60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

lineages of racism in genocidal contexts 167
Such movements were ostensibly based on an appeal to the masses.
They achieved their cohesion by a general mood rather than by
clearly defi ned aims, programmes and policies, structures, and institutions.
(In this regard, it is instructive to note that the Nazi party
proclaimed that though it had a programme, it did not need one.)
Their lack of tangible results in expansion before World War II was
made good by their capacity to organise outside of the party system,
often in competition with the party system, frequently transforming
parties into movements. Their anti-semitic stance corresponded to
their own absolute claim to a status of being chosen. That national
socialism emerged from such a ‘pan’ (in this case, pan-Germanist)
movement, is evident in its imitation of the slogans of the ‘pan’ movements
before and during World War I (Arendt [1951] 1976: 222-225,
243, 250, 251, 260).
Overseas imperialism, with its corresponding colonial racism, on the
other hand, is based on an imaginary race hierarchy or a fetishisation
of cultural diff erence, correlated with socially and politically institutionalised
(dis)advantages, and imbued with notions of superiority,
‘the white man’s burden’, and a national or civilising mission, and
so on. (Arendt [1951] 1976: 225, 233). While imperialism in the colonial
phase could show massive territorial expansion, it had comparatively
little infl uence on the home country’s political structure, and,
crucially, it commanded only limited appeal at home (Arendt [1951]
1976: 250, 265).
The birth of the ‘pan’ movements primarily in the Southern and Eastern
parts of Europe in the wake of declining dynastic regimes, Arendt
points out, did not coincide with the birth of imperialism. What
marked them as continental-imperialist was the fact that they had no
colonial possessions, no hope for colonial expansion, did not engage
in capital export, but hoped to gain and expand their infl uence on the
European continent instead. Correspondingly, they counted among
their members not businessmen or fi nanciers, but primarily the petite
bourgeoisie – teachers, civil servants and freelancing professionals.
Invoking ‘the people’ as central political actor, they expressed open
hostility to parties and other political and legal institutions of the nation
state, as they themselves had emerged from countries aff ected by
the dissolution of dynastic systems without corresponding nationstate
formation. What they had to off er was ‘only’ a movement and an
ideology, charged with philosophy and moral universals.
The distinction and interarticulation between race-thinking and racism,
continental and overseas imperialism is based on the idea, held by both
Foucault ([1976] 2003: 60) and Arendt ([1951] 1976: 174, 183-184), that