The American Right and the Aryan Phoenix
Conservative talk show host Michael Medved would have been a darling of the Third Reich. Yes, I know, he’s a Jew - what could possibly have endeared him to the likes of Hitler and Goering? How about Medved’s take on nationalism and racial superiority?
Mr. Medved has recently written an article, Respecting - And Recognizing - American D.N.A., espousing the idea that there is a unique and identifiable American genotype and that it is superior to other human genotypes.
In today’s ruthlessly competitive international economy, the United States may benefit from a potent but unheralded advantage: the aggressive edge sustained by the inherited power of American DNA.
If this idea sounds familiar it’s because it’s not new. The Nazis espoused the same concept with their belief in the Aryan master race. Like the Nazis, Medved thinks that other races, other genotypes, are inferior. He even goes so far as to use the idea of a superior American genotype to explain "our most persistent and painful racial divide."
Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.
Medved advances the notion that the racial divide between blacks and whites is not a matter of centuries of slavery, brutality, prejudice, deprivation and discrimination. Instead he proffers the explanation that blacks in America are descended from inferior genetic stock - unlike the rest of the American population.
What makes Medved even scarier - apart from being a racist - is his attempt to tie racial superiority to nationalism just as the Nazis did. In Michael Medved’s worldview, America’s position as a global hyperpower is not due to chance or circumstance. America is on top because we are the master race, the inheritors of a superior genotype.
In recent years I have jokingly referred to the American right as the Reichwing. It seems I may have unwittingly stumbled onto the truth. With people like Michael Medved espousing Hitlerian concepts of national and racial superiority, one can only wonder how long before we hear cries from the right for lebensraum.