The European importation at this period was the race theory. Originated in France by Gobineau, taken up in Germany by scientific thinkers and made the rallying cry of political parties, the theory was adapted to American conditions. In Germany and France the “great race” was the Teuton, below whom were ranged in order the Alpine, the Mediterranean, and the Semite. The safety of the Teuton and therefore of civilization as a whole depend on the purity of blood of the Teuton and his guarding from contamination by alien blood. The Semite, in particular, is a menace by reason of his lower moral and social standards and his inability ever to be assimilated by the higher races; he must be driven out of power and if possible out of the “sacred German land” itself. In the United States this theory was taken over bodily by such writers as Lothrop Stoddard and Grant Madison, with the trifling change that the word “Teuton” was altered to “Nordic.” This was done in order to include the many sub-varieties of the older immigration, most of whom came at some time from northern and western Europe. The Klan and the writers in the Dearborn Independent echoed them. The Russians in the United States attacking the Soviet government, many sub-groups of new Americans who imported their anti-Semitism with them, and the constant flood of letters, periodicals and books regarding the growth of mob violence, political discrimination and social obloquy in Europe, furnished the connecting link. The race theory became acclimatized.
Peculiarly enough, one of the most radical statements of the race theory was by a Jew, Maurice Samuel in “You Gentiles,” where he showed quite unintentionally how the theory is reversible to form opposite conclusions on the same premises. To Samuel, Jew and gentile are two radically different sorts of people, as the anti-Semite agrees; the difference he finds, however, is one of temperament, of viewpoint.
[90]To you (gentiles) life is a game and a gallant adventure, and all life’s enterprises partake of the spirit of the adventurous. To us (Jews) life is a serious and sober duty pointed to a definite and inescapable task. [91]We know nothing of science for science’s sake, as we know nothing of art for art’s sake. We know only of art for God’s sake.... Art and science, this is your gentile world, a lovely and ingenious world.... But not our world, not for us Jews.
To this we may contrast the remark of Irwin Edman:
[92]The Jews have been accused so often of impossible racial defects that they have in self defense, ascribed to themselves wholly imaginary racial virtues.... They have added to the unfavorable myths invented by outsiders a whole folklore of favorable myths about themselves.
The reprints from the Dearborn Independent can match this sort of hasty generalization a hundred times over in the language of anti-Semitism.
[93]The Jew is against the Gentile scheme of things. What are the causes of this disruptive tendency? First, his essential lack of democracy. Jewish nature is autocratic. [94]In a sense the United States is private property. It is the property of those who share the ideals of the founders of the government. And those ideals were ideals held by a white race of Christians. And with most of these the Jews not only disagree, but hold them in contempt. [95]The fathers were the men of the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic race ... who have given form to every government and a livelihood to every people and an ideal to every century. They got neither their God nor their religion from Judah, nor yet their speech nor their creative genius—they are the Ruling People, Chosen throughout the centuries to Master the world.... Into the camp of this race comes a people that has no civilization to point to, no aspiring religion, no universal speech, no great achievement in any realm but the realm of “get,” cast out of every land that gave them hospitality, and these people endeavor to tell the sons of the Saxons what is needed to make the world what it ought to be.
3.
I shall devote very few words to showing that this race theory, whether from the Nordic or any other angle, is composed of hasty and unscientific generalizations, merely the rationalization of the group prejudice whose actual background we are tracing. In the first place, anthropologists are not at all agreed either on the definition or the history of races. There seems, however, to be fairly general agreement that there is no such thing as a pure race—certainly not the English and probably not the Jews either. All sub-varieties of the white race are greatly mixed in blood. For the Jewish side of this problem, an interesting study is that of M. Fishberg, “The Jews, a Study of Race and Environment,” where the author has demonstrated the many physical types which appear in the Jewish people the world over, whether these are due to local and climatic influences, or as Dr. Fishberg holds, to interbreeding with other racial stocks. In the second place, even such racial groupings as can be roughly established vary indefinitely and overlap indefinitely in every physical and mental characteristic. There is no considerable body of people who conform to the Nordic type—blond, tall, long-headed, and so on. No test has ever been devised which can adequately compare the intelligence of different races, for every intelligence test yet invented presupposes a certain cultural and language background, and is therefore favorable to the group which has this background, and certain to give a low intelligence quotient to any different cultural group, whatever be its race or its potential intellectual power.
As Jean Finot sums up the entire theory in his book, “Race Prejudice”: