Lothrop Stoddard

Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (born June 29, 1883 in Brookline , Massachusetts , † May 1, 1950 in Washington, DC ) was an American historian and journalist . He wrote some sensational and high-circulation books in which he formulated civilizational doom scenarios on the basis of racial assumptions. Stoddard campaigned for a more restrictive immigration policy in the USA, propagated racial segregation , anti-Semitism and eugenics . He is considered one of profiliertesten American racists of the 20th century and was also attended by leading Nazis called as an influence. Stoddard was also a director and co-founder of the American Birth Control League .

life and work

The son of travel writer John Lawson Stoddard completed his college education at Harvard . He studied law at Boston University until 1908 , but only practiced briefly. In 1914 he earned a doctorate in history from Harvard University with a thesis on the French Revolution in Santo Domingo . In it he described the "annihilation" of the white settlers by their slaves, who had been incited by the egalitarian ideals of the revolution. He saw this conflict of the late 18th century as a sign of modernity.

Stoddard devoted the rest of his life to his work as a journalist and publicist. From 1918 to 1920 he was the foreign policy editor of World's Work Magazine . After his first book successes, he worked as a freelance author. In his writings on race theory, he oriented himself primarily to Madison Grant , with whom he was in close contact. He took over entire passages from Grant's main work The Passing of the Great Race in his own writings, but saw himself less committed to the “Nordic idea” and more concerned with international perspectives. In his best-known book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920), Stoddard warned of an imminent population explosion of the “colored” races, which would call “white” world domination into question. The "yellow races" - Japanese and Chinese - who have never allowed themselves to be subjugated by whites, are particularly dangerous. A "flood of inferior races" will pour over the home countries of the "Nordic". The elimination or absorption of the "white race" will mean the end of Western civilization.

The distribution of races according to L. Stoddard, a schematic map from The Rising Tide of Color

Stoddard wrote over twenty books that caused a sensation, especially in the 1920s, in connection with the discussion about restricting immigration to the United States. Alongside Grant, he is considered an important intellectual pioneer of the Immigration Act of 1924 . Grant and Stoddard influenced a number of popular authors such as Kenneth Roberts and Edgar Rice Burroughs . During the 1960s, they were important references for opponents of the American civil rights movement and are still well received by white Suprematists in the USA to this day. Stoddard's works are also read by right-wing and neo-racist groups as commitments to “Pan-Arianism” and criticism of globalization . In this context, Stoddard's book The New World of Islam (1921) has become popular again, in which he warns against fanatical Islam as a threat to the Western world.

Like Grant, Stoddard was committed to eugenics. He was a member of the Eugenics Record Office and, as a hardliner, advocated negative eugenic measures such as sterilization. He was appointed to the board of the American Birth Control League by Margaret Sanger . He was also a member of the American Historical Association and the American Political Science Association and other organizations.

Stoddard is also considered to be an important key word for German National Socialism . Not only did he regard Jews as a separate “bastard” race and a danger to European civilization: In his book The Revolt Against Civilization. The Menace of the Under Man (1922; Eng. The cultural overthrow. The threat of the sub-human , 1925) he identified Bolshevism with a racially defined Judaism and this in turn with the "sub-human". Alfred Rosenberg took up this link in The Myth of the 20th Century , so that the "Untermensch" became a National Socialist catchphrase. Stoddard's work was named as inspiration not least by authors such as Hans FK Günther and described as groundbreaking for German compulsory sterilization legislation.

In 1940 Stoddard traveled to National Socialist Germany for four months as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance . He received preferential treatment, met Adolf Hitler , Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler , among others , and attended sessions of the Hereditary Health Supreme Court in Berlin-Charlottenburg . His experiences and experiences also led him to the conclusion that the “Jewish question” in Germany would soon be resolved “by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich” (= by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich ) .

His close ties to National Socialism ruined Stoddard's reputation after the end of World War II. From then on he wrote political comments and contributions for the Washington Star . His death from cancer on May 1, 1950, attracted little attention.

The Great Gatsby

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald , Tom Buchanan mentions the fictional work "'The Rise of the Colored Empires' by this man Goddard". This is considered an allusion to Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy .

"Civilization goes to the dogs," Tom burst out passionately. "I've become a terribly pessimist lately. Have you read 'The Rise of the Colored Peoples' from this Goddard?"
"No," I replied, a little amazed at his tone.
"Well, this is a good book and everyone should read it. If we're not careful, the thesis goes, will - will the white race be completely subjugated. It's all scientific; all proven."
"Tom's getting more and more profound lately," Daisy said with an expression of thoughtless sadness. "He reads clever books with long words in them. What kind of word was that we -"
"Well, they're all science books," repeated Tom, glaring at her. "The fellow has researched the whole thing thoroughly. We, the ruling race, have to be careful that the other races don't take power one day."
"We have to knock them down," Daisy whispered, blinking wildly in the blazing sun. "

- F. Scott Fitzgerald : The Great Gatsby , Zurich 2007, p. 25.

Publications

• The French Revolution in San Domingo , New York 1914.
• Present-Day Europe. Its National States of Mind , New York 1917.
• The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy , New York 1920.
• The New World of Islam , Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1921. Digitized
• The Revolt Against Civilization. The Menace of the Under Man , New York 1922. (German version: Der Kulturumsturz. The threat of the Untermenschen , Munich 1925.)
• Racial Realities in Europe , New York 1924.
• Social Classes in Post-War Europe , New York 1925.
• The Story of Youth , New York 1928.
• Luck, Your Silent Partner , New York 1929.
• Master of Manhattan. The Life of Richard Croker , London 1931.
• Lonely America , Garden City 1932.
• Clashing Tides of Color , New York 1935.
• Into the Darkness - Nazi-Germany Today , New York 1940.

Quotes

"This worldview of the subhuman is called Bolshevism today ."

- Lothrop Stoddard : The cultural revolution. The threat of subhuman . Translated by W. Heise 1925, p. 127.

"The (German) sterilization court eradicates the bad dispositions in the Germanic race in a scientific and truly humane way."

- Lothrop Stoddard : Into the Darkness - Nazi Germany Today .

literature

• Christian Geulen: Culture's Shadow. Race and Postnational Belonging in the Twentieth Century ; in: Manfred Berg, Simon Wendt (Eds.): Racism in the Modern World. Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation , New York 2011, pp. 65–83.
• Jonathan Peter Spiro: Defending the Master Race. Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant , Lebanon 2009.

See also

• Madison Grant
• White supremacy

Web links

• Literature by and about Lothrop Stoddard in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Margaret Sanger Papers Project . In: NYU.edu , accessed February 2, 2019.
2. ^ Dona Schneider, David E. Lilienfeld: Public Health: The Development of a Discipline . Rutgers University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8135-4232-4 , p. 621.
3. ^ Spiro: Master Race , pp. 264f.
4. ^ Christian Geulen: Culture's Shadow. , P. 65f.
5. ^ Zachary Lockman: Contending Visions of the Middle East. The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge 2004, p. 100.
6. ^ Mike Hawkins: Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945. Nature as Model and Nature as Threat . Cambridge 1997, pp. 244-246.
7. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism . Berlin 1998, p. 620.
8. ^ Spiro: Master Race , pp. 356-362.
9. ^ Spiro: Master Race , p. 374.
10. ↑ The book was reprinted in German with a different subtitle in 2002 by the publishing house of the right-wing extremist Association for German God Knowledge .
11. ↑ cit. after Spiro: Master Race , p. 374.