Adorno insisted the upper class is violently antisemitic despite its good manners.

Evidence

On the other hand, in a critical commentary on an article by Frenkel-Brunswik on `The Anti-Semitic Personality’, based on a lecture given at the Psychiatric Symposium in San Francisco (see p. 358 above), Adorno emphasized: It is an illusion to which we easily fall [sic] that society people because of their good manners are free of Antisemitism. This did not even hold good in Europe. It is even less true here. We have the strongest reason to believe that the upper class is violently antisemitic. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 400

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crystallizes the project’s core anti-intuitive thesis: antisemitism is not a lower-class pathology but concentrated among the well-mannered upper class.
• XREF: Relates to Adorno’s later Authoritarian Personality claim that prejudice correlates with status anxiety and conformity. — connects to: Adorno held that upper-class manners conceal violent anti-Semitism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1597
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno held that upper-class manners conceal violent anti-Semitism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1597

Broader Connections

• Adorno held that upper-class manners conceal violent anti-Semitism #expands (0.97) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1597