Arthur de Gobineau

From Freepedia

Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (July 14, 1816 - October 13, 1882) was a French aristocrat who became famous for advocating White Supremacy and developing the theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855).

Gobineau was a successful diplomat whose career in Iran influenced the development of his ideas. He came to believe that race created culture, arguing that that distinctions between the three "black", "white", and "yellow" races are natural barriers, and that race-mixing breaks those barriers and leads to chaos. Gobineau's tripartite division of human populations corresponds to the categories of Negroid {black}, Caucasoid {white}, and Mongoloid {yellow}. He believed that the white race is superior to the others and that it corresponds to the ancient Indo-European culture also known as "Aryan".

In Gobineau's view the development of empires was ultimately destructive to the "superior" races that created them, since they led to the mixing of distinct races, which led to the 'degeneration' of the superior races. He called this process Semiticization, because of his belief that Semitic peoples were a product of the Middle-Eastern cross-over between the otherwise distinct three races. Because he believed Semitic peoples to be a cross between white, black, and yellow racial elements, Gobineau considered Arabs and Jews to be at the bottom of the racial ladder, in contrast to later racial theorists such as Madison Grant, who believed black Negroids to be the most primitive race. Gobineau also considered Nordic peoples to be the "purest" and fairest whites, and so to be superior to other Caucasians, laying the foundations for the Nordic theory.

He is also known to Bahá'is as the person who obtained the only complete manuscript of the early history of the Bábí religious movement of Persia, written by Hâjji Mirza Jân of Kashan who was put to death by the Persian authorities in c.1852. The manuscript is now in the public library: the Bibliothèque nationale at Paris.

Gobineau also wrote novels, notably Les Pléiades (1874). His study La Renaissance (1877) was also admired in his day. Both of these works strongly expressed his reactionary aristocratic politics, and his hatred of democratic mass culture.

Gobineau believed himself to be the descendant of Nordic Vikings and Condottieri.