Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

THREE Climax and Retreat
when self-interest can also be invoked. But to the considerable
extent that the Holocaust made blatant racism of all
kinds morally disreputable, African Americans and other
traditional or potential victims of racial discrimination,
not only in the United States but throughout the world,
gained a measure of international sympathy and even protection.
The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide did not prevent the occurrence
of racial injustice or even the mass murder of racial
or ethnic Others, but it increased the chance that
something might be done about violations of what were
now international norms. 56
The one overtly racist regime that survived World War
II and the Cold War was the South African, which did not
in fact come to maturity until the victory of the Afrikanerdominated
Nationalist Party in 1948 ushered in the era of
apartheid. Most of the Nationalist leaders who later came
to power opposed going to war with Germany in 1939, and
some remained sympathetic to the Nazi regime throughout
the conflict. Antisemitism of the populist, anticapitalist
variety had been a secondary theme in Afrikaner Nationalist
polemics in the 1930s, but the postwar party, for the
most part, eschewed attacking Jews per se as either capitalists
or communists. The campaign against the svart gevaar
(black menace) in 1948 put the English-speaking Jews on
the right side of the color line, even if they were not part
of the Volk. Not wishing to be associated with the Holocaust
and seeking to establish ties of mutual advantage with
Israel, the architects of apartheid concentrated on justifying
white rule in southern Africa. 57
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