Dienekes deconstructs pan-European racialists. He points out the problems caused by centers of reference and drawing lines on an arbitrary basis (or being influenced by non-anthropological criteria). To be mislabelled is a common occurance for many people, and if an individual of group A can confuse someone of group B as one of their own (or vice versa), then there needs to be a closer examination of the basis for any given taxonomic division.
If the oldest European civilizations were situated in the heart of Europe, in the region of modern Bavaria, Austria and Bohemia, the pan-European racialists would have a much easier time. They could dismiss Greeks as peripheral and only marginally European. Unfortunately, Greece serves as one of the main taproots for western culture, and the deepest to boot. The Romans, who served as models for European states and empire-builders for 2,000 years were also a southron people, though probably somewhat more physically diverse [1]. Northern & central Europeans can not cut the southerners off from the movement with any ease simply because much of what makes Europe what it is came from the south (Christian religion primarily, but also Civil Law, and inspiration for the Renaissance). On the other hand, Europeans with less historical heft can be demonized, so the Russians have often been portrayed as semi-Asiatic in nature to explain their despotic traditions and alien ways. Similarly, even the Germans were depicted as “Huns,” harking back to a people of Oriental origins and pagan brutality.
Minor note: I’ve been linking a lot to Dienekes, so much that some will accuse me of being a Hellenic stooge! In fact, I think that the Perl editor I used to use was made by a Greek company…connections, connections. So I offer this link Pontikos Exposed, brought to you by your local anti-Mud Clearinghouse Stormfront. To be fair, I do think Dienekes is a bit of a Hellenophile who tends to see his own people as the apex of creation (and can’t help but get some swipes in at “Nordicists” and rehash ancient ideas of his people being the Golden Mean), but, he is a Greek-and they frankly have a lot to be proud of. When was the last time you heard a Greek claiming that The Pharoh was an Achaean or that an ancient Indian philosopher had an Athenian father? They don’t need to do that, not when you have 3,500 years (minus a Dark Age) of literate history to draw upon. Contrast this with the Hinduvata movement that has a bizarre tendency to always assert somehow that “it all started in India,” (the ludicrous claims about nuclear weapons in ancient India as recorded by the Mahabharata). I can give Afro-centrists some slack for claiming Hannibal and Rameses II as “great black men” because black Africa had little in the way of literate centralized statecraft and if you need to believe your ancestors were great builders of cities but they were mostly at a pre-literate neolithic level, some white lies are understandable. But folk of the land of The Kama Sutra (brown people having sex-yuck!) shouldn’t need to resort to fantasy and falsehood. True, they were running around half-naked before my paternal grandfather’s foreskinless forbears came sweeping down out of the highlands of Turan introducing prudery, but those ornate temples with golden calfs required a great deal of taxation, alms and general injustice and despotism, so Indians can be proud, tyranny is part of their patrimony (and the idols melted so well, all the better to make ingots that could finance the building of clean mosques!) . No need to go one up everyone and claim that they had their hands on nuclear weapons before whitey!
[1] Dienekes has a fair take down of John V. Day’s contention that the proto-Indo-Europeans were fair-haired peoples who were later absorbed by swarthy indigenes in the ancient world. Dienekes criticises Day for noting the first 19 Roman Emperors as being rather light in color compared to what we perceive Italians to be, for of course, many of these individuals were related and so would not be a random sample of the Roman elite. The first five were members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caesars gens, the Julii, were notoriously fair-haired, as Gauis Julius Caesar himself was. Augustus had reddish blonde hair while the last of his line, Nero, was also a blonde. Of the later Emperors, none of them were from old Roman stock (from the patrician & plebian nobility of the City), so to use them as exemplars of the Aryan ideal among the Latins is somewhat peculiar (there were still some non-Indo-European tribes in Italy during the late Republic aside from the Etruscans, so “Latin” was still a far narrower term in that age). The Flavians were Italian lumpen by origin (and related, father and two sons). The Antonines were of mixed provenance, but they were all provincials after Nerva, Roman stock mixed with Spanish and Gaulish (and related by marriage and extended family ties). I don’t wish to harp on this point, but I do simply because 19 is a small sample. That they were mostly related and most of the later ones were not by blood connected to the ancient Roman aristocracy makes Day’s point rather mute. And why did Day stop at Commodus? Well, after a period of chaos, the Libyan-Syrian dynasty of the Severrans comes to the for, so this was the point with Mr. Day probably would want to draw the line (They were of polygot partial Italian origin as well, but the busts of Septimius Severus seem to indicate he would not stand out in modern day Tripoli as far as features go). He isn’t as extreme as Afro-Centrists trying to prove that the Sumerians were black because they called themselves the “black-headed people,” but I certainly knew what his conclusion was going to be (The essay was an interesting read of course)….
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