Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 56

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 17of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Steiner didn't shy away from describing the fate of those left behind by the forward march of racial and spiritual progress. He taught that these unfortunates would "degenerate" and eventually die out. Like his teacher Madame Blavatsky, Steiner rejected the notion that Native Americans, for example, were nearly exterminated by the actions of European settlers. Instead he held that Indians are "dying out of their own nature." Steiner also taught that "lower races" of humans are closer to animals than to "higher races" of humans. Aboriginal peoples, according to Anthroposophy, are descended from the already "degenerate" remnants of the third root race, the Lemurians, and are devolving into apes. Steiner referred to them as "stunted humans whose progeny, the so-called wild peoples, inhabit certain parts of the earth today." (Footnote: Rudolf Steiner, Aus der Akasha-Chronik, Basel 1955, p. 32.)

This straw man, an unrecognizable Steiner, is further abused here, relegated to a pupil of Blavatsky who allegedly promulgated every nasty thing she ever wrote. Steiner's relationship to Blavatsky is a complex subject, but while many notice at a superficial glance that there are indeed similarities, a simple teacher-pupil relationship posited from their chronological succession does not find support in any in-depth investigation.