A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #43 - Racism and Suprematism: Reflections on Colonialism - Roberto Manfredini (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Among the themes of historiography dedicated to long-term phenomena is 
the study and interpretation of modern colonialism. ---- One theme 
analyzed concerns the search for new territories for the purpose of 
relocating masses of populations to create new societies, militarily and 
politically superior and economically integrated into a system of trade 
relations. This also aims to create an ethnically homogeneous and closed 
population by physically eliminating or isolating indigenous 
populations. These are historical processes still underway, based on 
different projects, ideologies, and rhetoric. The analysis of social 
relations reveals the dispossession of sovereignty from populations 
subjected to colonialism, but also diverse geopolitical dynamics, 
including divisive anti-imperialist approaches.
The encounter between European culture and the cultural diversity of the 
"savage" occurred in the modern age with the conquest of the New World. 
The history of the conquest of the Americas is the history of the 
genocide perpetrated by Europeans against the Native American 
populations, while in the works of some travelers and philosophers (for 
example, Michel de Montaigne in the 16th century), the peoples of the 
New World are characterized positively. On a religious level, the 
discussion of the nature of these peoples culminates in the papal 
recognition of their humanity (veri homines).
From the 17th century onward, many works, on the contrary, highlight 
the barbarity of savages, where it becomes clear how the absence of a 
political and state organization comparable to that of Europe is 
decisive in classifying a population as savage or bestial. This is the 
case with the thought of Thomas Hobbes (1558-1679) with his negative 
conception of the natural state; where the absence of a 
political-territorial state determines the perpetual succession of wars 
which, according to the philosopher, is typical of the primitive and 
natural condition of man.
Voltaire later conceived the state of nature as the zeroth degree of 
civilization, the state of primitive humanity experienced by all peoples 
in their past. The historical state reached in Europe with modern 
science is the state of maturity of the human species. This is one of 
the first philosophical elaborations of the concept of progress, which 
Voltaire combined with the idea of the natural inferiority of blacks and 
Native Americans, a thesis that helped lay the foundation for the birth 
of modern racism in the eighteenth century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's view 
of the process of civilization contrasts with Voltaire's: science, 
culture, art, and material progress have corrupted humanity, forcing man 
to adopt external social behaviors that constrain him in a perpetual 
state of fiction. The state of aggression, contrary to Hobbes's view, is 
for Rousseau typical of civilized man, not of primitive man. According 
to the French philosopher, a revolution that led to civil society was 
brought about by the birth of private property, which gave rise to 
inequality among men, avarice, luxury, and the various vices that 
corrupted European customs. This condition, typical of the civilized 
state and absent from the natural state, gave rise to the social pact 
that gave rise to the state and the laws that protect the position of 
the wealthy, legalizing property and inequality that forever destroyed 
natural freedom.
Romantic nationalism can be considered one of the components of modern 
racism. According to this conception, every people possesses natural and 
instinctive characteristics that distinguish it from others and identify 
it throughout its journey through time. In the view of thinkers such as 
Johann G. Herder, nationality takes on an aesthetic, historical, and 
linguistic dimension that makes it an entity separate from any form of 
political organization and tends to mark the difference between one 
people and other populations.
The intermingling of science and ideology is also one of the distinctive 
features of modern racism and white supremacist privilege. In a country 
like the United States, racial segregation remained legally in force 
until 1964. For example, in his Winning of the West (1889), American 
President Theodore Roosevelt celebrated the destiny of the white race 
that came from Europe to civilize the American continent and spread its 
political system throughout the world. A system of social regulation 
that also made it difficult to reunite the working classes, considered a 
colonial-type workforce, in the face of the system of exploitation and 
wage demands.

In this context, also in the second half of the nineteenth century, key 
works in the development of racist ideology were published, including 
Arthur de Gobineau's Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855) 
and Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Twentieth 
Century (1899). In An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, the 
concept of race is adopted as a criterion for interpreting human history 
in general, a reactionary reflection that rejects the processes arising 
from the French Revolution and economic and political modernization. The 
essay The Foundations of the Twentieth Century presents what, for 
scholars such as George Mosse, are the fundamental traits of European 
racism.
Regarding the Italian situation, it is worth remembering the publication 
in July 1938 of the so-called Manifesto of Racial Scientists, which 
served to provide cultural support for the fascist government's racist 
legislation. The Manifesto asserted that humanity was divided into 
biologically distinct races and that, therefore, the differences between 
different populations were not determined by history, culture, or 
environment. These pseudoscientific theses were taken up by the journal 
La difesa della razza until 1943 to support Italian colonial policy.
Sources
Les Grands Dossiers, Sciences Humaines, Auxerre (FR), no. 61, December 
2020 - February 2021.
Alessandro Scassellati Sforzolini, White Suprematism: At the Roots of 
the Economy, Culture, and Ideology of Western Society, DeriveApprodi, 
Bologna, 2023.
Wolfang Reinhard, Storia del Colonialismo, Einaudi, Turin, 2002.
Emanuele Ertola, Il Colonialismo degli Italiani, Carocci, Rome, 2022.

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