Racism was a fascist coinage repurposed as its own critique

Evidence

“Racism” is a word that came into general usage only in the 1930s. It was at first a positive term launched by fascists to describe the importance they assigned to race, and then became the central term to express intellectual critiques of fascism. Magnus Hirschfeld’s still remarkable antifascist book Racism (1938) marked the turning point, according to Robert Miles (1989:42). Race was affected by the vicinity to racism. In scholarly language, after World War II “race” slowly began to be displaced by “ethnicity” so that Irish-Americans, for example, did not remain a “race” but became an “ethnic group” (a term that enjoyed wider circulation than “ethnicity”). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 696 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The term racism was coined and first used positively by fascists in the 1930s — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 696; WWII anti-Nazi propaganda delegitimized racism as antidemocratic — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3357; Psychoanalytic theories of racism have often been reductive and themselves racist — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The term racism was coined and first used positively by fascists in the 1930s #expands (0.93) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 696