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===Racial theories and aristocrats=== {{Conservatism in France}} Shocked by the Revolution of 1848, Gobineau first expressed his racial theories in his 1848 epic poem ''Manfredine''. In it he revealed his fear of the revolution being the beginning of the end of aristocratic Europe, with common folk descended from lesser breeds taking over.{{sfn|Blue|1999|p=99}} Reflecting his disdain for ordinary people, Gobineau said French aristocrats like himself were the descendants of the Germanic Franks who conquered the Roman province of Gaul in the fifth century AD, while common French people were the descendants of racially inferior Celtic and Mediterranean people. This was an old theory first promoted in a tract by Count [[Henri de Boulainvilliers]]. He had argued that the [[Second Estate]] (the aristocracy) was of "Frankish" blood and the [[Estates of the realm|Third Estate]] (the commoners) were of "Gaulish" blood.{{sfn|Davies|1988|p=57}} Born after the French Revolution had destroyed the idealized ''[[Ancien Régime]]'' of his imagination, Gobineau felt a deep sense of pessimism regarding the future.{{sfn|Davies|1988|p=57}} For him the French Revolution, having destroyed the racial basis of French greatness by overthrowing and in many cases killing the aristocracy, was the beginning of a long, irresistible process of decline and degeneration, which could only end with the utter collapse of European civilization.{{sfn|Davies|1988|pp=57–58}} He felt what the French Revolution had begun the [[Industrial Revolution]] was finishing; industrialization and urbanization were a complete disaster for Europe.{{sfn|Davies|1988|pp=57–58}} Like many other European romantic conservatives, Gobineau looked back nostalgically at an idealized version of the Middle Ages as an idyllic agrarian society living harmoniously in a rigid social order.{{sfn|Davies|1988|pp=57–58}} He loathed modern [[Paris]], a city he called a "giant cesspool" full of ''les déracinés'' ("the uprooted")—the criminal, impoverished, drifting men with no real home. Gobineau considered them to be the monstrous products of centuries of miscegenation ready to explode in revolutionary violence at any moment.{{sfn|Davies|1988|pp=59–60}} He was an ardent opponent of democracy, which he stated was mere "mobocracy"—a system that allowed the utterly stupid mob the final say on running the state.{{sfn|Davies|1988|p=59}}
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