Apartheid

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argued, already in the sixth century BCE, that different people tend to make their different
gods similar to themselves. That was before the Greeks united and became a world military
power, and before their society would descend into systematic ethnicism and desecularization.
Therefore, the Epicureans were either anthropologically retarded, or, much
more likely, they were involved in a propaganda campaign, possibly against the Stoics, and in
any case against the cultures of the many peoples subdued by the Greeks. 619
It should not come as a surprise now that members of the ancient Greek elites, through
their emulators (including the overwhelming majority of elite Imperial Romans and countless
latter-day adherents, such as Adolf Hitler 620 ), are identified here as partly responsible for
apartheid throughout history. They provided us not only with the first known examples of
slave-labor-based societies, an institution that was taken to extremes in the Dutch Cape
Colony, and of social Darwinist-elitist-ethnicist ideology, but also with a fully-fledged and
successful system of oppressive segregation against an indigenous majority over centuries,
including some quite sophisticated ideological techniques. As we have seen, the latter
included the mix of eschatological elements of Egyptian, Greek and western Asian origins
that created an appearance of de-segregation but in actual fact veiled the oppressive and
violent essence of the society. Coupled with de-secularization it became a remarkably useful
and successful instrument in the hands of the ruthless Greek and Roman elites.
Obviously, information and opinions did not flow freely in the oppressive society that
was Graeco-Roman Egypt: ‘…Hellenism was an elite culture, sponsored by the wealth of the
gymnasial and bouleutic [local government] classes and…[it] required a Greek literary
education of those who would participate. Those who either did not wish to or could not share
in the new culture were effectively silenced in the public sphere…’ 621 This means that the
indigenous majority, the Egyptians, more than any other group, were quite simply excluded
from the world of information, ideas and opinions. In this realm, their existence was indeed
like that of the shadows in Plato’s famous simile of the cave. They were not only oppressed.
They were also considered less civilized, less human, and even less real than the Greeks and
Romans were. Under South African apartheid, which started thousands of miles away and two
thousand years after Alexander’s conquest of Egypt, things were not all that different.
9.2. The Power of Racism
Racist ideas of western European origin since at least the 17 th century became an
important part of the origin of the racist social order in South Africa.
Africans served Europeans as a convenient mirror, or as a screen onto
which they projected their own fears about themselves and their world.
The encounter with Africa in the seventeenth century occurred in an
era that emphasized {especially for the Dutch colonists, however lax
they were} order, self-discipline, self-abnegation, sexual restraint and
Christianity. These were difficult ideals. The Europeans’ failure to
619 Werner 1992: 11
620 At the height of his influence and power, Hitler reportedly told his inner circle of confidantes: ‘When asked
about our ancestors or predecessors, we must always refer to the Greeks.’ (‚Wenn man uns nach unseren
Vorfahren fragt, müssen wir immer auf die Griechen hinweisen.‘) Picker: Hitlers Tischgespräche im
Führerhauptquartier 1941-1942, 1963: 159. Hitler appears to have been influenced by, among many others,
Friedrich Nietzsche, who (in 1884-5) held the ancient Greeks to be ‘the hitherto highest type of man’. See
Goldhill: Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism, 2002: 295. This politically extreme
right-wing tradition of Philhellenism or Hellenomania still exists today in several western countries, including
France, with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigration party, Front National, and the GRECE group.
See Tzermias 1998: 109.
621 Alston 2002: 272. One author, Sotades of Maronea, was executed (by drowning) after having been recaptured
following an escape from jail to which he had been sentenced after making fun of Ptolemy II’s marriage in a
verse. See MacLeod 2002: 5.