Talk:Arthur de Gobineau

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However, it is interesting to notice that the Nazis used his book but edited the part about the Jewish people.The Nazis of course, were not to happy to realize Gobineau did not agree with their Jewish race theory.The Jews are not and will never be a race of thei own.Jews are caucasian in the broad sense of the term.But biologically speaking, there are no races.In fact a norwegian girl could be genetically closer to an Nigerian woman, than to a Swedish teenager.

Is his firstname Arthur or Joseph or Joseph-Arthur?

Joseph Arthur from my source Nagelfar 08:08, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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From the article:

He came to believe that race created culture, rather than the reverse.

I've removed the bold partion above, as it makes absolutely no sense to me. Does it mean that the popular opinion at the time was that the culture of a specific country basically determined the skin color of its inhabitants, or what? —Gabbe 23:11, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 ? 2 Gobineau was a racist but not an anti-semite 3 Moved from main article space 4 WikiProject class rating 5 Neutrality?

[edit] ?

i can't help but wonder: what proportion of the french have predominantly nordic blood? i've always been under the impression that a huge proportion of them DON'T. Gringo300 10:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• There is no such thing as 'nordic blood'. Race is a predominantly cultural construction, not a biological one. Opinions to the contrary are held by nutters. Squiddy 01:10, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gobineau was a racist but not an anti-semite

In his most well known book, The Inequality of the Human Races, he speaks of the Jewish people as "succeeding in all it undertook...who gave the world as many learned men as merchants." And there's more along those lines. I haven't come across disparaging comments about either Jews or Arabs in Gobineau. Can somone tell me where his reputation as an anti-semite comes from? Or is it conflated with his racism, generally?Madmax5 16:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to report that he wasn't so enlightened about Jews and Arabs. He did not dislike them much MORE than other "non-Aryan" races, and certainly never talked about a Jewish problem or advocated genocide. He did, however, portray them as greedy, miserly, and untrustworthy, and did speak of them as a race in a derogatory fashion. We read Gobineau's correspondence from Aden in my French Orientalism class... I'll try to find the quotes for this page. Mkmo (talk) 15:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Moved from main article space

Interesting passage:

Arthur de Gobineau - the French writer and diplomat is the one who convinced Wagner of the importance of racial purity, the central concept of his famous and infamous ESSAY ON THE INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES. Note however that Gobineau wasn't a racist in the usual sense (he regarded the process of universal miscegenation as irreversible) and even less of an antisemite. (He actually regarded the Jewish people as aristocrats, an ethnic group that had succeeded more than most in preserving its original character through endogamy.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.139.103.158 (talk • contribs).

Gobineu actually thought that the Finns in Finland were mongoloids having compared a skull of a Finn, a Lapp and a Mongol. He never visited the country, but was able to describe Finns as "yellow", short, dark-haired, squinty eyed.

Why I brought this up was, that the illustrative map does not show this and the quotes I've read clearly show that he believed that short, dark, Asians populated Finland.

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality?

In the "Miscellaneous" section of the article: "Gobinwau was also a great philhellene. He wrote an excellent work about the original Greek State, the To the Kingdom of the Greeks in the end of the 19th century". It clearly says that he wrote an excellent work, and that is the authors personal view of the text that De Gobineau wrote.