History of Africa

What is Aryan Superiority?

Aryan supremacy or Aryanism, is a racist belief claiming that the Aryans are the superior race. The term "Aryan" is used in a racial and linguistic sense to describe descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The term, often used together with the racial characteristics "Nordic" or "Caucasian" was and still is used primarily in Europe and the Americas.

The ideological construct of Aryan superiority has its origins in the late 18th and early 19th-centuries, and reached the height of its influence in Nazi ideology during the 1930s and 1940s, which culminated in the Holocaust and other genocides by the Nazis. Nazi ideology combined biological racism, antisemitism and anti-communism. Modern white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups continue to use the idea of an "Aryan" master race to justify white supremacy.