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Where did the Aryan obsession come from? (lemm.ee)

submitted 16 hours ago by [email protected] to c/askhistorians

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Yes, I'm asking about where Hitler got the idea, but also you can see it depicted in media from that era. The fit and beautiful blonde had been portrayed as the ideal and the desirable so much in things like the stereotypical surfer hunk, and Barbie and Ken, and the chain of blonde sex symbol has continued through today. Where did that start?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan

Northern India has lighter skin due to interbreeding with their lighter-skinned neighbors from Iran, the Aryans.

Aryan (/ˈɛəriən/), or Arya (borrowed from Sanskrit ārya),[1] is a term originating from the ethno-cultural self-designation of the Indo-Iranians, specifically the Iranians and the Indo-Aryans.[2][3] It stood in contrast to nearby outsiders, whom they designated as non-Aryan (*an-āryā).[4] In ancient India, the term was used by the Indo-Aryan peoples of the Vedic period, both as an endonym and in reference to a region called Aryavarta (Sanskrit: आर्यावर्त, lit. 'Land of the Aryans'), where their culture emerged.[5] Similarly, according to the Avesta, the Iranian peoples used the term to designate themselves as an ethnic group and to refer to a region called Airyanem Vaejah (Avestan: 𐬀𐬫𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀𐬥𐬆𐬨 𐬬𐬀𐬉𐬘𐬀𐬵, lit. 'Expanse of the Arya'), which was their mythical homeland.[6][7] The word stem also forms the etymological source of place names like Alania (*Aryāna) and Iran (*Aryānām).[8]

Then Western Europe saw this and misunderstood it to make racist conclusions that led to Nazism.

In the 1850s, the French diplomat and writer Arthur de Gobineau brought forth the idea of the "Aryan race", essentially claiming that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were superior specimens of humans and that their descendants comprised either a distinct racial group or a distinct sub-group of the hypothetical Caucasian race. Through the work of his later followers, such as the British-German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau's theory proved to be particularly popular among European racial supremacists and ultimately laid the foundation for Nazi racial theories, which also co-opted the concept of scientific racism.[13]

[–] Uruanna 4 points 12 hours ago

So, I've never seen any research bring it up, but I've always been curious about the connection with Arianism.

Arianism and Aryanism have nothing to do with each other, and the names are pure coincidence (Arianism was literally named after some dude), but the whole "divine race" concept seems to come straight out of it. Arianism is the Christian interpretation that got Germanic tribes to join Christianity back in the 3rd to 6th centuries because it resembled their own theology the most - that kings were descendants of gods, a concept that does originate in a common Proto-Indo-European mytheme.

All I'm saying is, I wouldn't be surprised if we found out one day that one of those 1850s guys heard about Arianism giving a divine origin in their bloodline and mixed it up with Aryanism. Wagner was heavily into Germanic mythology too, he knew that Norse and Germanic myths said that kings were the children of Norse gods, and he's one of the leading names in Aryanism. Ignoring the name resemblance, the concept is definitely there. Meanwhile, actual Aryan populations have nothing to do with a divine origin or racial superiority, beside the perceived connection to an older race, which these guys interpreted as natural racial superiority. But I've never seen anyone bring up the coincidence.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

And the media I referenced got it from the Nazis and ran with because they either agreed with their conclusions or appreciated the method of coercion?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

At that time racial differences were a respected part of biomedical field

That's why also tried to come up with measurements for classification of people - like craniometry, in which the characteristics of the skull was measured

The idea was, that every race has different abilities and so on.

So at that time, they build up on some widely believed pseudo science