"Man’s most dangerous myth"

An excerpt from Steve Russell’s new book, Sequoyah Rising:The whole idea of “race” is, in Columbia professor Partha Chatterjee’s phrase describing nationalism, “a derivative discourse.” It is not only derived from European colonial discourse, but it has done and continues to do harm to Indian nations on a scale similar to that of smallpox and measles. Read Chatterjee’s words below (from her book, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World) and substitute “race” for “nationalism”:

Nationalism as an ideology is irrational, narrow, hateful and destructive. It is not an authentic product of any of the non-European civilizations which, in each particular case, it claims as its classical heritage. It is wholly a European export to the rest of the world. It is also one of Europe’s most pernicious exports.

Can “race” properly be considered, like nationalism, an ideology? According to the American Anthropological Association statement on race in 1998:

[Physical] variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields argue that “race” as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.… As they were constructing U.S. society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each “race,” linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians.… Ultimately, “race” as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere.

Anthropologist Ashley Montagu’s famous formulation of race as “man’s most dangerous myth” dates from 1942, when Adolf Hitler was engaged in a spectacular attempt to govern a modern nation by that myth. Before World War II, Hitler expressed admiration for the U.S.’s handling of race in Mein Kampf.Proving Hitler's regard for the US "final solution" is this quote:The settlement of the North American continent is just as little the consequence of any claim of right in any democratic or international sense; it was the consequence of a consciousness of right which was rooted solely in the conviction of the superiority and therefore of the right of the white race.Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Industrie-Klub of Düsseldorf, January 27, 1932Comment:  We hear echoes of Hitler constantly in online debates. "Western civilization was superior, the strong conquers the weak, it's inevitable, get over it." The people who say things like this are usually moderates or conservatives, not liberals. From now on, let's say these people agree with Hitler. "Might makes right" is the conservative/Nazi mantra.

Seriously, if you rewrote the Hitler quote in plain English, I wonder what percentage of conservatives would agree with it. A large majority, surely. It's part of their dogma that God made Americans exceptional, beyond the rules, free to do whatever they want. Including conquering and killing people.

For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A True American.

Below:  A typical "might makes right" conservative.