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Supremacism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people should have supreme authority over all others.[1] The presumed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nationality, culture, generation or belong to any other part of a particular population.

Sexual

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Male

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Some feminist theorists[2] have argued that in patriarchy, a standard of male "supremacism" is enforced through a variety of cultural, political, religious, sexual, and interpersonal strategies.[2][3] Since the 19th century there have been a number of feminist movements opposed to male supremacism, usually aimed at achieving equal legal rights and protections for women in all cultural, political and interpersonal relations.[4][5][6]

Female

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Misandry (/mɪsˈændri/) is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys.[7][8]

Racial

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White

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Centuries of European colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Australia, Oceania, and Asia were sometimes justified by white supremacist attitudes.[9] White Americans who participated in the Atlantic slave trade tried to justify their economic exploitation of African Americans by creating a scientific theory of white superiority and black inferiority.[10] Thomas Jefferson, believer in scientific racism and enslaver of over 600 African Americans (regarded as property under the Articles of Confederation),[11] wrote that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind."[12]

A justification for the conquest of American Indian tribes emanated from their dehumanized perception as the "merciless Indian savages", as described in the United States Declaration of Independence.[13][14]

During the 19th century, "The White Man's Burden", the phrase which refers to the thought that whites have the obligation to make the societies of the other peoples more 'civilized', was widely used to justify imperialist policies as a noble enterprise.[15][16] Thomas Carlyle, known for his historical account of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: A History, argued that European supremacist policies were justified on the grounds that they provided the greatest benefit to "inferior" native peoples.[17] However, even at the time of its publication in 1849, Carlyle's main work on the subject, the Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, was poorly received by his contemporaries.[18]

Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America was founded with a constitution that contained clauses which restricted the government's ability to limit or interfere with the institution of "negro" slavery.[19] In the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declared that one of the Confederacy's foundational tenets was white supremacy over African American slaves.[20] Following the war, a secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, was founded in the American South. Its purpose was to maintain white, Protestant supremacy in the US after the Reconstruction period, which it did so through violence and intimidation.[21]

According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism can be distinguished from racial antisemitism which is based on racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion ... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."[22]

One of the first typologies which was used to classify various human races was invented by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a theoretician of eugenics, who published L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899 – "The Aryan and his social role") in 1899. In his book, he divides humanity into various, hierarchical races, starting with the highest race which is the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", and ending with the lowest race which is the "brachycephalic", "mediocre and inert" race, that race is best represented by Southern European, Catholic peasants".[23] Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "Homo europaeus" (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Neapolitan, Andalus, etc.) Jews were brachycephalic just like the Aryans were, according to Lapouge; but he considered them dangerous for this exact reason; they were the only group, he thought, which was threatening to displace the Aryan aristocracy.[24] Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirations of Nazi antisemitism and Nazi racist ideology.[25]

The Anti-Defamation League[26] (ADL) and Southern Poverty Law Center[27] condemn writings about "Jewish Supremacism" by Holocaust-denier, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, and conspiracy theorist David Duke as antisemitic – in particular, his book Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question.[28] Kevin B. MacDonald, known for his theory of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy", has also been accused of being "antisemitic" and white supremacist in his writings on the subject by the ADL[29] and his own university psychology department.[30]

Nazi Germany

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From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, promoted the belief in the existence of a superior, Aryan Herrenvolk, or master race. The state's propaganda advocated the belief that Germanic peoples, whom they called "Aryans", were a master race or a Herrenvolk whose members were superior to the Jews, Slavs, and Romani people, so-called "gypsies". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial intermixing, which he believed had destroyed the purity of the Nordic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a large and strong following in Germany, emphasized the belief in the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan and Jewish cultures.[31]

Russian

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Great Russian chauvinism (Russian: великорусский шовинизм) is a term defined by the early Soviet government officials, most notably Vladimir Lenin, to describe an ideology of the "dominant exploiting classes of the nation, holding a dominant (sovereign) position in the state, declaring their nation as the "superior nation". Lenin promoted an idea for the Bolshevik party to defend the right of oppressed nations within the former Russian Empire to self-determination and equality as well as the language-rights movement of the newly formed republics.

Black

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Cornel West, an African-American philosopher, writes that black supremacist religious views arose in America as a part of black Muslim theology in response to white supremacism.[32]

Hutu supremacism

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Hutu Power is an ethnic supremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutu, often in the context of being superior to Tutsi and Twa, and therefore, they are entitled to dominate and murder these two groups and other minorities. Espoused by Hutu extremists, widespread support for the ideology led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and the members of their families, the moderate Hutu who opposed the killings, and the Twa, who were considered traitors. Hutu Power political parties and movements included the Akazu, the Parmehutu, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic and its Impuzamugambi paramilitary militia, and the governing National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and its Interahamwe paramilitary militia. The belief in the theory that Hutu people are superior is most common in Rwanda and Burundi, where they make up the majority of the population. Due to its sheer destructiveness, the ideology has been compared to Nazism in the Western world.[33]

Arab

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In Africa, black Southern Sudanese allege that they are being subjected to a racist form of Arab supremacy, which they equate with the historic white supremacism of South Africa's apartheid.[34] The alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing in the ongoing War in Darfur has been described as an example of Arab racism.[35] For example, in their analysis of the sources of the conflict, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal say that Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, sponsored "Arab supremacism" across the Sahara during the 1970s. Gaddafi supported the "Islamic Legion" and the Sudanese opposition "National Front, including the Muslim Brothers and the Ansar, the Umma Party's military wing." Gaddafi tried to use such forces to annex Chad from 1979–81. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government's war in the South during the early 1980s, and in return, he was allowed to use the Darfur region as a "back door to Chad". As a result, the first signs of an "Arab racist political platform" appeared in Darfur in the early 1980s.[36]

Indian

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In Asia, Indians in Ancient India considered all foreigners barbarians. The Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians called foreigners impure.[37] A few centuries later, Dubois observes that "Hindus look upon Europeans as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good breeding... In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcaste) and a European are on the same level."[37] The Chinese also considered the Europeans repulsive, ghost-like creatures, and they even considered them devils. Chinese writers also referred to foreigners as barbarians.[38]

Chinese

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Sinocentrism refers to a worldview that China is the cultural, political, or economic center of the world.[39] Sinocentrism was a core concept in various Chinese dynasties. The Chinese considered themselves to be "all-under-Heaven", ruled by the emperor, known as Son of Heaven. Those that lived outside of the Huaxia were regarded as "barbarians". In addition, states outside of China, such as Japan or Korea, were considered to be vassals of China.[40]

Religious

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Christian

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Academics Carol Lansing and Edward D. English argue that Christian supremacism was a motivation for the Crusades in the Holy Land, as well as a motivation for crusades against Muslims and pagans throughout Europe.[41] The blood libel is a widespread European conspiracy theory which led to centuries of pogroms and massacres of European Jewish minorities because it alleged that Jews required the pure blood of a Christian child in order to make matzah for Passover. Thomas of Cantimpré writes of the blood curse which the Jews put upon themselves and all of their generations at the court of Pontius Pilate where Jesus was sentenced to death: "A very learned Jew, who in our day has been converted to the (Christian) faith, informs us that one enjoying the reputation of a prophet among them, toward the close of his life, made the following prediction: 'Be assured that relief from this secret ailment, to which you are exposed, can only be obtained through Christian blood ("solo sanguine Christiano")."[42] The Atlantic slave trade has also been partially attributed to Christian supremacism.[43] The Ku Klux Klan has been described as a white supremacist Christian organization, as are many other white supremacist groups, such as the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity and Positive Christianity movements.[44][45]

Islamic

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Academics Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ian Lague, and Joshua Cone note that, while the Quran and other Islamic scriptures express tolerant beliefs, such as Al-Baqara 256 "there is no compulsion in religion",[46] there have also been numerous instances of Muslim or Islamic supremacism.[47] Examples of how supremacists have interpreted Islam include the history of slavery in the Muslim world, Caliphate,[48] Ottoman Empire, the early-20th-century pan-Islamism promoted by Abdul Hamid II,[49] the jizya and supremacy of Sharia law, such as rules of marriage in Muslim countries being imposed on non-Muslims.[50]

While non-violent proselytism of Islam (Dawah) is not Islamic supremacism, forced conversion to Islam is Islamic supremacism.[51][52] Death penalty for apostasy in Islam is a sign of Islamic supremacism.[53]

Numerous massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jews, Christians and non-Muslims[54] occurred in some Muslim-majority countries including in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria, where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos.[55] Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted during the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.[56] At certain times in Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face the Islamic death penalty.[57] While there were antisemitic incidents before the 20th century, antisemitism increased after the Arab–Israeli conflict. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, the creation of the State of Israel and Israeli victories during the wars of 1956 and 1967 were a severe humiliation to Israel's opponents – primarily Egypt, Syria, and Iraq.[58] However, by the mid-1970s the vast majority of Jews had left Muslim-majority countries, moving primarily to Israel, France, and the United States.[59] The reasons for the Jewish exodus are varied and disputed.[59]

Jewish

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Ilan Pappé, an expatriate Israeli historian, writes that the First Aliyah to Israel "established a society based on Jewish supremacy" within "settlement-cooperatives" that were Jewish owned and operated.[60] Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab studies, holds that "Jewish supremacism" has always been a "dominating principle" in religious and secular Zionism.[61][62]

Other

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Social

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Social cleansing (Spanish: limpieza social) is social group-based killing that consists of the elimination of members of society who are considered "undesirable", including, but not limited to, the homeless, criminals, street children, the elderly, the poor, the weak, the sick, the needy and the disabled.[63][64][65] This phenomenon is caused by a combination of economic and social factors, but killings are notably present in regions with high levels of poverty and disparities of wealth.[63][66] Perpetrators are usually of the same community as the victims and they are often motivated by the idea that the victims are a drain on the resources of society.[63][67] Efforts by national and local governments to stop these killings have been largely ineffective. The government and police forces are often involved in the killings, especially in Africa, Asia, and South America.[64][68][69]

Political

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Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary and include forced migration, ethnic cleansing and population transfers.

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ "Supremacist". Merriam-Webster. November 7, 2023.
  2. ^ a b Graham, Philip (2017). "Male Sexuality and Pornography". Men and Sex: A Sexual Script Approach. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 250–251. doi:10.1017/9781316874998.013. ISBN 978-1107183933. LCCN 2017004137. Patriarchal beliefs assert the "natural" superiority of men with a right to leadership in family and public life.
  3. ^ Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female power and male dominance: on the origins of sexual inequality, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 6–8, 113–114, 174, 182. ISBN 978-0-521-28075-4
  4. ^ Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus. London: Collins. 2006. ISBN 978-0-00-722405-0.
  5. ^ Humm, Maggie (1992). Modern feminisms: Political, Literary, Cultural. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-08072-9.
  6. ^ Cornell, Drucilla (1998). At the heart of freedom: feminism, sex, and equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02896-5.
  7. ^ "Misandry" Archived 19 February 2020 at the Wayback Machine at Oxford English Dictionary Online (ODO), Third Edition, June 2002. Accessed through library subscription on 25 July 2014. Earliest recorded use: 1885. Blackwood's Edinb. Mag, Sept. 289/1 No man whom she cared for had ever proposed to marry her. She could not account for it, and it was a growing source of bitterness, of misogyny as well as misandry.
  8. ^ "Misandry" Archived 19 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine at Merriam-Webster online ("First Known Use: circa 1909")
  9. ^ Takashi Fujitani, Geoffrey Miles White, Lisa Yoneyama, Perilous memories: the Asia-Pacific War(s), p. 303, 2001.
  10. ^ Boggs, James (October 1970). "Uprooting Racism and Racists in the United States". The Black Scholar. 2 (2). Paradigm Publishers: 2–5. doi:10.1080/00064246.1970.11431000. JSTOR 41202851.
  11. ^ Finkelman, Paul (2012). Slavery in the United States. Duke University School of Law. p. 116.
  12. ^ Paul Finkelman (November 12, 2012). "The Monster of Monticello". The New York Times. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  13. ^ "Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech'". The Guardian. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  14. ^ Out West. University of Nebraska Press. 2000. p. 96.
  15. ^ Miller, Stuart Creighton (1982). Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903. Yale University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-300-03081-5. ...imperialist editors came out in favor of retaining the entire archipelago (using) higher-sounding justifications related to the "white man's burden.
  16. ^ Opinion archive, International Herald Tribune (February 4, 1999). "In Our Pages: 100, 75 and 50 Years Ago; 1899: Kipling's Plea". International Herald Tribune: 6.: Notes that Rudyard Kipling's new poem, "The White Man's Burden", "is regarded as the strongest argument yet published in favor of expansion."
  17. ^ "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question".
  18. ^ "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question".
  19. ^ "Constitution of the Confederate States". March 11, 1861.: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
  20. ^ Alexander Stephens (March 21, 1861). "'Corner Stone' Speech".: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."
  21. ^ Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, Perennial (HarperCollins), 1989, pp. 425–426.
  22. ^ Nichols, William: Christian Antisemitism, A History of Hate (1993) p. 314.
  23. ^ Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2003). The end of the soul: scientific modernity, atheism, and anthropology in France. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-0231128469. OCLC 53118940.
  24. ^ Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2003). The end of the soul : scientific modernity, atheism, and anthropology in France. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 171–172. ISBN 978-0231128469. OCLC 53118940.
  25. ^ See Pierre-André Taguieff, La couleur et le sang – Doctrines racistes à la française ("Colour and Blood – Racist doctrines à la française"), Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2002, 203 pages, and La Force du préjugé – Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles, Tel Gallimard, La Découverte, 1987, 644 pages
  26. ^ "David Duke: Ideology". ADL.org. Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 23, 2015.
  27. ^ "American Renaissance". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  28. ^ Duke, David. Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question. Aware Journalism, 2007.
  29. ^ "Kevin MacDonald: Ideology". archive.adl.org/. Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  30. ^ Rider, Tiffany (October 6, 2008). "Academic senate disassociates itself from Professor MacDonald". Daily 49er. Archived from the original on December 15, 2012. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  31. ^ Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia: Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 62.
  32. ^ Cornel West, Race Matters, Beacon Press, 1993, p. 99: "The basic aim of black Muslim theology – with its distinct black supremacist account of the origins of white people – was to counter white supremacy."
  33. ^ Becker, Heike (January 26, 2017). "Auschwitz to Rwanda: the link between science, colonialism and genocide". The Conversation. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
  34. ^ "Racism in Sudan". February 2011.
  35. ^ "Welcome To B'nai Brith". Bnaibrith.ca. August 4, 2004. Archived from the original on September 19, 2010. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
  36. ^ Flint and de Waal, Darfur: A New History of a Long War, rev. ed. (London and New York: Zed Books, 2008), pp. 47–49.
  37. ^ a b The First Spring: The Golden Age of India by Abraham Eraly p. 313
  38. ^ The Haunting Past: Politics, Economics and Race in Caribbean Life by Alvin O. Thompson p. 210
  39. ^ "Beneath the Facade of China". School of Contemporary Chinese Studies. NG8 1BB. May 30, 2007.
  40. ^ Tan Chung (September 1973). "On Sinocentrism: A Critique". China Report. 9 (5): 38–50. doi:10.1177/000944557300900507. ISSN 0009-4455.
  41. ^ Carol Lansing; Edward D. English, A companion to the medieval world, Vol. 7, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, p. 457, ISBN 978-1405109222
  42. ^ Albert Ehrman, "The Origins of the Ritual Murder Accusation and Blood Libel", Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Spring 1976): 86
  43. ^ Mary E. Hunt, Diann L. Neu, New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views, SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2010, p. 122, ISBN 978-1594732850
  44. ^ R. Scott Appleby, The ambivalence of the sacred: religion, violence, and reconciliation, Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict series, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p. 103, ISBN 978-0847685554
  45. ^ "PublicEye.org – The Website of Political Research Associates". publiceye.org. Retrieved July 4, 2015.
  46. ^ Quran 2:256
  47. ^ Joshua Cohen, Ian Lague, Khaled Abou El Fadl, The place of tolerance in Islam, Beacon Press, 2002, p. 23, ISBN 978-0807002292
  48. ^ Cramer, Frederick H. (1952). "The Arab Empire: A Religious Imperialism". Current History. 22 (130). University of California Press: 340–347. ISSN 0011-3530. JSTOR 45308160. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
  49. ^ Gareth Jenkins, Political Islam in Turkey: running west, heading east?, Macmillan, 2008, p. 59, ISBN 978-1403968838
  50. ^ Malise Ruthven, Islam: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, 1997, Macmillan, 2008 p. 117, ISBN 978-0-19-950469-5
  51. ^ Dorsey, James M (2024). "The Battle for the Soul of Islam". The Battle for the Soul of Islam. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. p. 1–32. doi:10.1007/978-981-97-2807-7_1. ISBN 978-981--972806-0.
  52. ^ Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam, p. 73
  53. ^ Kumar H. M., Sanjeev (October 10, 2018). "Islam and the Question of Confessional Religious Identity: The Islamic State, Apostasy, and the Making of a Theology of Violence". Contemporary Review of the Middle East. 5 (4). SAGE Publications: 327–348. doi:10.1177/2347798918806415. ISSN 2347-7989.
  54. ^ "The Forgotten Refugees – Historical Timeline". September 27, 2008. Archived from the original on September 27, 2008. Retrieved March 20, 2019.
  55. ^ Roumani, Maurice. The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, 1977, pp. 26–27.
  56. ^ "The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. February 19, 1947. Retrieved July 2, 2011.
  57. ^ Bat Ye'or, The Dhimmi, 1985, p. 61
  58. ^ Lewis (1986), p. 204
  59. ^ a b Shenhav, Yehouda A. (2006). The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804752961 – via Google Books.
  60. ^ Ilan Pappé (1999). The Israel/Palestine question. Psychology Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0415169479. Whereas the First Aliya established a society based on Jewish supremacy, the Second Aliya's method of colonization was separation from Palestinians.
  61. ^ David Hirsch, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections Archived 2008-10-11 at the Wayback Machine, The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism Working Paper Series; discussion of Joseph Massad's "The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle", Interventions, Vol. 5, No. 3, 440–451, 2003.
  62. ^ According to Joseph Massad's "Response to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report" Archived 2006-09-13 at the Wayback Machine on his Columbia University web site during a 2002 rally he said "Israeli Jews will continue to feel threatened if they persist in supporting Jewish supremacy." Massad says others have misquoted him as saying Israel was a "Jewish supremacist and racist state." See for example David Horowitz, The professors: the 101 most dangerous academics in America, Regnery Publishing, 271, 2006
  63. ^ a b c Ordoñez 1996, p. 18.
  64. ^ a b Schwartz 1995, p. 384.
  65. ^ Sanford 2008, p. 110.
  66. ^ Federici 2010, p. 12.
  67. ^ Federici 2010, p. 18.
  68. ^ Abrahams 1987, p. 187.
  69. ^ Miguel 2005, p. 1155.