Doctrines of civilizational decay are intimately connected with race-thinking

Evidence

“Orientalists divided human societies into civilizations that have a core set of values that drive their progress (or lack thereof). The people who inhabit these civilizations were said to have a cultural ‘essence’ that explains who they are across time. Essentialism of this sort is one of the pillars of race making.” Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: 20 Years after 9/11 (Verso, 2021), 19. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1277 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The ‘primary racism’ is in his view universal. It is a natural reaction to the presence of an unknown stranger, to any form of human life that is foreign and puzzling. Invariably, the first response to strangeness is antipathy, which more often than not leads to aggressiveness. Universally goes hand-in-hand with spontaneity. The primary racism needs no inspiring or fomenting; nor does it need a theory to legitimize the elemental hatred – though it can be, on occasion, deliberately beefed up and deployed as an instrument of political mobilization. At such a time it can be lifted to another level of complexity and turn into a ‘secondary’ (or rationalized) racism. This transformation happens when a theory is supplied (and internalized) that provides logical foundations for resentment. The repelling Other is represented as ill-willed or ‘objectively’ harmful – in either case threatening to the well-being of the resenting group. … Finally, the ‘tertiary’, or mystifactory, racism, which presupposes the two ‘lower’ levels, is distinguished by the deployment of a quasi-biological argument. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 185 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Philological reduction of language legitimates claims connecting race to mind and character.; Orientalist civilizational essentialism is a pillar of race making — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1277; Gobineau’s race theory translated caste decline into civilizational decay (+8 more)

Related

• Orientalist civilizational essentialism is a pillar of race making (similarity 0.86)
• Cultural essentialism divides civilizations and serves as a pillar of race making (similarity 0.84)
• Even anti-racist Orientalists held fixed cultural essences for the racialized (similarity 0.81)
• Philological reduction of language legitimates claims connecting race to mind and character. (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist doctrine attributes untruthfulness to a racialized Oriental mind (similarity 0.79)
• Emphasizing essential cultural difference feeds the clash-of-civilizations frame (similarity 0.79)
• Racism develops from elemental antipathy through theorized levels (similarity 0.79)
• Civilizational theory defined all non-Western peoples as inferior by default (similarity 0.79)
• Race-as-inferiority toward Arabs and Muslims emerged only with nineteenth-century colonial power (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Gobineau’s race theory translated caste decline into civilizational decay #exemplifies (0.85)
• Orientalist civilizational essentialism is a pillar of race making #corroborates (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1277
• Racism develops from elemental antipathy through theorized levels #expands (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 185