The European powers didn't build their empires because they were racist, but because they were greedy. If someone steals from a Jew, it doesn't mean he is anti-semite, just that he is a thief.
It is of course possible for someone to try and justify his greed by providing a 'racist' argument, but that doesn't make him racist, any more than fomenting a jihad or a crusade means you're particularly religious.
Egg and chicken
I've no idea where you get that from. It certainly wasn't true of 99% of the people I knew. Unless you have a very odd (and elastic) definition of racism.
Well logically as most West European countries had colonial empire and most of colonial power cover their greed with a racist ideology most of European ought to have been racist. Nothing hard core necessarily but racist nonetheless. Just see nowadays over 30% of European openly admit they are racists...
Then it wasn't a very good choice of word.
Granted
I suppose the Japanese colonisation in the far east wasn't 'colonial' either? What was it? Third wave?
Precisely not. Japanese expension was closely related to that second wave of colonisation. The third wave is neo-colonialism.
What you seem to be doing is to restrict your definition of 'racism' in some way to theories similar to Nazism, and then saying Nazism is the prime example.
I don't Lenine and Rosa Luxembourg clearly hinted this way. So did Hannah Arendt when she called colonisation a totalitarism.
(While of course also expanding the definition enough so that it includes 99% of Europeans in the 1930/40s. Put those two together and you're saying, in effect, that Nazism best represents the views of 99% of Europeans when I was a child. Which just isn't true.)
Of course I'm not saying that. Take the thesis of Zeev Sternel about the Frendh origin of Facism and Nazism (you may not agree with him but it shows that the general idea was well spread).
That's not particularly 19th century. It's the same view the Crusaders had, at least to begin with. And the same the Spanish had.
Maybe but here we have the Parlementary Papers
There are some similarities. But for instance the Nazis, at least in the longer term, advocated replacing the population of conquered territories with 'Aryans' (like the extremist Israelis making their settlements in Palestine), while the colonial racists, mostly, were concerned to exploit the native populations, while leaving them in place.
I didn't say they were the same, I said they had distressing similarities.
Over all you may be right nazism is maybe not the most famous form of racism world-wide but in which case it is arguable that there is just no globally recognized most famous form of racism.