Language:
English
Year of publication:
1994
Titel der Quelle:
Challenging Racism and Sexism
Angaben zur Quelle:
(1994) 188-210
Keywords:
Antisemitism Philosophy
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Racism History 20th century
;
National socialism and women
Abstract:
Pseudo-biology played an important role in ideological justifications of Nazi policy and thinking. One of its main buttresses was genetic determinism, which underpinned both racism (especially in its antisemitic form) and sexism. In particular, the Jews were presented as a group whose parasitical and destructive traits were racially predetermined, and as a contagious disease threatening the German "race." It was specifically this approach which turned Nazi antisemitism into an exterminatory one. Women were regarded by Nazi ideologists as biologically inferior creatures whose main social role was reproduction; sexual coolness and innocence were elevated. This image of an ideal German woman was easy to set off against the image of the hypersexual, lecherous Jewish male. Sexual imagery was used intensively by Nazi antisemitic propaganda of the 1920s-30s. It not only permitted the Nazis to portray the Jew as an oppressor and the innocent German woman as his victim; the sexual act of a Jew with an Aryan woman was seen as a rape of the entire German people.
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