Laura D.

I saw it more in the context of someone descended from the Iranian nomadic peoples. But your interpretation works equally well.

We can agree that anyone attacking Dawkins in that instance would have far exceeded the bounds of courtesy, decency, and legitimate criticism. I can think of no case where an individual (e.g. George Bush) has raised the specter of Nazi Germany to win an argument that I have not lost all respect for his or her rhetorical capability.

I will note that Mr. Eagleton appears to have intended his use of philistine in the context of a person deficient in the culture of the liberal arts (unkind to say the least). Frankly, I have yet to see philistine used in an explicit or even implicit racial sense despite the fact that The New York Times does infrequently resort to its use. I have not seen the term Entartete used outside of textbooks except when actually referring to the 1937 exhibition (the article concerned a Paul Klee painting I believe). And quite thankfully, I have never seen the term Untermensch used in your proposed context. Frankly, I am unsure whether it has any meaning other than subhuman with the all too real and horrible historical connotations that word carries.

Given your evocation of Untermensch and Entartete, I concede the field and assure you that I will excise philistine from my vocabulary.

Laura

Doug Shaver

It's a secular kind of Original Sin. If the first people to use an expression were expressing racism with it, then the expression to this day can never be anything but racist.