How Nazis manufactured the idea of race

“Race had to be manufactured in Germans’ minds and everyday lives, and one of the ways they manufactured race was by celebrating this unique mix of movements that made them different from other people, and the actual movement of Germans themselves became a mechanism to get people to think in racial terms,” Denning said.

Take youth camps and regional rallies, he said. They drew Germans out of their hometowns and got them to think less about their class or religion and more about national identity and their ties to one another.

Industrialized nations have long played mobility both ways, he said: Good for us, bad for others. One of the major undercurrents in global politics today, Denning said, is a shift away from those countries championing mobility as necessary for a global, capitalist system and a key metric of individual freedom.

“In the last five to 10 years I think we’ve been seeing a much more complicated attitude toward movement in the developed world that suggests that we have the right to fly to China to conduct business, to take trips to Tahiti and move as we please,” Denning said. “On the other hand, politicians and states have increasingly cast the movement of groups who are not citizens as dangerous, bringing terror to Europe or drugs into the United States.”

Source: Examining Nazi obsession with movement further reveals how they manufactured the idea of race