Supremacism

Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to, and should have authority over, all others. The presumed superior group can be defined by various characteristics, including age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nationality, culture, generation, or any other human attribute.

In Asia, Indians in Ancient India considered all foreigners barbarians. The Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians called foreigners impure. A few centuries later, Dubois observes that "Hindus look upon Europeans as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good breeding... In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcaste) and a European are on the same level." The Chinese also considered the Europeans repulsive, ghost-like creatures, and they even considered them devils. Chinese writers also referred to foreigners as barbarians.

In Africa, black Southern Sudanese allege that they are being subjected to a racist form of Arab supremacy, which they equate with the historic white supremacism of South Africa's apartheid. The alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing in the ongoing War in Darfur has been described as an example of Arab racism. For example, in their analysis of the sources of the conflict, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal say that Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, sponsored "Arab supremacism" across the Sahara during the 1970s. Gaddafi supported the "Islamic Legion" and the Sudanese opposition "National Front, including the Muslim Brothers and the Ansar, the Umma Party's military wing." Gaddafi tried to use such forces to annex Chad from 1979 to 1981. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government's war in the South during the early 1980s, and in return, he was allowed to use the Darfur region as a "back door to Chad". As a result, the first signs of an "Arab racist political platform" appeared in Darfur in the early 1980s.

Cornel West, an African-American philosopher, writes that black supremacist religious views arose in America as a part of black Muslim theology in response to white supremacy.

East Asian supremacism and race-based nationalism appear among the people of China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, and East Asia holds an important stake in global GDP. It has also influenced far-right white nationalists, such as Anders Behring Breivik.

Han supremacy comes from the perception that the culture of the majority ethnic Han in China is superior to other minorities. The Chinese Communist Party has been accused of encouraging settler colonialism and Han supremacy, which can combine with Chinese ultranationalism.

Initially, in order to justify Japan's conquest of Asia, Japanese propaganda espoused the ideas of Japanese supremacy by claiming that the Japanese represented a combination of all Asian peoples and cultures, emphasizing heterogeneous traits. The Empire of Japan often opened human zoos to showcase the supposed inferiority of other Asian peoples and Japanese superiority. Japanese propaganda started to place an emphasis on the ideas of Japanese supremacy of the Yamato race when the Second Sino-Japanese War intensified. At the end of World War II, the Japanese government continued to adhere to the notion of racial homogeneity and racial supremacy, as well as an overall complex of social hierarchy, with the Yamato race at the top of the racial hierarchy. Even in modern Japan, the concept related to "Yamato race" remains important, which means that even ethnic Koreans living there for generations can't get citizenship and there's less immigration despite a contracting population.

Centuries of European colonialism in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania were justified by Eurocentric attitudes as well as sometimes by white supremacist attitudes.