claimed descent.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Leoussi |first1=Athena |title=Encyclopedia of Nationalism |date=2001 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |location=United Kingdom |page=11 |quote="The process was further assisted by a romanticism which gloried in the exotic and encouraged the idea that the greatest civilizational achievements of Europe could be attributed to the stimulus of ancient Aryan tribal movements...Historians seemed increasingly bent on discovering in each case a vigorous national past from which could be projected an even greater future. Scholars searching for Aryan pedigree also availed themselves of such newer disciplines as ethnology and anthropology."}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Judaken |first=Jonathan |title=Leon Poliakov, Philosophy, and the Secularization of Anti-Judaism in the Development of Racism |journal=Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal |date=6 March 2024 |volume=35 |issue=1 |url=https://www.academia.edu/37191095|pages=193–195 |quote=It seemed as in the Europeans of the scientific age, having freed themselves from the conventional Noachian genealogy and rejected Adam as a common father, were looking around for new ancestors but were unable to break with the tradition which placed their origin in the fabulous Orient. It was the science of linguistics which was to give a name to these ancestors by opposing the Aryans to the Hamites, the Mongols—and the Jews.}}</ref>
In Europe new concepts were forged around it. These new ideas in Europe reached their height of popularity during the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. Inspired by the discovery of the Indo-European language family. 19th century ethnologists speculated that European peoples descended from an ancient people called the Aryans. The term Aryan thus came to exclude not only traditionally defined "non-white" groups such as ]s,
and ]s, but also ] peoples (] and ])<ref> http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Aryan_race</ref>. This was because the ] are unrelated to Indo-European, a fact that was used to argue that the ancestral population of Semites was completely separate from that of Aryans. Among ]s this led to the claim that Jews were an alien presence in Aryan societies and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruction of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall.
Also discovery of the Indo-European language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by ] to link the pre-history of European peoples to the ancient "Aryans" (variously referring to the Indo-Iranians or the Proto-Indo-Europeans).
] figure ](485-465 BCE), the son of ], states in ], I am Persian son of a ] an Aryan having Aryan lineage.]]


=== Romanticism and Social Darwinism ===
]
{{See also|Romantic nationalism|German nationalism#Romantic nationalism}}
(795—838) fought for the preservation of ].]]
The influence of ] in Germany saw a revival of the intellectual quest for "the German language and traditions" and a desire to "discard the cold, artificial logic of ]".{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=7–8}} After ]'s 1859 publication of '']'' and publicization of the theorized model of ] (PIE), the Romantics convicted that language was a defining factor in ], combined with the new ideas of ].{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=8}} The ] misemployed the ] of ] for the rationalization of the supposed ] of some races over others, although Darwin himself never applied his ] to vague entities such as races or languages.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=8}} The "unfit" races were suggested as a source of genetic weakness, and a threat that might contaminate the superior qualities of the "fit" races.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=8}} The misleading mixture of ] and Romanticism produced new racial ideologies which used distorted ] interpretations of race to explain "the superior biological-spiritual-linguistic essence of the ]ans" in self-congratulatory studies.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|1992|pp=12–14}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=8–9}} Subsequently, the German Romantics' quest for a "pure" national heritage led to the interpretation of the ancient speakers of PIE language as the distinct progenitors of a "racial-linguistic-national stereotype".{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=8–10}}<ref name="frederic_94">Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief ''Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary'' Springfield, Massachusetts: 1994. Merriam-Webster p. 66</ref>
The word ''anti-Semitic'' was first used in 1860 by the ]n Jewish ] ] in the phrase "anti-Semitic prejudices". Steinschneider used this phrase to characterize ]'s ideas about how "] races" were inferior to "] races." These ] theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in ]. In its best-known incarnation, under Nazism, hostility toward or prejudice against Jews became institutionalized. Nazism portrayed their interpretation of an "Aryan race" as the only race capable of, or with an interest in, creating and maintaining culture and civilizations, while other races are merely capable of conversion, or destruction of culture.


== Invention of the Aryan race ==
The word '']'' is a ] of ],
=== Racial association of the term Aryan ===
and is derived from the word ''Aryanam'' (see ]), meaning "Land of the Aryans", a term adopted in ] by the ] meaning ''free'', ''noble'', ''spiritual''. Seventy percent of those living in modern Iran are native speakers of Iranian/Aryan dialects. ] was in ancient times also referred to as ], which means "Abode of the Aryans". ] speaking people form majority of the population of ]. The term ''Arya'' (noble) appears in the ancient texts of ] and ], known as the ] and ], respectively.
{{See also|Aryan}}
The term "]" was originally used as an ] self-designative identity and epithet of "noble" by ] and the authors of the oldest known ] of '']'' and '']'' within the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family—Sanskrit and ], who lived in ] and ].{{sfn|Anthony|2007|pp=9–10}} Although the Sanskrit ā́rya- and Iranian *arya- descended from a form *ā̆rya-, it was only attested to the Indo-Iranian tribes.{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=209}}{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=22}} ] states that there may have been no term for self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and no such ]s has survived.{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=22}} ] et al. states although the term "Aryan" takes on an ethnic meaning attesting to Indo-Iranians, there is no grounds for ascribing this semantic use to the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction of lexicon ''*h₂eryós'' i.e. there is no evidence that the speakers of proto-language referred to themselves as "Aryans".<ref>{{cite book|publisher=]|title=The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World|author1=]|author2=]|isbn=9780199296682|date=August 2006|url=https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/the-oxford-introduction-to-proto-indo-european-and-the-proto-indo-european-world-9780199296682?cc=ca&lang=en&|chapter=Proto-Indo-European Society|page=266}}</ref> However, in the 19th century, it was proposed that ā́rya- was not only the tribal self-designation of Indo-Iranians, but self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves, a theory rejected by modern scholarships.{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=209}}{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=22}} "Aryan" then came to be used by scholars of the 19th century to refer to Indo-Europeans.{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=209}} The now-discredited and ] ] was endorsed by such scholars who situated the PIE homeland in northern Europe,{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=209}} which led to the association of "]", originally a hypothesized linguistic population of ]n PIE speakers, with a new, imagined biological category: "a tall, light-complexioned, blonde, blue-eyed race" - supposed ]s of ].<ref name="Villar91" />{{Sfn|Mallory|2015|p=268}}{{Sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=43}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=9}} The ] term "Aryan" then developed into a purely racialist meaning implicating Nordic racial type.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=9}}{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=209}} However, modern scholarship of Indo-European studies use "Aryan" and "Indo-Aryan" in their original senses referring to Indo-Iranian and Indic branch of Indo-Europeans.{{sfn|Fortson|2011|p=209-210}}


Classification of human races based on the now-pseudoscientific study of phenotypical differences developed during the nineteenth century and evidence in support of such theories were sought from the study of language and reconstructions of language families.<ref name="cashmore97">{{cite book|publisher=]|doi=10.4324/9780203437513|isbn=978-0203437513|first=Ellis|last=Cashmore|title=Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations|url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203437513/dictionary-race-ethnic-relations-professor-ellis-cashmore-ellis-cashmore|edition=4|year=1997|chapter=Language, race, and ethnicity|page=198|author-link=Ellis Cashmore}}</ref> Scholars of this era established the ethnological term "Aryan" as the race that had spoken the Proto-Indo-European language, and in this context, the term was often used as a synonym for "Indo-Europeans".<ref name="cashmore97" />
Since, in the 19th century, the Indo-Iranians were the most ancient known speakers of "]" languages, the word Aryan was adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian people, but also to Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the ], ], the ], ], ] and ]. It was argued that all of these languages originated from a common root — now known as ] — spoken by an ancient people who must have been the original ancestors of the ], ], and ] peoples. The ethnic group composed of the ]s and their modern descendants was termed the ] with the idea of distinctive behavioral and ancestral ethnicity marked by language distribution. This usage was common in the late 19th and early 20th century. An example of an influential best-selling book that reflects this usage is the 1920 book ''The Outline of History'' by ]. In it he wrote of the accomplishments of the Aryan people, stating how they "learned methods of civilization" while "Sargon II and Sardanapalus were ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia and Syria and Egypt". As such, Wells suggested that the Aryans had eventually "subjugated the whole ancient world, Semitic, Aegean and Egyptian alike".<ref></ref>
], used in ancient Indo-Iranian culture, came to be identified as a distinctively Nazi symbol. This Iranian necklace was excavated from ], ], first millennium BCE, ]. The original Indo-Iranian meaning of good-luck, good fortune or well-being is linked to it.]]
]. Painting of Persian women musicians from ''Hasht-Behesht Palace'' ] ("Palace of the 8 heavens"). The word "Aryan", originally applied to the ] culture.]]


Scholars point out that, even in ancient times, the Aryan identity as asserted in the ''Rig Veda'' was ], ], and ], not racial; nor do the ''Vedas'' contemplate ].{{sfn|Bryant|2001|pp=60–63}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=11}}{{sfn|Witzel|2008|p=21}} The Rig Veda affirms a ]: an individual is considered Aryan if they ] to the right gods, which requires performing traditional prayer in the traditional language, and does not connote a racial barrier.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=11}} ] states that term Aryan "does not mean a particular ''people'' or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes speaking ] and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual, poetry, etc.)".{{sfn|Witzel|2008|p=21}} Scholars state that the historical Aryans, the ] ] tribes who lived in ], ], and the northern ]—composers of the Rig Veda and Avesta—were unlikely to be blond or blue-eyed, contrary to the proponents of Aryanism and Nordicism.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=10}}{{sfn|Witzel|2008|pp=10–11}}
The usage of Aryan to mean "all Indo-Europeans" is now regarded by most scholars as "obsolete", though it is still seen occasionally and some people continue this usage.<ref> Renfrew, C. ''The Origins of Indo-European Languages'' Scientific American October 1989 Pages 106–114 The word "Aryan" is used to mean "all Indo-Europeans" when describing the hypothesis that the Aryans (proto-Indo-Europeans) originated in the city of ] about ] and spread out from there. </ref><ref> The ] author ] (]–])(of ]n ancestry), an ] ], used the word ''Aryan'' in the sense of "all Indo-Europeans" in all his science fiction novels. He spoke of the Aryans as taking the lead in developing ] and spoke of the "Aryan bird of prey". </ref> In today's English, "Aryan", if used at all, is normally synonymous to ], or ]. The idea that the ''north'' Europeans were the "purest" of these people was later theorized by the ] and by other writers, most notably his disciple ], who wrote of an "Aryan race"—those who spoke Indo-European languages and were claimed to be the "noblest" of people.


=== North Europe hypothesis and archaeological affirmation ===
Modern research considers “Aryan” merely in connection with the Iranians, and contemporary ] who believe in the existence of an ancient Aryan race, generally have the opinion that its closest descendants today are the ].<ref> http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Aryan_race</ref> However because of its association with racism, the words Aryan and Aryan race today for many people carry negative connotations.<ref name="nvtc">{{cite web| url=http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/february/indoIranianBranch.html| title="The Indo-Iranian Branch of the Indo-European Language Family"| first=Government of the U.S.A.| last=National Virtual Translation Center| accessdate=2006-04-14}}</ref>
The racial interpretation of ''Aryans'' stems from the now-discredited ] of ], who asserted a one-to-one correspondence between ] and ].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/1543/1/JK4.pdf|publisher=], Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies|year=2020|page=14|first=John T.|last=Koch|title=Celto-Germanic: Later Prehistory and Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West|access-date=6 April 2022|url-status=bot: unknown|archive-date=12 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220412005308/https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/1543/1/JK4.pdf}}</ref>{{sfn|Zvelebil|1995|pp=42–44}} According to Kossinna, the continuity of a "culture" exposits the continuity of a "race" which lived continuously in the same area, and the resemblance of a culture in a younger layer to a culture from an older layer indicates that the autochthonous ] from the homeland had migrated.{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=143}} Kossinna developed an ethnic paradigm in archaeology called ] and practiced the nationalistic interpretation of German archaeology for the ].{{sfn|Jones|1997|page=2}} The obsolete North European hypothesis was endorsed by Kossinna and ], including German nationalists, which was later used by the Nazis to condone their genocidal and racist state policies.<ref name="Villar91">{{cite book |last=Villar |first=Francisco |url=https://www.mulino.it/isbn/9788815127068 |title=Los Indoeuropeos y los origines de Europa: lenguaje e historia |publisher=Gredos |year=1991 |isbn=84-249-1471-6 |location=Madrid |pages=42–47 |language=es |author-link=Francisco Villar}}</ref>{{sfn|Zvelebil|1995|p=34}} Kossinna identified the ] with the ], and placed the ] in ].{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|pp=142–143}} He argued a ] model of culture, and emphasised the racial superiority of ] over ] (]) and ], whom he described as destroyers of culture as compared to Germanics.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Arnold |first1=Bettina |date=July–August 1992 |title=The Past as Propaganda: How Hitler's Archaeologists Distorted European Prehistory to Justify Racist and Territorial Goals |journal=] |publisher=] |pages=30–37 }}</ref> Kossinna's ideas have been heavily criticised for its inherent ambiguities in the method and advocacy for the ideology of a ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Veit |first=Ulrich |author-link=:de:Ulrich Veit |year=2012 |chapter=Kossinna, Gustaf |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199735785.001.0001/acref-9780199735785-e-0237 |editor-last=Silberman |editor-first=Neil Asher |editor-link=Neil Asher Silberman |title=The Oxford Companion To Archaeology |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199735785.001.0001/acref-9780199735785 |edition=2 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0199735785 }}</ref>


=== Earliest utilization of Aryan race ===
These discoveries, and the new popularity of the ] symbol, led to a widespread desire to ascribe symbolic significance to every example of the motif. In Germanic countries examples of similar shapes in ancient European artifacts and in folk art were interpreted as emblems of good-luck linked to the ] meaning.
] shows the '']'' (in shades of grayish blue-green) as comprising ''Aryans'', '']'', and '']''. ''Aryans'' are subdivided into ''European Aryans'' and ''Indo-Aryans'' (for those now called Indo-Iranians).<ref name="Lehner15">{{cite book|url=https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004292932/B9789004292932_005.xml|publisher=]|date=2015|isbn=978-9004292932|volume=4|title=Race and Racism in Modern East Asia|chapter=4 The 'Races' of East Asia in Nineteenth-Century European Encyclopedias|first=Georg|last=Lehner|doi=10.1163/9789004292932_005|pages=77–101}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.retrobibliothek.de/retrobib/seite.html?id=111177|website=The Retro Library|language=de|title=Meyers Konversationslexikon: Volume 11: Luzula – Nathanael|access-date=15 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210422170655/https://www.retrobibliothek.de/retrobib/seite.html?id=111177|archive-date=22 April 2021|url-status=live}}</ref>]]
Western use of the motif, along with the religious and cultural meanings attached to it, was subverted in the early twentieth century after it was adopted as the emblem of the ] (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the forefathers of modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. The swastika was used as a conveniently geometrical and eye-catching symbol to emphasize the so-called Aryan-German correspondence and instill racial pride. Since World War II, many people know the swastika as solely a Nazi symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use in the West and confusion about its sacred ] and historical status in other ].
] popularized the term Aryan in his writings on ],<ref>{{cite web | title = Aryan | url = https://www.etymonline.com/word/Aryan | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230208041034/https://www.etymonline.com/word/Aryan | archive-date = 8 February 2023 | url-status = live | website = ] | access-date = 10 May 2023}}</ref> and is often identified as the first writer to mention an Aryan race in English.{{sfn|Bryant|2001|p=33}} He began the racial interpretation of the ] passages based upon his editing of the ''Rigveda'' from 1849 to 1874.{{sfn|Bryant|2001|p=60}} He postulated a small Aryan clan living on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages, which later branched off in two directions: one moved towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one group invading north-western India and conquering the dark-skinned '']s'' of ] who lived there.{{sfn|Thapar|1996|pp=5–6}} The northern Aryans of Europe became energetic and combative, and they invented the idea of a nation, while the southern Aryans of Iran and India were passive and meditative and focussed on religion and philosophy.{{sfn|Thapar|1996|p=5}}


Though he occasionally used the term "Aryan race" afterward, Müller later objected to the mixing of the linguistic and racial categories,<ref name="redner19" /> and was "deeply saddened by the fact that these classifications later came to be expressed in racist terms".<ref>{{cite book|title=Mapping Channels between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations|isbn=9781847185877|date=11 July 2008|first1=Jorg|last1=Esleber|first2=Christina|last2=Kraenzle|first3=Sukanya|last3=Kulkarni|publisher=]|url=https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/9781847185877|page=62|quote=In later years, especially before his death, he was deeply saddened by the fact that these classifications later came to be expressed in racist terms}}</ref> In his 1888 lecture at ], he stated, " science of Language and the science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar",<ref name="redner19">{{cite journal|journal=]|publisher=]|volume=152|issue=1|doi=10.1177/0725513619850915|title=Dialectics of Classicism: The birth of Nazism from the spirit of Classicism|date=16 March 2019|first=Harry|last=Redner|page=22|s2cid=181387481 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0725513619850915}}</ref> and in his ''Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas'' (1888), he writes, " ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes, and hair, is a great sinner as a linguist ".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-08450-7|publisher=]|editor=Jon R. Stone|year=2002|title=The Essential Max Müller On Language, Mythology, and Religion|isbn=978-1-137-08450-7|doi=10.1007/978-1-137-08450-7|page=18}}</ref>
== Interpretations of the term ==
] as an "Aryan" (here meaning "Anglo-Saxon") whose instinct for racial solidarity leads him to protect a threatened woman because "she is of my people".]]During the 19th century, it was commonly believed that the Aryan race originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day ], and including the ]. The Steppe theory of Aryan origins was not the only one circulating during the nineteenth century, however. Many British, American and ] scholars argued that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany or ], or at least that in those countries the original Aryan ethnicity had been preserved. The German origin of the Aryans was especially promoted by the archaeologist ], who claimed that the Proto-Indo-European peoples were identical to the ] of Neolithic Germany. This idea was widely circulated in both intellectual and popular culture by the early twentieth century.


European scholars of 19th century interpreted the Vedic passages as depicting battle between light-skinned ] and dark-skinned indigenous tribes, but modern scholars reject this characterization of racial division as a misreading of the Sanskrit text,<ref name="west10" /> and indicate that the Rig Vedic opposition between ''ārya'' and ''dasyu'' is distinction between "disorder, chaos and dark side of human nature" contrasted with the concepts of "order, purity, goodness and light",<ref name="west10">{{cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania|first=Barbara A.|last=West|page=182|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pCiNqFj3MQsC&pg=PA182|isbn=9781438119137|year=2010|publisher=Infobase }}</ref> and "]".<ref>{{cite book|title=The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History|publisher=]|date=2004|first1=Edwin |last1=Bryant|first2=Laurie|last2=Patton|isbn=978-1135791025|page=8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NDRRNGj17EMC}}</ref>{{sfn|Bryant|2001|pp=60–63}} In other contexts of the Vedic passages the dinstiction between ''ārya'' and ''dasyu'' refers to those who had adopted the ], speaking Vedic Sanskrit, and those who opposed it.{{sfn|Witzel|2008|p=21}}<ref>{{cite book|title=]: The Vedic Age|volume=253|first1= Ramesh C.|last1=Majumdar|author-link=R. C. Majumdar|publisher=]|isbn=9788172764401|page=253}}</ref>
=== British Raj ===
In India, under the ], the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian ]. It was widely claimed that the Aryans were white people who had invaded India in ancient times,<ref>{{cite news|first=Bijal P|last=Trivedi|title=Genetic evidence suggests European migrants may have influenced
the origins of India's caste system|url=http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/05_01/Indo-European.shtml|work=Genome News Network|publisher=J. Craig Venter Institute|date=]|accessdate=2005-01-27|language=English}}</ref> subordinating the darker skinned native ] peoples, who were pushed to the south. Thus the foundation of Hinduism was ascribed to northern invaders who had established themselves as the dominant castes, and who were supposed to have created the sophisticated ] texts. Much of these theories were simply conjecture fueled by European ] (see ]). This styling of an "]" by British colonial fantasies of racial supremacy lies at the origin of the fact that all discussion of historical ]s or Aryan and Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, and does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, and supporters of the ], most commonly ]s, claim that the worship of ] is a distinct Dravidian religion going back to the Indus Civilization,<ref>It is claimed that the Pashupati seal represents Shiva. J. Marshall 1931: Vol. 1, 52-55. Mohenjo-Daro and the IVC. London: Arthur Probsthain.</ref> to be distinguished from ]ical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist ] movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, asserting that Vedic beliefs emerged from the ],<ref>Although most pro-Aryan migration theory scholars also agree that a part of the IVC culture has influenced Hinduism. Renfrew says: "it is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley Civilization. Renfrew 1988:188-190. Archaeology and Language. New York: Cambridge University Press</ref> which pre-dated the supposed advent of the Indo-Aryans in India, and is identified as a likely candidate for a ] culture.


However, increasing number of Western writers of this era, especially among anthropologists and non-specialists influenced by Darwinist theories, contrasted ''Aryans'' as a "physical-genetic species" rather than an ethnolinguistic category.<ref>{{cite book|title=The occult roots of Nazism: the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890–1935|first=Nicholas|last=Goodrick-Clarke|year=1985|publisher=Wellingborough Aquarian Press|author-link=Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke|url=https://ixtheo.de/Record/331828073|page=5|isbn=0850304024}}</ref>{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=61}}
Some Indians were also influenced by the debate about the Aryan race. The Indian nationalist ] believed in the theory that an "Aryan race" migrated to India,<ref>Bryant 2001:271, Talageri 2000. The Rigveda.</ref> but he didn't find much value in a racialized interpretation of the "Aryan race".<ref>After all there is throughout this world so far as man is concerned but a single race - the human race, kept alive by one common blood, the human blood. All other talk is at best provisional, a makeshift and only relatively true. (...) Even as it is, not even the aborigines of the Andamans are without some sprinkling of the so-called Aryan blood in their veins and vice-versa. Truly speaking all that one can claim is that one has the blood of all mankind in one’s veins. The fundamental unity of man from pole to pole is true, all else only relatively so. Savarkar: "Hindutva". Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Savarkar Samagra: Complete Works of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 10 volumes, ISBN 81-7315-331-0</ref> Some Indian nationalists supported the theory because it gave them the prestige of common descent with the ruling British class.<ref>Erdosy 1995:21, The Indo-Aryans of ancient South asia.</ref>


Encyclopedias and textbooks of historiography, ethnography, and anthropology from this era, such as ], ], ], ]'s '']'', ]'s ''Great Races of Mankind'', and other works reinforced European racial constructions developed on now-pseudoscientific concepts such as ], ], and ] to classify human races.<ref name="Lehner15" /><ref>{{cite journal | title = Becoming caucasian: Vicissitudes of whiteness in american politics and culture | journal = Global Studies in Culture and Power | date = 4 May 2010 | pages = 89–90 | doi = 10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962685 | url = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962685 | vauthors = Mattew J | volume = 8 | issue = 1| s2cid = 145003887 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title = Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century | isbn = 9781138310315 | edition = 1 | date = 5 July 2017 | publisher = ] | url = https://www.routledge.com/Blacks-and-Blackness-in-European-Art-of-the-Long-Nineteenth-Century/Childs-Libby/p/book/9781138310315 | page = 21}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title = Nordicism and Modernity | isbn = 978-3-030-61210-8 | date = 28 November 2020 | publisher = ] | chapter = Introduction: Nordicism, Myth and Modernity | doi = 10.1007/978-3-030-61210-8_1 | vauthors = Gregers F | pages = 1–13 | s2cid = 229648042 | chapter-url = https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-61210-8_1}}</ref>
], a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the ] phenomena.]]


=== Theosophy === === Theories of racial supremacy ===
The term ''Aryan'' was adopted by various ] and ] writers such as ], ], ], ], ] and ] during the nineteenth century for the promotion of ], spawning ideologies such as ] and ].{{Sfn|Mallory|2015|p=268}}{{Sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=43}}{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=9}}{{sfn|Kaufman|Sturtevant|2020|pp=57–58}} The connotation of the term ''Aryan'' was detached from its proper geographic and linguistic confinement as a ] branch of ] by this time.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=9}} The inequality of races and the notion of a "superior race" was universally accepted by the scholars of this era, therefore race was referred to "national character and national culture" beyond biological confinement.{{sfn|Santucci|2008|pp=40–41}}
These debates were addressed within the ] movement founded by ] and ] at the end of the nineteenth century. This was an early kind of ] philosophy, that took inspiration from Indian culture, in particular from the Hindu reform movement the ] founded by ].


In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau published '']'', in which he originally identified the Aryan race as the white race,<ref>{{cite web|title=Aryan|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aryan|publisher=]|access-date=24 April 2022}}</ref> and the only civilized one, and conceived cultural decline and ] as intimately intertwined.{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=45}} He argued that the Aryans represented a superior branch of humanity,<ref name="Orsucci">{{cite web|first=Andrea|last=Orsucci|url=http://www.unifi.it/riviste/cromohs/3_98/orsucci.html|url-status=dead|title=Ariani, Indo-Germanic, stirpi mediterranee: aspetti del dibattito sulle razze europee (1870–1914)|language=it|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020310125529/http://www.unifi.it/riviste/cromohs/3_98/orsucci.html|archive-date=10 March 2002|publisher= Cromohs Journal, ]|date=2002-03-10}}</ref> and attempted to identify the races of Europe as Aryan and associated them with the sons of ], emphasizing superiority, and categorized non-Aryan as an intrusion of the ].{{sfn|Thapar|1996|p=5}} According to him, northern Europeans had migrated across the world and founded the major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with indigenous populations described as racially inferior, leading to the progressive decay of the ancient Aryan civilizations.{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|pp=13–50}}{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=45}}
Blavatsky argued that humanity had descended from a series of "]s", naming the fifth root race (out of seven) the "Aryan" Race. She thought that the ]s originally came from ] and described the Aryan races with the following words:


In 1878, German American anthropologist ] published a survey of historical references attempting to demonstrate that the Aryans were light-skinned blue-eyed blonds.{{Sfn|Mallory|2015|p=268}}
:"The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth ] -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of ].".<ref>], Vol.II, p.249</ref>


In 1899, ] published what is described as "one of the most important proto-Nazi texts", '']'', in which he theorized an existential struggle to the death between a superior German-Aryan race and a destructive ] race.{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=155}}
Blavatsky used "]" as a technical term to describe human evolution over the large ] periods in her ]. However, she also claimed that there were modern non-Aryan peoples who were inferior to Aryans. She regularly contrasts "Aryan" with "]" culture, to the detriment of the latter, asserting that Semitic peoples are an offshoot of Aryans who have become "degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality.".<ref>Ibid., p.200</ref> She also states that some peoples are "semi-animal creatures". These latter include "the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China." There are also "considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.".<ref>Ibid., pp.195-6</ref>


In 1916, ] published '']'', a polemic against interbreeding between "Aryan" Americans, the original ] settlers of British-Scots-Irish-German origin, with immigrant "inferior races", which according to him were, ], ], Jews, and ].{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=9}} The book was a best-seller at the time.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=9}}
Despite this, Blavatsky's admirers claim that her thinking was not connected to fascist or racialist ideas, asserting that she believed in a ] of humanity and wrote that "all men have spiritually and physically the same origin" and that "mankind is essentially of one and the same essence".<ref>''The Key to Theosophy'', Section 3</ref> On the other hand, in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky states: "Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence."


While the Aryan race theory remained popular, particularly in ], some authors opposed it, in particular ], ] and the ethnologist ], who proposed to ban the notion of Aryan from anthropology.<ref name=Orsucci/> The term was also adopted by various ]s and ] of this era, such as ],{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|1992|pp=20–21}} and ].{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|1992|pp=227}}
Blavatsky connects physical race with spiritual attributes constantly throughout her works:
:"Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do".<ref>], Vol. II, p.723</ref>


== Nazism ==
:"The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the ], is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the ], the ] of ], and some ], to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the ], and the ]s so called. The 'sacred spark' is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily -- owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction -- fast dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent".<ref>Ibid., p 421</ref>
{{Nazism sidebar |expanded=Race}}


=== Subhuman and inferior races in Nazi Germany ===
According to Blavatsky, "the MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the "narrow-brained" savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had".<ref>Ibid., p.168</ref>
{{See also|Mischling Test|Dehumanization}}
The ], the ], and the ] of ] considered ], ] and ], including ], ], ] and ], "racially inferior sub-humans" ({{langx|de|]|lit=sub-human}});{{sfn|Connelly|2008|pp=4–11}}<ref name=":7">{{Cite book|last=Gordon|first=Sarah Ann|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/9946459|title=Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question"|date=1984|publisher=Princeton University Press|others=Mazal Holocaust Collection|isbn=0-691-05412-6|location=Princeton, N.J.|pages=96|oclc=9946459}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Longerich|first=Peter|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/610166248|title=Holocaust : the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews|date=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-280436-5|location=Oxford|pages=83, 241|oclc=610166248}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MSa7B9oovacC|first=Oliver|last=Rathkolb|title=Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy: Coming to Terms With Forced Labor, Expropriation, Compensation, and Restitution|publisher=]|isbn= 978-1412833233|page=84}}</ref> the term was also applied to "'']''" (persons of ] "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry) and ].<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/deruntermensch.html |title=Der Untermensch "The subhuman" |author=Reichsführer-SS |publisher=SS Office |location=Berlin |year=1942 |access-date=14 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220110053011/http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/deruntermensch.html|archive-date=10 January 2022|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="michel98">{{cite book |last1=Berenbaum |first1=Michel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zkZC6bp3upsC |title=The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined |last2=Peck |first2=Abraham J. |publisher=], ] |year=1998 |isbn=978-0253215291 |pages=59 & 37}}</ref>


=== Connotation of the term Aryan in Nazi racial theories ===
She also prophecies of the destruction of the racial "failures of nature" as the future "higher race" ascends:
{{see also|Nazi racial theories|Racial policy of Nazi Germany}}
:"Thus will mankind, race after race, perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups -- the failures of nature -- will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind".<ref>Ibid., p.446</ref>
A definition of Aryan that included all non-Jewish Europeans was deemed unacceptable, and the ] of 1933 brought together important Nazi intellectuals ], ], and ] to plan the course of Nazi racial policy, defining an Aryan as one who was "tribally related to the German blood and descendant of a '']''".<ref name="rhrenreich07">{{cite book|first= Eric |last=Ehrenreich|title = The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=5BvlGAEGAy0C |publisher = ]|isbn = 978-0-253-11687-1 |year=2007 |page = 10}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|publisher=]|first=Robert N.|last=Proctor|isbn= 9780674745780|title= Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hogbxS2Gp1QC|year=1988|page=95}}</ref> The term "'']''" was used by Nazis to indicate "ethnic Germans" who did not hold German Reich citizenship;<ref name="bergen94">{{cite journal|journal=]| doi=10.1177/002200949402900402|first=Doris L.|last=Bergen|volume=29|issue=4|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002200949402900402|title=The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939-45|pages=569–570|year=1994| s2cid=159788983}}</ref> ''Volksdeutsche'' further consist of "racial groups"—minorities within a state—who are descendants of a ''Volk'' domiciled in Europe in a closed tribal settlement and are closely related to German racial community.{{sfn|Lumans|1993|p=23}}<ref name="rhrenreich07" /> The Nazi concept of "'']''" racially unified ethnic Germans, including those living outside the German Reich, propounding only the members of the racial community be considered Aryan.<ref>{{cite book|doi=10.3998/mpub.93476|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.93476|publisher=]|first1=Krista|last1=O'Donnell|first2=Renate|last2=Bridenthal|first3=Nancy|last3=Reagin|editor-first1=K. |editor-first2=Renate |editor-first3=Nancy |editor-last1=O'Donnell |editor-last2=Bridenthal |editor-last3=Reagin |year=2005|title=The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness|chapter=3: German-Speaking People and German Heritage: Nazi Germany and the Problem of Volksgemeinschaft|pages=58–81|jstor=10.3998/mpub.93476 |isbn=9780472114917 }}</ref><ref>{{Britannica|632308|Volksgemeinschaft}}, March 2021. ''Accessed'' 28 April 2023</ref>


Members of the ] deemed Aryans could be selected from populations of ''Volksdeutsche'' across Europe to create "master race".<ref>{{Cite episode| title= Holocaust - Hitler's War Against the Jews | url= https://www.wondrium.com/a-history-of-hitlers-empire-2nd-edition|access-date=17 April 2023| series= A History of Hitler's Empire, 2nd Edition| first= Thomas| last= Childers| author-link= Thomas Childers| publisher= ] | date= 2001| number= 11 | language= English | time=09:05-10:14 }}</ref> Nazi Party established the organization ] to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities considered ''Volksdeutsche'' in central and eastern Europe.{{sfn|Lumans|1993|p=31-32}} Nazi racial theories considered the "purest stock of Aryans" the ], identified by ] such as tallness, white skin, blue eyes, narrow and straight noses, ], prominent chins, and blond hair, including ]ns, ], ] and ],<ref>{{cite book|title=Volksgeist as Method and Ethic : Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition|publisher=]|first=George W.|last=Stocking|date=1996|isbn= 978-0299145538|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2M2xMV5MeuQC|page=92}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Digging for Hitler: The Nazi Archaeologists Search for an Aryan Past|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hfbyDQAAQBAJ|first=David|last=Barrowclough|publisher= Fonthill Media; ]|date= 2017|page=110}}</ref> with Nordic and ] being the "master race" ({{langx|de|Herrenrasse}}).<ref>{{cite book | last = Longerich | first = Peter | author-link = Peter Longerich | title = Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews | year = 2010 | isbn = 978-0-19-280436-5 | publisher = ]|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rLy80aq8tR8C | location = Oxford; New York }}</ref> Recent ] studies contradict these ideas, and instead suggest that Proto-Indo-European speaking peoples probably had brown eyes and hair, and intermediate skin complexion.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Lazaridis |first1=Iosif |last2=Alpaslan-Roodenberg |first2=Songül |last3=Acar |first3=Ayşe |last4=Açıkkol |first4=Ayşen |last5=Agelarakis |first5=Anagnostis |last6=Aghikyan |first6=Levon |last7=Akyüz |first7=Uğur |last8=Andreeva |first8=Desislava |last9=Andrijašević |first9=Gojko |last10=Antonović |first10=Dragana |last11=Armit |first11=Ian |last12=Atmaca |first12=Alper |last13=Avetisyan |first13=Pavel |last14=Aytek |first14=Ahmet İhsan |last15=Bacvarov |first15=Krum |date=2022-08-26 |title=A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia |journal=Science |language=en |volume=377 |issue=6609 |pages=940–951 |doi=10.1126/science.abq0755 |issn=0036-8075 |pmc=10019558 |pmid=36007020|bibcode=2022Sci...377..940L }}</ref>
] (and his followers such as ]) later took up some of Blavatsky's ideas, mixing her ideology with nationalistic and fascist ideas; this system of thought became known as ]. Such views also fed into the development of Nazi ideology. However, the theosophical publications such as '']'' were strongly opposed to the Nazi usage, attacking ].


=== Nazism === === Historical revisionism ===
After the death of Kossinna, ], and other Nazi figures such as ], adopted his nationalistic theories of ] and methodologies, including settlement archaeology, and founded the ] organization ] ({{langx|de|Deutsches Ahnenerbe}}) for conducting archaeological investigations of a presumed "Germanic expansion in pre-history".{{sfn|Jones|1997|pp=2–3}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Veit |first=Ulrich |author-link=:de:Ulrich Veit |year=2012 |chapter=Kossinna, Gustaf |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199735785.001.0001/acref-9780199735785-e-0237 |editor-last=Silberman |editor-first=Neil Asher |editor-link=Neil Asher Silberman |title=The Oxford Companion To Archaeology |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199735785.001.0001/acref-9780199735785 |edition=2 |publisher=] |isbn=9780199735785 }}</ref> Nazi scholars endorsed the now-discredited ] in an effort to prove PIE was originally spoken by an "Aryan master race", and associated the ] with "inferior races".<ref name="colin89" /> ] around race was disseminated through the Nazi ] Ahnenerbe.<ref name="Rich983"/>{{sfn|Kaufman|Sturtevant|2020|pp=57–58}} Hitler regularly invoked ] concepts of ] such as higher evolution ({{langx|de|Höherentwicklung}}), struggle for existence ({{langx|de|Existenzkampf}}), selection ({{langx|de|Auslese}}), struggle for life ({{langx|de|Lebenskampf}}), in his Nazi racial ideology, which is the central theme in the chapter "Nation and Race" of '']''.{{sfn|Weikrt|2013|p=541}} Haeckel's Social Darwinism was also praised by Alfred Ploetz, founder of the ], who made him an honorary member of the eugenic organization.<ref>{{Cite book|title=From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany|publisher=]|date=2016|first=Richard|last=Weikart|isbn=978-1137109866|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=11QBDgAAQBAJ|page=15}}</ref>
] poster by ], portraying ] as a mouse-like figure, countering Nazi propaganda about the Aryan race]]The theory of the Northern origins of the Aryans was particularly influential in Germany. It was widely believed that the Vedic Aryans were ethnically identical to the ], ] and other ancient Germanic peoples of the '']''. This idea was often intertwined with ] ideas. The distinctions between the "Aryan" and "]" peoples were based on the linguistic and ethnic history described above. In this way Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within "Aryan" societies, and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruction of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall by proto-Nazi and Nazi theorists such as ] and ].


=== Nazi eugenics and Nordic supremacy ===
According to the adherents to ], the Aryan was a ] that built a civilization that dominated the world from ] about ten thousand years ago. This alleged civilization declined when other parts of the world were colonized after the 8,000 BC destruction of ] because the inferior races mixed with the Aryans but it left traces of their civilization in ] (via ]), and even in ], ], and ]. (The date of 8,000 BC for the destruction of ] in ] is 2,000 years later than the date of 10,000 BC given for this event in ].) These theories affected the more esotericist strand of Nazism.
{{see also| Nordicism|Rassenschande}}


In 1938, the ] released the German biology curriculum which reflected the curriculum developed by the ] and emphasized the Social Darwinst interpretation of the evolution of human races.{{sfn|Weikrt|2013|p=542}} ], who had joined the ] and worked for the ] publishing theories of ] and racial evolution, claimed the ] as a highly evolved race, and ] as being the lowest rank in the ].{{sfn|Weikrt|2013|pp=543–544}} ] was considered to be the most influential Nazi anthropologist, although he was not professionally trained.{{sfn|Weikrt|2013|p=544}} Günther's racist writings on Nordicism was suffused with the ideas of Gobineau, who believed the Nordic race had originated in northern Europe and spread through conquest;{{sfn|Weikrt|2013|pp=543–544}} this had expressed approval of the ] policies and had critical influence on scientific racism.{{sfn|Weikrt|2013|p=544}} Günther's theories gained acclamation from Hitler, who later included his books as a recommended reading material for the ].<ref>{{cite book|title= Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pSQSFKeOF5MC|first=Timothy W.|last=Ryback|publisher=]|year=2010|isbn= 978-0307455260|page=132}}</ref> After the Nazis came to power, ] for supposed Aryan traits such as athleticism, blond hair and blue eyes was encouraged, while the "inferior races" and people with ] or ] were deemed "]" ({{langx|de| lebensunwertes Leben|lit= ]}}) and many were interned in ]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eugenics/|title=Eugenics|publisher=], ]|access-date=27 March 2022|first1=Sara|last1=Goering|first2=Edward N.|last2=Zalta|date=2 July 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220218001005/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eugenics/|url-status=live|archive-date=18 February 2022}}</ref>
A complete, highly speculative and racist theory of Aryan and anti-Semitic history can be found in ]'s publication, ''Race and Race History''. Rosenberg's account of ancient history is very well researched, but his conclusions require great leaps in logic. But the seemingly scholarly nature of such works was very effective in spreading Aryan supremacist theories among German intellectuals in the early 20th century, especially after the ].


=== Ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust ===
These and other ideas evolved into the ] use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a "]" of people of northern ] descent, going to extreme and violent lengths to "maintain the purity" of this race through a far-reaching ] program (including ] legislation, ] of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutionalized mentally ill as part of a ], and eventually the systematic targeting of "die Untermenschen," or lesser races, of ]s and ] in ]). This usage now has nearly no meaning outside of Nazi ideology.
{{main|The Holocaust|Final Solution}}
{{see also|Extermination through labour|Generalplan Ost|Porajmos|Aktion T4}}


The culmination of Nazi eugenicist and racial hygiene programs of sterilization and extermination aimed at creating an "]" and eliminating "inferior non-Aryan types" such as Jews, Slavs, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and the ].{{sfn|Bryant|2001|pp=33–50}}{{sfn|Schaefer|2008|p=473}} Nazi Germany introduced the ] that systemically ] by requiring ] for a ] citizen.<ref>{{cite journal|journal=]|title=The Long-Term Direct and External Effects of Jewish Expulsions in Nazi Germany|volume=7|number=3|date=August 2015|page=61|doi=10.1257/pol.20130223|url=https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20130223|author= Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel|s2cid=11860826 |hdl=10419/51695|hdl-access=free}}</ref>{{sfn|Schaefer|2008|pp=473–474}} After Hitler became the ], the public policies of Nazi Germany became increasingly hostile towards supposed "inferior types",{{sfn|Schaefer|2008|p=637}} particularly Jews, who were considered to be the highest manifestation of the Semitic race,<ref>{{cite web|publisher=]|first1=James|last1=Michae|first2=Adam|last2=Burgos|title=Race|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/|access-date=21 March 2022|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220309091846/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/|archive-date=9 March 2022}}</ref> and segregation of ] culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the ] to the ].<ref>{{cite web|publisher=]|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solution-overview|title=Final Solution|access-date=21 March 2022}}</ref> The ] systematically murdered over 6 million Jews,<ref name=Dawidowicz>{{cite book |first=Lucy |last=Dawidowicz |author-link=Lucy Dawidowicz |title=The War Against the Jews |url=https://archive.org/details/waragainstjews00lucy |url-access=limited |isbn=0-553-34302-5 |publisher=Bantam Books |location=New York |year=1986 |page= }}</ref> 5.7 million Slavs,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution|title=Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution|publisher=]}}</ref> 1.8–3 million Poles,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/poles-victims-of-the-nazi-era/polish-resistance-and-conclusions|title=Polish Resistance and Conclusions|publisher=]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180102111652/https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/poles-victims-of-the-nazi-era/polish-resistance-and-conclusions|archive-date=2018-01-02|quote=Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944–45 to liberate Poland.}}</ref> 270,000 disabled people,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.holocaust-education.dk/baggrund/eutanasi.asp |title=The Danish Center for Holocaust and |publisher=Holocaust-education.dk |date=1939-09-01 |access-date=2015-09-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303081500/http://www.holocaust-education.dk/baggrund/eutanasi.asp |archive-date=2016-03-03 }}</ref> ], including children through ], ], ], and ], in the process known as ].<ref>{{cite book | title=The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942|publisher=]|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/11675 |last=Browning |first=Christopher |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-8032-5979-9}}</ref>{{sfn|Schaefer|2008|pp=636–637}} The ethnic Germans considered ''Volksdeutsche'' joined the local SS organizations under NSDAP/AO and participated in ] in eastern and central Europe during the Holocaust, including seizures of Jewish property.<ref name="bergen94" /><ref>{{cite web|publisher=]|access-date=28 April 2023|title=Origins of Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist Terms and Symbols: 'Blood and Soil{{'-}} |url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230124130554/https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/origins-of-neo-nazi-and-white-supremacist-terms-and-symbols#blood-and-soil |archive-date=24 January 2023|location=]|url=https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/origins-of-neo-nazi-and-white-supremacist-terms-and-symbols#blood-and-soil }}</ref> The Aryan race belief was used by the Nazis to justify the persecution, depicting the victims as the "antipode and eternal enemy of the Aryans".{{sfn|Schaefer|2008|p=637}}
It is noteworthy that ], the person ordered by ] to implement the ] (]), told his personal masseur Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient ] scripture, the ] because it relieved him of guilt about what he was doing--he felt that like the warrior ], he was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions.<ref> Padfield, Peter ''Himmler'' New York:1990--Henry Holt Page 402 </ref>


=== Neo-Nazism === == White supremacy ==
{{see also|One-drop rule}}
Since the military defeat of ] by the ] in 1945, ] ideologues have expanded their concept of the "Aryan Race" from the Nazi concept that the purest Aryans were the Teutonics or ] of Northern Europe to the idea that the true Aryans are everyone descended from the Western or ] branch of the ] peoples. This is sometimes referred to as "pan-Aryanism". The degree of inclusivity varies between factions.<ref>A modern exponent is the , a web discussion forum, which has the stated claims of wanting to "arouse racial awareness" and to "liberate and unite" all "whites" according to the group's definition of white.</ref> This usage totally inverts the meaning of "Aryan" from the way it is used by most non-Neo-Nazis today, i.e., to refer to the Eastern or ] (]) branch of the Indo-European peoples. However, as noted above and below in the references, some people still use the term ''Aryan'' in its earlier sense as denoting ''all Indo-Europeans''.
Following ], various ] and ] movements developed a more inclusive definition of Aryan claiming to ]an peoples, with ] and ]s being the most "racially pure".{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=663–671}}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=221}}<ref>{{cite book|last=Blamires|first=Cyprian P.|editor1-last=Blamires|editor1-first=C. P.|editor2-last=Jackson|editor2-first=Paul|year=2006|title=World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia|volume=1: A–K|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-940-9|pages=459–461|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&q=neo-nazism&pg=PA460}}</ref> However, in the ], most white nationalists ] broadly as people of ], and some consider Jews to be white although this is controversial within white nationalist circles.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2006/schism-over-anti-semitism-divides-key-white-nationalist-group-american-renaissance|title=Schism over Anti-Semitism Divides Key White Nationalist Group|publisher=]|date=Summer 2006|access-date=22 February 2018|author=Potok, Mark|author2=Beirich, Heidi}}</ref>


Many white supremacist neo-Nazi groups and ], notably in the United States, view themselves as part of an Aryan race, including the ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ].{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=232–233}}<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Blazak|first=Randy|date=2009|title=The prison hate machine|journal=]|publisher=]|volume=8|issue=3|pages=633–640|doi=10.1111/j.1745-9133.2009.00579.x|issn=1745-9133|url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2009.00579.x}}</ref>
Many Neo-Nazis view their political work as being directed towards the establishment of an autocratic state to be called "The Western Imperium". This proposed autocratic state would be led by a ]-like figure and include all areas inhabited by the "Aryan Race" (defined as non-Jews of European ancestry) i.e. Europe, ], ], ] and ], and southern ]. This concept is based on a 1947 book called '']'' by ].<ref>Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and The Politics of Identity'' New York: 2002--N.Y. University Press, Chapters 4 and 11</ref> It is envisioned that after the "Western Imperium" is established, all Jews and non-] illegal immigrants would be expelled from its territory.
Only those of the "Aryan Race" would be full citizens of the State. ] would be outlawed. ] would be used extensively for ]. There would be strict ] and ] laws (see ]). It is usually envisioned that the flag of the "Western Imperium" would be like the red Nazi flag, except within the white disc would be a black-colored nationalistic stylized ] rather than a black ].


== Quotations == == Neo-pagan movements ==
{{main|Criticism of modern paganism#Racial issues}}
{{ Copy section to Wikiquote }}
Indo-European history, real and feigned, plays a significant role in various ] movements.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=10}}
{{cquote|I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a ] dictionary or a ] grammar." --]}}


=== Russian neo-paganism ===
{{cquote|"Many names have been used to denote this type, but the usefulness of most of them has been spoilt through their application to denote linguistic groups (e.g. Indo-Germanic, Aryan), and by the false assumption that linguistic groups are racial groups." --] ]<ref>McDougall, William., The Group Mind, p.159, Arno Press, 1973; Copyright, 1920 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.</ref>}}
]", the most common symbol of Slavic Neopaganism. According to its practitioners, it is an ancient Slavic symbol; however, the historic usage of such iconography is not attested in authentic sources.<ref name="Pilkington">Pilkington, Hilary; Popov, Anton (2009). "". In George McKay (ed.). ''Subcultures and New Religious Movements in Russia and East-Central Europe''. Peter Lang. p. 282. ISBN 9783039119219.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Laruelle |first=Marlène |author-link=Marlène Laruelle |title=The New Age of Russia. Occult and Esoteric Dimensions |url=https://www.academia.edu/17977459 |location=Munich |publisher=Kubon & Sagner |date=2012 |pages=293–310 |isbn=9783866881976}}</ref>]]
The ] borrowed various discrete ideas of a presumed "prestigious Aryan origin" of Europeans from Nazi Germany.<ref>{{cite journal|journal=]|title=Alternative identity, alternative religion? Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in contemporary Russia|first=Marlène |last=Laruelle |author-link=Marlène Laruelle |volume=14|issue=2|date=10 April 2008|pages=283–301 |doi-access=free|doi=10.1111/j.1469-8129.2008.00329.x}}</ref>{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=10}} Although ] was the primary religious influence on Russian nationalists, the ] was treated skeptically by these groups, who later began searching for an ancient text to rationalize a "return to the origins".{{sfn|Laruelle|2008|pp=284–285}} Various writers in the newspaper ''Zhar-Ptitsa'' showed interest in a purported manuscript—the ]—which supposedly dated to the first century BCE.{{sfn|Laruelle|2008|p=285}} F. A. Izenbek, a ] officer, alleged the discovery of this manuscript during the ]. However one of Izenbek's friends, Iurii Miroliubov, had forged the manuscript, and used the term "]" to describe Russian neo-paganism; he later appropriated the Indian religious scripture, the ], to aggrandize the manuscript.{{sfn|Laruelle|2008|p=285}}<ref>{{cite journal|title={{-'}}Christians! Go home': A Revival of Neo-Paganism between the Baltic Sea and Transcaucasia (An Overview)|journal=]|volume=17|issue=2|first=Victor A.|last=Shnirelman|doi=10.1080/13537900220125181|date=2 August 2010|pages=197–211 |s2cid=51303383 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/13537900220125181|quote=The urbanized bookish Neo-Paganism is constructed by people of high educational standards. They do not restrict themselves to an oral tradition and are searching for earlier cultures reconstructed by scholars. It is on this ground that the Russian Neo-Pagans forge their versions of the Neo-Pagan belief system: some of them emphasize an Indo-Iranian heritage ('Aryan', 'Vedaic'), others are more fascinated with Zoroastrianism, still others are adherents of the 'Runic Magic'}}</ref> Nationalistic ]s and neo-Pagans consider the manuscript to be an authentic historical source of Slavic antiquity,{{sfn|Laruelle|2008|pp=285–286}} who claim a direct link between "ancient Aryans" and themselves as Slavs.{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=10}} However, the manuscript is declared ] by scholars.<ref>{{cite book|title=Russia as Civilization|year=2020|publisher=], ]|isbn=978-1003045977|chapter=Civilizational discourses in doctoral dissertations in post-Soviet Russia|first1=Mikhail|last1=Suslov|first2=Irina|last2=Kotkina|url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003045977-8/civilizational-discourses-doctoral-dissertations-post-soviet-russia-mikhail-suslov-irina-kotkina|page=171|doi=10.4324/9781003045977-8 |s2cid=219456430 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|url=https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/23845486|title=Rules of Disengagement: Author, Audience, and Experimentation in Ukrainian and Russian Literature of the 1970s and 1980s|website=], Graduate School of Arts & Science|year=2015|first=Kotsyuba|last=Oleh|page=22}}</ref> ], a Russian ],<ref>{{cite book |last= Klejn |first= Leo |author-link= Leo Klejn |date= 2004 |title= The Resurrection of Perun: Toward the Reconstruction of East Slavic Paganism |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Aa8qCwAAQBAJ |location= ] |publisher= Eurasia |isbn=9785444804223 |language=ru|pages=114, 480}}</ref> is considered the ] of ].<ref>{{cite journal |last= Shizhensky |first= Roman |author-link= |date= 2009 |title= Neo-pagan myth about Prince Vladimir |url= https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/neoyazycheskiy-mif-o-knyaze-vladimire |journal= Bulletin of the Buryat State University. Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Cultural Studies |issue= 6 |pages= 250–256 |language=ru }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Laruelle |first=Marlène |author-link=Marlène Laruelle |title=Арийский миф — русский взгляд / Translation from French by Dmitry Bayuk. 25.03.2010 | url=https://www.vokrugsveta.ru/telegraph/theory/1125/ |publisher=] |date=25 March 2010}}</ref>


=== Goddess movement ===
{{cquote|I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by ''arisch''. I am not of '''''Aryan''''' extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects." --], responding to a German publisher who was inquiring about the possibility of printing a German translation of '']''}}
{{Main|Goddess movement}}


With the rise of ], various authors of the ] cast the ancient Indo-Europeans as a "patriachal, warlike invaders who destroyed a utopian prehistoric world of feminine peace and beauty" in various ] and books such as ]'s '']'' (1987) and ]'s ''Civilization of the Goddess'' (1991).{{sfn|Anthony|2007|p=10}}
{{cquote|In Latin malus ... could indicate the common man as the dark one, especially as the black-haired one, as the pre-Aryan dweller of the ]soil which distinguished itself most clearly through his colour from blonds who became their masters, namely the Aryan conquering race. ... Who can say whether modern ], even more modern ] and especially that ], for the most primitive form of society, which is now shared by all the ] of ], does not signify in the main a tremendous counterattack —and that the conqueror and master race, the Aryan, is not succumbing ], too?” --] The Genealogy of Morals}}


== See also ==
{{cquote|It is quite in order that we possess no religion of oppressed Aryan races, for that is a contradiction: a master race is either on top or it is destroyed. (''The Will to Power'', 145)}}
{{div col|colwidth=22em}}

* ]
{{cquote|The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth. ], Wings In The Night}}
* ]

* ]
{{cquote|I am Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries containing all kinds of men, King in this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an '''''Aryan''''', having '''''Aryan''''' lineage." --] (549 BC - 486 BC) of the Persian Empire}}
* ]

* ]
{{cquote|He is of '''''Aryan''''' lineage, sprung from the Kshatriya caste; His feet have been honoured by Gods and men; His mind is well established in morality and concentration. That, indeed, is your father, lion of men. -- '''''Lion of Men''''' scripture about ]}}
{{div col end}}

{{cquote|The primal savage or ape merely looks about his native forest to find a mate; the '''exalted Aryan''' should lift his eyes to the worlds of space and consider his relation to infinity!!!! ], letter of Jan. 23, 1920}}


== References == == References ==
'''Notes'''
<references/>
{{Reflist}}


'''Bibliography'''
== Further reading ==
*Arvidsson, Stefan. ''Aryan Idols. The Indo-European Mythology as Science and Ideology.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ] ISBN 0-226-02860-7
*Poliakov, Leon. ''The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe'' New York: Barnes & Noble Books. ] ISBN 0-7607-0034-6
*Widney, Joseph P. ''Race Life of the Aryan Peoples'' New York: Funk & Wagnalls. ] ISBN B000859S6O In this massive best-sellling two volume work, ], the chancellor of the ], describes in Volume One the origin of the Aryans (i.e., the Proto-Indo-Europeans) in what is now ] about ], and how they spread out; in Volume Two is described the major present-day subraces of the Aryans, i.e., the Indo-Aryans, Irano-Aryans (including Armenians), Slavs, Greeks, Romanics, Teutons, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Australian/New Zealanders, Anglo/Boer-South Africans, and Hispano-Americans .


{{Refbegin|30em}}
== External links ==
* {{cite book|last=Anthony|first=David W. |author-link=David W. Anthony |title=] |publisher=] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0691148182}}
*
* {{cite book|last=Arvindsson|first=Stefan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=idTPDI6l0mkC|publisher=]|date=2006|title=Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science|isbn= 978-0226028606}}
*
* {{cite book|title=Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807863114_lumans|publisher=]|first=Valdis O.|last=Lumans|date=1993|jstor=10.5149/9780807863114_lumans |isbn=9780807865644 }}
*
* {{Cite book |last=Bryant |first=Edwin |url=https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195137779.001.0001/acprof-9780195137774 |title=The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate |publisher=] |year=2001 |isbn=978-0195169478 |doi=10.1093/0195137779.001.0001 |author-link=Edwin Bryant (author)}}
* (nornirsaett.de)
* {{cite book|last= Goodrick-Clarke|first=Nicholas|publisher=]|title=The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology|isbn= 978-0814730607|year=1992|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9ZzWRz9x8mwC|author-link=Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke}}
*{{Cite book|last=Goodrick-Clarke|first=Nicholas|title=Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity|date=2002|publisher=New York University Press|isbn=978-0814731550|author-link=Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke}}
* {{cite journal|last=Thapar|first=Romila|journal=]|volume=24|number=1/3|date=January 1996|title=The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics|pages=3–29|doi=10.2307/3520116|jstor=3520116|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3520116}}
* {{cite journal|publisher=]|journal=]|date=October 2013|volume=36|number=3|title=The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought: Hitler and Darwinism|first=Richard|last=Weikrt|jstor=43555141 |url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/43555141}}
* {{cite journal|publisher=]; ]|journal=]|volume=32|issue=1|date=16 December 2008|first=John|last=Connelly|doi=10.1017/S0008938900020628|title= Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice|pages=1–33 |pmid=20077627 |s2cid=41052845 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/abs/nazis-and-slavs-from-racial-theory-to-racist-practice/EA806272318241CF1263BA177711475F|author-link=John Connelly (historian)}}
* {{cite book|publisher=]|year=2020|first1=Amy S.|last1=Kaufman|first2=Paul B.|last2=Sturtevant|isbn= 978-1487587840|title= The Devil's Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past|url=https://utorontopress.com/9781487587840/the-devil-and-x2019s-historians}}
* {{cite book|title= Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society|first= Richard T.|last= Schaefer|publisher=], ]|date=2008|url=https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/encyclopedia-of-race-ethnicity-and-society/book228721|isbn= 978-1412926942}}
* {{cite book|publisher=], ], ]|isbn=9780203164891|doi=10.4324/9780203164891|first=Aaron|last=Gillette|date= 2004|location=]|url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203164891/racial-theories-fascist-italy-aaron-gillette|title=Racial Theories in Fascist Italy|edition=1}}
* {{cite journal|journal=]|volume=3|issue=1|year=1995|doi=10.1179/096576695800688278|publisher=]|title=At the Interface of Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics: Indo-European Dispersals and the agricultural transition in Europe|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-european-archaeology/article/abs/at-the-interface-of-archaeology-linguistics-and-genetics-indoeuropean-dispersals-and-the-agricultural-transition-in-europe/017A5B249A4E3E85F834882129EA5CC0|first=Marek|last=Zvelebil|pages=33–70}}
* {{cite book|publisher=]|first1=Asya|last1=Pereltsvaig|first2=Martin W.|last2=Lewis|title= The Indo-European Controversy|date=2015|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iFe3BwAAQBAJ|isbn= 978-1107054530|author1-link= Asya Pereltsvaig}}
* {{cite book|title=In Search of the Indo-Europeans / Language, Archaeology and Myth|first=J.P.|last=Mallory|journal=Praehistorische Zeitschrift |doi=10.1515/pz-1992-0118|isbn=978-0500276167|date=2015|volume=67 |publisher=]|s2cid=197841755 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/pz-1992-0118/html}}
* {{cite journal|publisher=]|volume=2|issue=3|date=1 February 2008|first=James A|last=Santucci|url=https://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-abstract/11/3/37/95426/The-Notion-of-Race-in-Theosophy|title=The Notion of Race in Theosophy|doi=10.1525/nr.2008.11.3.37|journal=]|pages=37–63}}
* {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bSxHgej4tKMC|title=Indo-European Language and Culture|first=Benjamin W.|last=Fortson|publisher=], ]|date= 2011|isbn=978-1444359688|edition=2|chapter=Indo-Iranian I: Indic|author-link=Benjamin W. Fortson IV}}
* {{Cite journal|last=Witzel|first=Michael|author-link=Michael Witzel|date=17 April 2008|title=Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts|url=https://fid4sa-repository.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/118/|volume=14|journal=Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies|issue=3|doi=10.11588/xarep.00000118}}
* {{cite book|title=The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present|first=Sian|last=Jones|date= 1997|location=London|publisher=], ]|edition=1|doi=10.4324/9780203438732|isbn=978-0203438732|url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203438732/archaeology-ethnicity-si%C3%A2n-jones}}
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Latest revision as of 14:47, 30 December 2024

Hypothetical racial grouping

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The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.

The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language were distinct progenitors of a superior specimen of humankind, and that their descendants up to the present day constitute either a distinctive race or a sub-race of the Caucasian race, alongside the Semitic race and the Hamitic race. This taxonomic approach to categorizing human population groups is now considered to be misguided and biologically meaningless due to the close genetic similarity and complex interrelationships between these groups.

The term was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers during the 19th century, including Arthur de Gobineau, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose scientific racism influenced later Nazi racial ideology. By the 1930s, the concept had been associated with both Nazism and Nordicism, and used to support the white supremacist ideology of Aryanism that portrayed the Aryan race as a "master race", with non-Aryans regarded as racially inferior (Untermensch, lit. 'subhuman') and an existential threat that was to be exterminated. In Nazi Germany, these ideas formed an essential part of the state ideology that led to the Holocaust.

History

Debates on linguistic homeland

In the late 18th century, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was constructed as the hypothesized common proto-language of the Indo-European languages. Sir William Jones, who was acclaimed as the "most respected linguist in Europe" for his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), was appointed one of the three justices of the Supreme Court of Bengal. Jones, who arrived in Calcutta and began his study of Sanskrit and the Rig Veda, was astonished by the lexical similarities between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages such as Persian, Gothic, Greek, and Latin, and concluded that Sanskrit—as a descendant language—belonged to the same proto- or parent-language in the language family—that is PIE, as the other Indo-European languages, in his Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus (1786). However, the linguistic homeland of the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European was a politicized debate among the archaeologists and comparative historical linguists since the start, entangling in chauvinistic causes. Some European nationalists and dictators, most notably the Nazis, later attempted to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland in their country or region as racially superior.

According to Leon Poliakov, the concept of the Aryan race was deeply rooted in philology, based on the work of Sir William Jones' claiming that Sanskrit was related to Greco-Roman (European) languages. Other thinkers invented secularized origins for European civilization that were not based on the biblical genealogies from which Europe's aristocracy had long claimed descent.

Romanticism and Social Darwinism

See also: Romantic nationalism and German nationalism § Romantic nationalism

The influence of Romanticism in Germany saw a revival of the intellectual quest for "the German language and traditions" and a desire to "discard the cold, artificial logic of Enlightenment". After Darwin's 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species and publicization of the theorized model of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), the Romantics convicted that language was a defining factor in national identity, combined with the new ideas of Darwinism. The German nationalists misemployed the scientific theory of natural selection for the rationalization of the supposed fitness of some races over others, although Darwin himself never applied his theory of fitness to vague entities such as races or languages. The "unfit" races were suggested as a source of genetic weakness, and a threat that might contaminate the superior qualities of the "fit" races. The misleading mixture of pseudoscience and Romanticism produced new racial ideologies which used distorted Social Darwinist interpretations of race to explain "the superior biological-spiritual-linguistic essence of the Northern Europeans" in self-congratulatory studies. Subsequently, the German Romantics' quest for a "pure" national heritage led to the interpretation of the ancient speakers of PIE language as the distinct progenitors of a "racial-linguistic-national stereotype".

Invention of the Aryan race

Racial association of the term Aryan

See also: Aryan

The term "Aryan" was originally used as an ethnocultural self-designative identity and epithet of "noble" by Indo-Iranians and the authors of the oldest known religious texts of Rig Veda and Avesta within the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family—Sanskrit and Iranian, who lived in ancient India and Iran. Although the Sanskrit ā́rya- and Iranian *arya- descended from a form *ā̆rya-, it was only attested to the Indo-Iranian tribes. Benjamin W. Fortson states that there may have been no term for self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and no such morphemes has survived. J. P. Mallory et al. states although the term "Aryan" takes on an ethnic meaning attesting to Indo-Iranians, there is no grounds for ascribing this semantic use to the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction of lexicon *h₂eryós i.e. there is no evidence that the speakers of proto-language referred to themselves as "Aryans". However, in the 19th century, it was proposed that ā́rya- was not only the tribal self-designation of Indo-Iranians, but self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves, a theory rejected by modern scholarships. "Aryan" then came to be used by scholars of the 19th century to refer to Indo-Europeans. The now-discredited and chronologically reconstructed North European hypothesis was endorsed by such scholars who situated the PIE homeland in northern Europe, which led to the association of "Proto-Indo-Europeans", originally a hypothesized linguistic population of Eurasian PIE speakers, with a new, imagined biological category: "a tall, light-complexioned, blonde, blue-eyed race" - supposed phenotypic traits of Nordic race. The anglicized term "Aryan" then developed into a purely racialist meaning implicating Nordic racial type. However, modern scholarship of Indo-European studies use "Aryan" and "Indo-Aryan" in their original senses referring to Indo-Iranian and Indic branch of Indo-Europeans.

Classification of human races based on the now-pseudoscientific study of phenotypical differences developed during the nineteenth century and evidence in support of such theories were sought from the study of language and reconstructions of language families. Scholars of this era established the ethnological term "Aryan" as the race that had spoken the Proto-Indo-European language, and in this context, the term was often used as a synonym for "Indo-Europeans".

Scholars point out that, even in ancient times, the Aryan identity as asserted in the Rig Veda was cultural, religious, and linguistic, not racial; nor do the Vedas contemplate racial purity. The Rig Veda affirms a ritualistic barrier: an individual is considered Aryan if they sacrifice to the right gods, which requires performing traditional prayer in the traditional language, and does not connote a racial barrier. Michael Witzel states that term Aryan "does not mean a particular people or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual, poetry, etc.)". Scholars state that the historical Aryans, the Vedic period Bronze Age tribes who lived in Iran, Afghanistan, and the northern Indian subcontinent—composers of the Rig Veda and Avesta—were unlikely to be blond or blue-eyed, contrary to the proponents of Aryanism and Nordicism.

North Europe hypothesis and archaeological affirmation

The racial interpretation of Aryans stems from the now-discredited culture-historical archaeology theory of Gustaf Kossinna, who asserted a one-to-one correspondence between archaeological culture and archaeological race. According to Kossinna, the continuity of a "culture" exposits the continuity of a "race" which lived continuously in the same area, and the resemblance of a culture in a younger layer to a culture from an older layer indicates that the autochthonous tribe from the homeland had migrated. Kossinna developed an ethnic paradigm in archaeology called settlement archaeology and practiced the nationalistic interpretation of German archaeology for the Third Reich. The obsolete North European hypothesis was endorsed by Kossinna and Karl Penka, including German nationalists, which was later used by the Nazis to condone their genocidal and racist state policies. Kossinna identified the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the Corded Ware culture, and placed the Proto-Indo-European homeland in Schleswig-Holstein. He argued a diffusionist model of culture, and emphasised the racial superiority of Germanic peoples over Romans (Roman Empire) and French, whom he described as destroyers of culture as compared to Germanics. Kossinna's ideas have been heavily criticised for its inherent ambiguities in the method and advocacy for the ideology of a Germanic master race.

Earliest utilization of Aryan race

A nineteenth-century edition of the Meyers Konversations-Lexikon shows the Caucasian race (in shades of grayish blue-green) as comprising Aryans, Semites, and Hamites. Aryans are subdivided into European Aryans and Indo-Aryans (for those now called Indo-Iranians).

Max Müller popularized the term Aryan in his writings on comparative linguistics, and is often identified as the first writer to mention an Aryan race in English. He began the racial interpretation of the Vedic passages based upon his editing of the Rigveda from 1849 to 1874. He postulated a small Aryan clan living on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages, which later branched off in two directions: one moved towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one group invading north-western India and conquering the dark-skinned dasas of Scythian origin who lived there. The northern Aryans of Europe became energetic and combative, and they invented the idea of a nation, while the southern Aryans of Iran and India were passive and meditative and focussed on religion and philosophy.

Though he occasionally used the term "Aryan race" afterward, Müller later objected to the mixing of the linguistic and racial categories, and was "deeply saddened by the fact that these classifications later came to be expressed in racist terms". In his 1888 lecture at Oxford, he stated, " science of Language and the science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar", and in his Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888), he writes, " ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes, and hair, is a great sinner as a linguist ".

European scholars of 19th century interpreted the Vedic passages as depicting battle between light-skinned Aryan migrants and dark-skinned indigenous tribes, but modern scholars reject this characterization of racial division as a misreading of the Sanskrit text, and indicate that the Rig Vedic opposition between ārya and dasyu is distinction between "disorder, chaos and dark side of human nature" contrasted with the concepts of "order, purity, goodness and light", and "dark and light worlds". In other contexts of the Vedic passages the dinstiction between ārya and dasyu refers to those who had adopted the Vedic religion, speaking Vedic Sanskrit, and those who opposed it.

However, increasing number of Western writers of this era, especially among anthropologists and non-specialists influenced by Darwinist theories, contrasted Aryans as a "physical-genetic species" rather than an ethnolinguistic category.

Encyclopedias and textbooks of historiography, ethnography, and anthropology from this era, such as Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, Nordisk familjebok, H. G. Wells's A Short History of the World, John Clark Ridpath's Great Races of Mankind, and other works reinforced European racial constructions developed on now-pseudoscientific concepts such as racial taxonomy, Social Darwinism, and scientific racism to classify human races.

Theories of racial supremacy

The term Aryan was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers such as Arthur de Gobineau, Theodor Poesche, Houston Chamberlain, Paul Broca, Karl Penka and Hans Günther during the nineteenth century for the promotion of scientific racism, spawning ideologies such as Nordicism and Aryanism. The connotation of the term Aryan was detached from its proper geographic and linguistic confinement as a Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family by this time. The inequality of races and the notion of a "superior race" was universally accepted by the scholars of this era, therefore race was referred to "national character and national culture" beyond biological confinement.

In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau published An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, in which he originally identified the Aryan race as the white race, and the only civilized one, and conceived cultural decline and miscegenation as intimately intertwined. He argued that the Aryans represented a superior branch of humanity, and attempted to identify the races of Europe as Aryan and associated them with the sons of Noah, emphasizing superiority, and categorized non-Aryan as an intrusion of the Semitic race. According to him, northern Europeans had migrated across the world and founded the major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with indigenous populations described as racially inferior, leading to the progressive decay of the ancient Aryan civilizations.

In 1878, German American anthropologist Theodor Poesche published a survey of historical references attempting to demonstrate that the Aryans were light-skinned blue-eyed blonds.

In 1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain published what is described as "one of the most important proto-Nazi texts", The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in which he theorized an existential struggle to the death between a superior German-Aryan race and a destructive Jewish-Semitic race.

In 1916, Madison Grant published The Passing of the Great Race, a polemic against interbreeding between "Aryan" Americans, the original Thirteen Colonies settlers of British-Scots-Irish-German origin, with immigrant "inferior races", which according to him were, Poles, Czechs, Jews, and Italians. The book was a best-seller at the time.

While the Aryan race theory remained popular, particularly in Germany, some authors opposed it, in particular Otto Schrader, Rudolph von Jhering and the ethnologist Robert Hartmann, who proposed to ban the notion of Aryan from anthropology. The term was also adopted by various occultists and esoteric ideological systems of this era, such as Helena Blavatsky, and Ariosophy.

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Subhuman and inferior races in Nazi Germany

See also: Mischling Test and Dehumanization

The racial policies of Nazi Germany, the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, and the racist doctrines of Adolf Hitler considered Jews, Roma and Slavs, including Poles, Czechs, Russians and Serbs, "racially inferior sub-humans" (German: Untermensch, lit.'sub-human'); the term was also applied to "Mischling" (persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry) and black people.

Connotation of the term Aryan in Nazi racial theories

See also: Nazi racial theories and Racial policy of Nazi Germany

A definition of Aryan that included all non-Jewish Europeans was deemed unacceptable, and the Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy of 1933 brought together important Nazi intellectuals Alfred Ploetz, Fritz Thyssen, and Ernst Rüdin to plan the course of Nazi racial policy, defining an Aryan as one who was "tribally related to the German blood and descendant of a Volk". The term "Volksdeutsche" was used by Nazis to indicate "ethnic Germans" who did not hold German Reich citizenship; Volksdeutsche further consist of "racial groups"—minorities within a state—who are descendants of a Volk domiciled in Europe in a closed tribal settlement and are closely related to German racial community. The Nazi concept of "Volksgemeinschaft" racially unified ethnic Germans, including those living outside the German Reich, propounding only the members of the racial community be considered Aryan.

Members of the SS deemed Aryans could be selected from populations of Volksdeutsche across Europe to create "master race". Nazi Party established the organization NSDAP/AO to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities considered Volksdeutsche in central and eastern Europe. Nazi racial theories considered the "purest stock of Aryans" the Nordic people, identified by physical anthropological features such as tallness, white skin, blue eyes, narrow and straight noses, doliocephalic skulls, prominent chins, and blond hair, including Scandinavians, Germans, English and French, with Nordic and Germanic people being the "master race" (German: Herrenrasse). Recent archaeogenetic studies contradict these ideas, and instead suggest that Proto-Indo-European speaking peoples probably had brown eyes and hair, and intermediate skin complexion.

Historical revisionism

After the death of Kossinna, Heinrich Himmler, and other Nazi figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, adopted his nationalistic theories of Germanic peoples and methodologies, including settlement archaeology, and founded the SS organization Ahnenerbe (German: Deutsches Ahnenerbe) for conducting archaeological investigations of a presumed "Germanic expansion in pre-history". Nazi scholars endorsed the now-discredited North European hypothesis in an effort to prove PIE was originally spoken by an "Aryan master race", and associated the Semitic languages with "inferior races". Historical revisionism around race was disseminated through the Nazi think tank Ahnenerbe. Hitler regularly invoked Social Darwinist concepts of Ernst Haeckel such as higher evolution (German: Höherentwicklung), struggle for existence (German: Existenzkampf), selection (German: Auslese), struggle for life (German: Lebenskampf), in his Nazi racial ideology, which is the central theme in the chapter "Nation and Race" of Mein Kampf. Haeckel's Social Darwinism was also praised by Alfred Ploetz, founder of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, who made him an honorary member of the eugenic organization.

Nazi eugenics and Nordic supremacy

See also: Nordicism and Rassenschande

In 1938, the Reich Ministry of Education released the German biology curriculum which reflected the curriculum developed by the National Socialist Teachers League and emphasized the Social Darwinst interpretation of the evolution of human races. Hans Weinert, who had joined the SS and worked for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology publishing theories of Nazi eugenics and racial evolution, claimed the Nordic race as a highly evolved race, and Aboriginal Australians as being the lowest rank in the racial hierarchy. Hans F. K. Günther was considered to be the most influential Nazi anthropologist, although he was not professionally trained. Günther's racist writings on Nordicism was suffused with the ideas of Gobineau, who believed the Nordic race had originated in northern Europe and spread through conquest; this had expressed approval of the Nazi eugenics policies and had critical influence on scientific racism. Günther's theories gained acclamation from Hitler, who later included his books as a recommended reading material for the Nazi Party members. After the Nazis came to power, selective breeding for supposed Aryan traits such as athleticism, blond hair and blue eyes was encouraged, while the "inferior races" and people with physical or mental illness were deemed "life unworthy of life" (German: lebensunwertes Leben, lit.'lives unworthy of life') and many were interned in concentration camps.

Ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust

Main articles: The Holocaust and Final Solution See also: Extermination through labour, Generalplan Ost, Porajmos, and Aktion T4

The culmination of Nazi eugenicist and racial hygiene programs of sterilization and extermination aimed at creating an "Aryan master race" and eliminating "inferior non-Aryan types" such as Jews, Slavs, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and the disabled. Nazi Germany introduced the Anti-Jewish legislation that systemically discriminated against Jews by requiring Aryan certification for a German Reich citizen. After Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, the public policies of Nazi Germany became increasingly hostile towards supposed "inferior types", particularly Jews, who were considered to be the highest manifestation of the Semitic race, and segregation of Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The state-sponsored persecution systematically murdered over 6 million Jews, 5.7 million Slavs, 1.8–3 million Poles, 270,000 disabled people, among other victims, including children through mass shooting, gas chamber, gas van, and concentration camps, in the process known as the Holocaust. The ethnic Germans considered Volksdeutsche joined the local SS organizations under NSDAP/AO and participated in Nazi-sponsored pogroms in eastern and central Europe during the Holocaust, including seizures of Jewish property. The Aryan race belief was used by the Nazis to justify the persecution, depicting the victims as the "antipode and eternal enemy of the Aryans".

White supremacy

See also: One-drop rule

Following Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II, various neo-Nazi and racial nationalist movements developed a more inclusive definition of Aryan claiming to Western European peoples, with Nordic and Germanic peoples being the most "racially pure". However, in the United States, most white nationalists define whiteness broadly as people of European ancestry, and some consider Jews to be white although this is controversial within white nationalist circles.

Many white supremacist neo-Nazi groups and prison gangs, notably in the United States, view themselves as part of an Aryan race, including the Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Nations, Aryan Guard, Aryan Republican Army, White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Circle, Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and others.

Neo-pagan movements

Main article: Criticism of modern paganism § Racial issues

Indo-European history, real and feigned, plays a significant role in various neo-pagan movements.

Russian neo-paganism

"Kolovrat", the most common symbol of Slavic Neopaganism. According to its practitioners, it is an ancient Slavic symbol; however, the historic usage of such iconography is not attested in authentic sources.

The Russian Slavophile movements borrowed various discrete ideas of a presumed "prestigious Aryan origin" of Europeans from Nazi Germany. Although Russian Orthodoxy was the primary religious influence on Russian nationalists, the primacy of Christianity was treated skeptically by these groups, who later began searching for an ancient text to rationalize a "return to the origins". Various writers in the newspaper Zhar-Ptitsa showed interest in a purported manuscript—the Book of Veles—which supposedly dated to the first century BCE. F. A. Izenbek, a White Army officer, alleged the discovery of this manuscript during the Russian Civil War. However one of Izenbek's friends, Iurii Miroliubov, had forged the manuscript, and used the term "Vedism" to describe Russian neo-paganism; he later appropriated the Indian religious scripture, the Vedas, to aggrandize the manuscript. Nationalistic white Russian émigrés and neo-Pagans consider the manuscript to be an authentic historical source of Slavic antiquity, who claim a direct link between "ancient Aryans" and themselves as Slavs. However, the manuscript is declared literary forgery by scholars. Alexey Dobrovolsky, a Russian neo-Nazi, is considered the founding Nazi ideologues of Slavic Neopaganism.

Goddess movement

Main article: Goddess movement

With the rise of first-wave feminism, various authors of the Goddess movement cast the ancient Indo-Europeans as a "patriachal, warlike invaders who destroyed a utopian prehistoric world of feminine peace and beauty" in various archaeological dramas and books such as Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade (1987) and Marija Gimbutas's Civilization of the Goddess (1991).

See also

References

Notes

  1. Knight Dunlap (October 1944). "The Great Aryan Myth". The Scientific Monthly. 59 (4). American Association for the Advancement of Science: 296–300. Bibcode:1944SciMo..59..296D. JSTOR 18253.
  2. ^ Arvindsson 2006, pp. 13–50.
  3. ^ Arvindsson 2006, p. 45.
  4. Ramaswamy, Sumathi (June 2001). "Remains of the race: Archaeology, nationalism, and the yearning for civilisation in the Indus valley". The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 38 (2): 105–145. doi:10.1177/001946460103800201. ISSN 0019-4646. S2CID 145756604.
  5. Pereltsvaig & Lewis 2015, p. 11.
  6. Anthony 2007, p. 2.
  7. Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary Springfield, Massachusetts. 1994 – Merriam-Webster See original definition (definition #1) of "Aryan" in English. 0. 66
  8. Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4th edition, 1885–90, T11, p. 476.
  9. Templeton, A. (2016). "Evolution and Notions of Human Race". In Losos, J.; Lenski, R. (eds.). How Evolution Shapes Our Lives: Essays on Biology and Society. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press. pp. 346–361. doi:10.2307/j.ctv7h0s6j.26. ISBN 9780691170398. JSTOR j.ctv7h0s6j. ... the answer to the question whether races exist in humans is clear and unambiguous: no.
  10. Wagner, Jennifer K.; Yu, Joon-Ho; Ifekwunigwe, Jayne O.; Harrell, Tanya M.; Bamshad, Michael J.; Royal, Charmaine D. (February 2017). "Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 162 (2): 318–327. doi:10.1002/ajpa.23120. PMC 5299519. PMID 27874171.
  11. American Association of Physical Anthropologists (27 March 2019). "AAPA Statement on Race and Racism". American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  12. ^ Paul B. Rich (1998). "Racial ideas and the impact of imperialism in Europe". The European Legacy. 3 (1): 30–33. doi:10.1080/10848779808579862.
  13. Anthony 2007, pp. 13–40.
  14. Gregor, A James (1961). "Nordicism Revisited". Phylon. 22 (4): 352–360. doi:10.2307/273538. JSTOR 273538.
  15. ^ Bryant 2001, pp. 33–50.
  16. Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0191613470.
  17. ^ Gordon, Sarah Ann (1984). Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question". Mazal Holocaust Collection. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. p. 96. ISBN 0-691-05412-6. OCLC 9946459.
  18. "Aryan". Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
  19. Bryant 2001, p. 20.
  20. ^ Anthony 2007, pp. 4–5.
  21. Anthony 2007, p. 6.
  22. Anthony 2007, p. 7.
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