Theories of racial supremacy 240x240px|Arthur de Gobineau Arthur de Gobineau, the author of the influential Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853), viewed the white or Aryan race as the only civilized one, and conceived cultural decline and miscegenation as intimately intertwined. According to him, northern Europeans had migrated across the world and founded the major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with indigenous populations described as racially inferior, leading to the progressive decay of the ancient Aryan civilizations. In 1878, German American anthropologist Theodor Poesche published a survey of historical references attempting to demonstrate that the Aryans were light-skinned blue-eyed blonds. The use of Arier to mean 'non-Jewish' seems to have first occurred in 1887, when a Viennese physical fitness society decided to allow as members only "Germans of Aryan descent" (Deutsche arischer Abkunft). In The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), described as "one of the most important proto-Nazi texts", British-German writer Houston Chamberlain theorized an existential struggle to death between a superior German-Aryan race and a destructive Jewish-Semitic race. The best-seller The Passing of the Great Race, published by American writer Madison Grant in 1916, warns of a danger of miscegenation with the immigrant "inferior races" – including speakers of Indo-European languages such as Slavs , Italians and Yiddish-speaking Jews – allegedly faced by the "racially superior" Germanic Aryans, that is Americans of English, German and Scandinavian descent.
Theories of racial supremacy 240x240px|Arthur de Gobineau Arthur de Gobineau, the author of the influential Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853), viewed the white or Aryan race as the only civilized one, and conceived cultural decline and miscegenation as intimately intertwined. According to him, northern Europeans had migrated across the world and founded the major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with indigenous populations described as racially inferior, leading to the progressive decay of the ancient Aryan civilizations. In 1878, German American anthropologist Theodor Poesche published a survey of historical references attempting to demonstrate that the Aryans were light-skinned blue-eyed blonds. The use of Arier to mean 'non-Jewish' seems to have first occurred in 1887, when a Viennese physical fitness society decided to allow as members only "Germans of Aryan descent" (Deutsche arischer Abkunft). In The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), described as "one of the most important proto-Nazi texts", British-German writer Houston Chamberlain theorized an existential struggle to death between a superior German-Aryan race and a destructive Jewish-Semitic race. The best-seller The Passing of the Great Race, published by American writer Madison Grant in 1916, warns of a danger of miscegenation with the immigrant "inferior races" – including other Indo-Europeans (Slavs and Italians), as well as Jews – allegedly faced by the "racially superior" Germanic Aryans, that is Americans of English, German and Scandinavian descent.
R
speakers of Indo-European languages such as Slavs , Italians and Yiddish-speaking
other Indo-Europeans (Slavs and Italians), as well as