ABSTRACT
By the end of the nineteenth century, social Darwinist (see Box 9.3) accounts of social behaviour, including politics, particularly when related to an imperialist project, produced a quite different state form. Such prescriptions produced an exclusive citizenry. Here states were defined by the exclusion of particular groups from membership of that state. This logic proved to be a particularly efficient populist model for legitimating state form, particularly as the basis of political power slipped away from small elites to rest upon the masses. The efficiency came from the idea’s emotional and intellectual appeal – and an ability to cut across otherwise divisive categories, like social class and economic wellbeing. This efficiency led to gains in the ease with which political legitimacy could be maintained, with failure being attributed to ‘outsiders’ or those within who did not really belong. Politicians were quick to exploit the authority that came with nationalism and no earlier ideologies of the state escaped contact with it unscathed. What social Darwinism additionally offered was an organic view of the state with the irresistible imperative that it was ‘natural’. This imperative extended to the hierarchical classification of ‘races’ with the subsequent outcome of differential rights to citizenship. This ideology is seen clearly in imperialism and developed its most dangerous and murderous form in the Holocaust.
