Comment by Reasoning | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Reasoning | Hacker News Reader

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From contemporary ethnologists who used the term to refer to the proto-indo-europeans? Because the term aryan is common amongst the languages descended from the proto-indo-european language (Arya, Iran, Alans, Arios)?

Nazi philosophy grew out of 19th century ethnology which was heavily influenced by Darwinism. They believed the proto-indo-european ("Aryan") homeland was in northern Europe and that the spread of "Aryan" language was do to "Aryan" immigration to those regions and that in ancient times those regions were led by an "Aryan" "master race" who ruled over the "lesser races" do to their natural superior genes developed through generations of natural selection in the harsh northern climate.

To be clear, I believe that is all BS but I wrote all that to clarify that the Nazis didn't steal the term Aryan from the Hindu, it's a term used by the Indo-Iranians to self-designate which was erroneously misattributed to the proto-indo-europeans by early European ethnologists.

So Hitler was jealous of the fact that the Romance speakers had history and the Germanic speakers didn't. And he solved that problem by appropriating the history of India and claiming it was also the history of the Germans. He used Indian symbols and Indian words.

But that doesn't mean that he took them from India? That's crazy. What else would you say he did? That they were from India was the point. Without their Indian identity, they would have failed to serve his purpose of giving a history to the Germans.

You are missing Reasoning's point (although I think you're right about the Nazis needing to create or appropriate some other people's heritage). 'Aryan' was a linguistic term previously mistakenly used to mean Proto-Indo-European. Hitler didn't personally invent Nazi master-race ideology and look to India, it's a small pseudo-intellectual extension of (European) 19th/early 20th century ethnology and eugenics, and that's a very important distinction to make, to understand how the Nazi came to believe what they did through a product of many often-plausible steps and all-too-common character flaws, not through one man.

> You are missing Reasoning's point

Note that the comment here is from HK-NC:

>>> I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.

You're saying I shouldn't be reading this as a claim that the Nazi swastika was an indigenous development, unrelated to the Indian symbol despite the fact that it symbolized an official ideology naming the Indians as a sister tribe to the Germans and adopting the tribal name of the Indians for the Germans, and the fact that it was referred to by its Sanskrit name?

> Hitler didn't personally invent Nazi master-race ideology and look to India

Why is this relevant? He is the one who adopted the ideology on behalf of the German state.

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