Losurdo's Thesis - Fascism as "Colonialism Turned Inward"
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Domenico Losurdo (1941-2018) developed a provocative thesis: National Socialism was not an anomaly of Western civilization, but its continuation. The extermination policy against Jews, Sinti and Roma, Slavs, and other people classified as “inferior” was not unprecedented barbarism, but the application of colonial practices within Europe.[1]
The Continuity of Colonial Violence
Losurdo’s argument unfolds in three steps:
Colonial genocide as prehistory. The European colonial powers had systematically exterminated indigenous peoples over centuries. The Spanish Conquista in Latin America (16th century), the genocide of the indigenous peoples of North America by the USA (19th century), the wars of extermination in Africa (Germany in Namibia 1904-1908, Belgium in the Congo), racist segregation in the USA (slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynch law)—all this occurred before National Socialism, within Western civilization, legitimated by that same civilization.
The ideological justification was structurally identical. All these genocides were legitimated with the same logic: the “savages” were not full human beings. The “civilized” race had the right and duty to subjugate or annihilate. Elimination was a biological necessity or historical mission. National Socialism did not invent this logic—it inherited it.
The fascination of the perpetrators. Hitler and other National Socialist ideologues explicitly admired colonial violence. Hitler praised the British Empire for its ability to establish and maintain a world empire. American “Indian policy” served as a model: “What the Americans did to the Indians, we must do to the Slavs.” American segregation policy inspired the Nuremberg Laws—National Socialist jurists studied American racial laws and found them in part too radical for German circumstances.[2]
The Unprecedented: The Application within Europe
What then was the new thing about National Socialism? Not violence itself, not the logic of annihilation, not racist legitimation—but its location. Until then, the European powers had exercised colonial violence outside Europe—against “savages,” “primitives,” “colored people” on distant continents. National Socialism transferred this logic to Europe itself—against Jews, Slavs, Sinti and Roma.
Losurdo’s provocative point: horror at the Holocaust was partly horror that Europeans were treated like colonized people. The violence was not new—but its victims were “too close,” “too white,” “too civilized.” The moral outrage that set in after 1945 was justified—but it was also selective. The same practices against “natives” in Africa or Asia had never elicited the same outrage.
The Systematic Implications
This thesis is provocative—and systematically important. It shows several things:
The universality of moral standards. There is no “legitimate” violence against “savages” and “illegitimate” violence against “the civilized.” Every systematic extermination is equally reprehensible—regardless of whether it takes place in Auschwitz or the Congo, in Treblinka or at Wounded Knee. Horror at the Holocaust must not remain selective.
The continuity of the crimes. National Socialism was not the break with Western civilization, but its darkest consequence. The Enlightenment had proclaimed human rights—but let them apply only to “civilized” (white, Christian, European) human beings. National Socialism showed where this particularization leads when thought through consistently to the end.
The necessity of self-criticism. The West cannot externalize National Socialism as “the Other,” as foreign, as an irruption of barbarism into an otherwise civilized history. It must work through its own history of colonial violence—and recognize the continuities. Without this self-criticism, “coming to terms with the past” remains incomplete.
Integration into the Systematic Analysis
Losurdo’s thesis adds an important dimension to our analysis:
The counter-Enlightenment was not merely an intra-European debate between rationalists and irrationalists. It had a colonial dimension. The “savages” in the colonies were interpreted as proof that not all human beings are capable of reason, that humanity falls into “races” of different worth. Biological racism was the flip side of Enlightenment universalism—its dark underside, which particularized the proclaimed universalism.
Fascism took up this colonial logic—but universalized it in a new sense. Not only “savages” in distant lands, but also Europeans could be classified as “inferior.” The boundary no longer ran between Europe and the colonies, but within Europe itself—between “Aryans” and “subhumans.” National Socialism turned colonial violence against Europe itself.
The systematic lesson: a philosophy of recognition must be universal. There are no “inferior” races, peoples, cultures—not in Africa, not in Asia, not in Europe, nowhere. Recognition applies to every human being as a human being—or it does not apply at all. Every particularization of recognition—“only for the civilized,” “only for Europeans,” “only for whites,” “only for Christians”—opens the door to barbarism. The Holocaust was the end of this logic—but not its beginning.
Critical Assessment
Losurdo’s thesis has limits. It can create the impression that the Holocaust was “nothing special”—just one variant among many genocides. That would be a trivialization. The industrial dimension of the extermination, the bureaucratic perfection, the ideological elaborateness of National Socialism were indeed unique. The Holocaust was not “like” other genocides—it had specific characteristics.
But Losurdo’s point remains valid: this uniqueness does not make the Holocaust incommensurable with other crimes. It stands within a history, it has precursors, it was made possible by an ideology older than National Socialism. Recognition of uniqueness must not become immunization against comparisons—for without comparisons there is no understanding, and without understanding no prevention.
Domenico Losurdo: Controstoria del liberalismo, Rome: Laterza, 2005; German: Liberalismus. Eine Gegengeschichte, Cologne: PapyRossa, 2010. See also: idem: Il linguaggio dell’Impero. Lessico dell’ideologia americana, Rome: Laterza, 2007. ↩︎
James Q. Whitman: Hitler’s American Model. The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Whitman shows in detail how National Socialist jurists studied and adapted U.S. racial laws. ↩︎