We have to be ignorant or prejudiced not to see it: Nazism contains within it, for reasons that are in no way accidental, the beginnings of an authentic concern for preserving "natural," which is to say, here again, "original" peoples. In the chapter devoted to this subject in his book, Walther Schoenichen cannot find words harsh enough to condemn the attitude of "the white man, the great destroyer of creation": in the paradise he himself is responsible for losing, he has paved only a path of "epidemics, thievery, fires, blood and tears!" "Indeed, the enslavement of primitive peoples in the 'cultural' history of the white race constitutes one of its most shameful chapters, which is not only streaked with rivers of blood, but of cruelty and torture of the worst kind. And its final pages were not written in the distant past, but at the beginning of the twentieth century." Schoenichen proceeds to trace, with great precision, the list of the various genocides that have occurred throughout the history of colonialization, from the massacre of the South American Indians to that of the Sioux--who "were pushed back in unthinkable conditions of cruelty and infamy"--and the South African bushmen. The case of the latter is particularly symbolic of the misdeeds of liberal capitalism: they were killed because they had no notion of ownership. Game having disappeared from their region, this hunting people was forced to "steal" goats belonging to the colonists--the word "steal" must be placed in quotes, since bushmen had no concept of private property. And as they were thrown into prison without any idea of what was happening to them, they allowed themselves to die of starvation: "Thus an interesting people was exterminated before our very eyes, simply because an exogenous policy imposed on the indigenous population refused to understand that these men could not abandon their hunting lives to become farmers from one day to the next..." This indictment, written in 1942 by a Nazi biologist who saw the Naturschutzgesetz as a means to remedy these misdeeds (does it not protect all forms of wild life?), is not without interest. Its designated target is liberalism and, more specifically, French-style republicanism. But it also has a positive goal: to defend the rights of nature in all its forms, human and nonhuman, so long as they are representative of an original state (Urspriinglichkeit). On the first point, Schoenichen's attacks are clear. They throw in question capitalism's greed. For in the context of a different world vision, it "would have been entirely possible to find a reasonable compromise between the claims of the conquerors and the basic needs of the primitive peoples. It is primarily the liberal vision of the world that is responsible for having stood in the way of such a solution. For it recognizes no motivation other than economic profitability, which raises to the level of a moral principle the exploitation of the colonies for the sole benefit of the mother country." This naturally provides an occasion to assail the French theory of assimilation, which is, according to Schoenichen, "drawn directly from the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789. Thus "the old liberal theory of exploitation always constituted the backdrop for French colonial policy, so that there was no room for a treatment of primitive peoples that tended in the direction of the protection of nature." In opposition to this "assimilationist" vision of the primitive state, Nazi policy advocates an authentic recognition of differences: "The natural policy for National Socialism to follow is clear. The policy of repression and extermination, the models for which are furnished by the early days of America or Australia, are just as unthinkable as the French theory of assimilation. Rather it is appropriate for the natives to flourish in conformity with their own racial stock." It is necessary then, in all cases, to leave the natives to their own development. The only recommendation, which according to Schoenichen is obvious "from the point of view of a National Socialist vision of the world" is the prohibition against mixed marriages, precisely because they imply the disappearance of differences and the uniformization of the human race. Now as before, the extreme Right assails inbreeding in all of its forms, assigning to ecology the task of "defending identity," which is to say "preserving the ethnic, cultural and natural milieux" of peoples--beginning, of course, with one's own: "Why fight for the preservation of animal species while accepting the disappearance of human races through widespread inbreeding. Indeed... Like the aesthetics of sentiment and deep ecology, which also place new value on primitive peoples, mountain folk, or Amerindians, the National Socialist conception of ecology encompasses the notion that the Naturviilker, the "natural peoples," achieve a perfect harmony between their surroundings and their customs. This is even the most certain sign of the superiority of their ways over the liberal world of uprootedness and perpetual mobility. Their culture, similar to animal ways of life, is a prolongation of nature; it is this ideal conciliation that the modernity issued from the French Revolution has destroyed and which it is now a matter of restoring. (Luc Ferry, "The New Ecological Order," p.103-105 Ferry is a philosophy professor at the Sorbonne. David Harvey credits him in "Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference" as helping to prove that the "Nazis were the first radical environmentalists" in the 20th century.) Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
