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Social Forces.
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RACISM IN NORTHWESTERNEUROPE
of a dismal future state in which all human activities are viewed continuously and reient]essly
by an all-seeing eye. The basic weakness in this
picture is precisely this assumption of the existence
of robot-like creatures who, alone, could perform
such a function, plus the fact that millions of them
would be required to keep the population under
complete control. The concentration camp material
supports this criticism. Many of the flaws in the
efficiency of the concentration camp system were
due to the venality of the SS personnel, some of
them appeared because of the persistence of humane considerations, and vanity often played into
the hands of the inmates.
There is another important factor that contributes to the impossibility of instituting perfect social
controls that is demonstrated by the concentration camp experience. This also pertains to the
human rather than the material aspects of organization. To achieve their ends, the concentration
camp personnel had to employ the services of their
prisoners. Need for special skills made some of the
jailors dependent upon some of the prisoners, a
fact that gave these unforeseen opportunities to
counteract administrative measures to the advantage of large numbers of inmates. Work requirements, for example, employment outside of
the camps, often put prisoners in a position to
thwart the controls imposed upon them. The ingenuity of the strategems used by concentration
155
HE
Ibid., p. 15.
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SOCIAL FORCES
existential basis of truth, but also of social illusions, superstitions, and socially conditioned errors
and forms of deception.")10
The peoples of northwestern Europe and the
United States have always been very conscious of
the culture which they inherited from the classic
civilizations of the Mediterranean basin; indeed,
in common language "culture" is usually used to
describe those parts of our culture which were
acquired from Greece and Rome. We are perhaps
less conscious of how much of our cultural heritage,
our habits, and values were acquired from the
ancient peoples of the North Sea basin. These
cultural factors are less dramatic and evident
because they are acquired in the subtle process of
socialization, rather than through a foreign language or a formal educational institution, and have
in this way endured through the ages passed from
generation to generation. Thus past events are
encysted in the social attitudes of today, and these
events cannot be fully understood without reference to their origins and developmental history,
for the present attitude represents merely the
latest or contemporary phase of the total genetic
process.
Barzun has pointed out the apparent paradox
that modern, Nordic, racial ideology has originated
in the writings of Latins such as Tacitus, Bougainville, and de Gobineau;11 these authors really used
the Nordics as Samuel Johnson used the Chinese,
or More the Utopians, to create invidious comparisons as a critique of their own society. It is significant that these doctrines did not become very
important in the ideology and politics of the Latin
countries where many of them originated, but did
achieve much greater influence in some northern
European countries. This is understandable when
it is realized that cultural diffusion is selective and
that the culture of the ancient peoples of the North
Sea Basin contained a rather complete racist
theory which was integrated with their mythology
and their total value system, and which in most
respects paralleled the myths of modern racist
dogma.
The Rigsthula12is a cultural poem which de10 Max Scheler, Die Wissenformen und die Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Der Neue-Geist Verlag, 1926), pp.
59-61. Quoted by Merton, op. cit., p. 383.
Jacques Barzun, The French Race, p. 12.
12The Rigsthula sometimes called Rigsmol is contained in the Codex Wormanius, a manuscript of
Snorri's Prose Edda. The Eddin poems were the work
157
scribes the racial make-up, the functions and relationships of social classes in Viking society, and
explains the origins of these classes and their function on a mythological basis. According to this
poem it was the god Rig who created the different
classes of society. Thrael, of the lowest class, is
describedas black-hairedwith wrinkled skin, rough
hands and knotted knuckles, thick fingers, ugly
face, twisted back, and big heels. Thrael's wife
would hardly win any beauty contest either since
she had, according to this account, crooked legs,
stained feet, sunburned arms, and a flat nose.
Their function as described by this work was to
carry burdens all day, dig turf, spread dung, and
herd swine and goats.
Karl, the yeoman, however, is pictured as sturdy
and strong with a ruddy face and flashing eyes.
It was his duty to manage the farm, build houses,
and fashion other artifacts.
Mothir, the woman of the noble class, is described as having bright brows, a shining breast,
and a neck "whiter than the new fallen snow."
And her son, Jarl, by the god Rig, is portrayed in
these words, "Blond he was, and bright his cheeks,
grim as a snake's were his glowing eyes." Jarl's
function as a warrior and ruler is described in
detail; he, unlike either Thrael or Karl, is taught
runes.
This poem like the rest of Norse mythology may
be looked upon as a mental production which gave
the Vikings explanations about nature, society,
and themselves, gave them answers to questions
they could answer in no other way, and therefore
helped them to solve problems arising out of activity in these spheres of life.
The thralls found in Scandinavia at the opening of the Viking Age were probably to a large
extent descendants of the short, brunette, brachycephalic race which the tall, blond, long-headed
of various authors of ancient Iceland and Norway. It is
thought that the Rigsthula was reduced to writing in
the last part of the Tenth Century, but that it had
existed for many generations before this in oral form.
The poem has been of considerable interest to European
scholars. See for example Maximilien de Ring, Essai
sur la Rigsmaal-Saga: et sur les Trois Classes de la Societe Germanique(Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1854); Karl
Von Lehman, Die Rigsbula (Rostock: Verlag der Stillerchen Hof und Universitatsbuchandlung, 1904). It
has been translated into several languages including
English. Cf. Henry Adams Bellows, Quotationsfrom the
Poetic Edda (Princeton: Princeton University Press
and Scandinavian Foundation, 1936), pp. 201-17.
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SOCIAL FORCES
RACISM IN NORTHWESTERNEUROPE
Nineteenth Century, Romanticism, helped to make
the peoples of Scandinavia, Germany, England,
and America conscious of their Norse heritage.
In his rejection of neo-classical themes the Romanticist sought inspiration in other directions,
one of these sources being ancient Norse sagas
and Teutonic ideas. Norse and Anglo-Saxon themes
are important aspects of the Romantic movement
in Scandinavia, England, and the United States.20
The same was true of Germany and it was no accident that Houston Stewart Chamberlain,disciple
of de Gobineau, who elaborated and popularized
Gobinism, was an enthusiastic admirer of Richard
Wagner who perhaps better tha anyone resurrected and dramatized old Nordic myths in his
The Ring of theNiebelungen.Wagner and Gobineau
were good friends and the German master found
great pleasure in being told that the Ring embodied
the quintessence of de Gobineau's principles of
German race superiority. Chamberlain's marriage
to Wagner's daughter joined individuals who were
already intimately spiritually related. That Hitler
should find both Wagner's operas and the present
Wagner family worthy of his intense patronage is
therefore understandable.
It would appear then- that the central ideas of
racism had been part of the intellectual atmosphere
of northwestern Europe since the beginning of
historical times and most probably long before,
and that the Romantic movement created a renaissance and dramatization of Norse ideals in the
Nineteenth Century. In fact, de Gobineau himself
was essentially and typically a romanticist.
Though some forms of racist ideas were present
in Spain, Portugal, and particularly France, racism
never took root and grew to such virulent proportions in these countries even though their exploitation of colonial peoples created a situation
in which one could expect such ideas to flourish.
However, religious traditions, and the traditions
of the Inquisition were strong in these countries
and it was to this type of mental productions that
the Spaniards and Portuguese turned for their
rationalizations. The exploitation by the Latin
colonial powers of the natives was no less brutal
than that practiced by the colonizers from northwestern Europe, but it was justified by different
premises. The Spaniards, for example, justified
20 Cf. Frank Edgar Farley, Scandinavian Infinences
on the English Romantic Movement (Boston: Ginn and
Co., 1903); Josef Koerner, Niebelungenforschungender
deutschen Romatik (Leipzig: H. Hassel, 1911).
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