Adorno saw Jews as occupying the proletariat’s place at the pole opposite concentrated power.

Evidence

It often seems to me that everything that we used to see from the point of view of the proletariat has been concentrated today with frightful force upon the Jews. No matter what happens to the project, I ask myself whether we should not say what we really want to say in connection with the Jews, who are now at the opposite pole to the concentration of power. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 297

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The equation of Jewishness with world-historical powerlessness reframes the proletariat concept centrally, and would reward dwelling on given Adorno and Horkheimer’s later totalizing turn.
• XREF: Connects directly to the earlier chapters on state capitalism and Neumann’s opposing insistence on political-legal structures. — connects to: For Adorno, antisemitism casts Jews as embodying modernity’s repressed other side; The fate of the Jews absorbed the proletariat’s world-historical role for Adorno — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1139; Adorno conceived of the Jews as the universal proletariat of the enlightenment process — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1140 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: For Adorno, antisemitism casts Jews as embodying modernity’s repressed other side; The fate of the Jews absorbed the proletariat’s world-historical role for Adorno — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1139; Adorno conceived of the Jews as the universal proletariat of the enlightenment process — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1140 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The fate of the Jews absorbed the proletariat’s world-historical role for Adorno #corroborates (0.97) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1139
• Adorno conceived Jews as the enlightenment’s world-historical proletariat, stripped of all power. #expands (0.96) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 297
• Adorno conceived of the Jews as the universal proletariat of the enlightenment process #expands (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1140
• Zionist ideology framed the exilic Jew in orientalist terms as its polar opposite. #complicates (0.72) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 640