A protected outsider group dissolves when the protecting state decays

Evidence

The Jews could remain a separate group outside of society only so long as a more or less homogeneous and stable state machine had a use for them and was interested in protecting them. The decay of the state machine brought about the dissolution of the closed ranks of Jewry, which had so long been bound up with it. The first sign of this appeared in the affairs conducted by newly naturalized French Jews over whom their native-born brethren had lost control in much the same way as occurred in the Germany of the inflation period. The newcomers filled the gaps between the commercial world and the state. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 294

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism parallels how modern bureaucracies selectively protect and then abandon outsider groups — connects to biopolitics and modular exclusion themes in the Islamophobia reading list. — connects to: Armed non-state groups emerge to replace states that abandon caretaking for pure repression — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 652; An alliance persists when its founding enemy vanishes. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 57
• QUESTION: Worth tracing: how does group ‘closed ranks’ depend on the protectiveness of a stable state, rather than on internal community strength alone?