ABSTRACT

Wulf D. Hund addresses the long history of racism, and how its different forms of discrimination against ‘barbaric,’ ‘impure,’ ‘pagan,’ ‘savage,’ and ‘racialized’ ‘others' went along with various forms of dehumanization. The leveling of the social differentiation of its victims was common to all of these processes. The others were treated as an amorphous mass of inferior others. In comparison to them, the members of hierarchically structured societies could (and still can) imagine themselves as a superior community. This form of a shared identity does not delete the conditions of social domination and subordination in racist societies. As negative societalization, it establishes social affiliation by the degradation and exclusion of racially stigmatized others. The chapter discusses this correlation using the examples of four different forms of racist discrimination: ancient slavery, early modern antisemitism, enlightened race theory, and racist fascism.