American workers’ anti-Semitic image of Jews omitted the radical-communist stereotype

Evidence

The image of the Jew seems to be essentially the same among the great majority of our sample. While they behave differently, their critique, resentment, hostility and hatred are directed at the phantom Jew. Most workers seem to see the Jew as a cheating storekeeper, a merciless landlord or rental agent, an unscrupulous pawn-broker, or an instalment salesman and insurance collector who will take away the collateral or let the insurance lapse at the first delinquency. To this is added the idea that the Jews own all business and that at least most Jews are in business. All this is so because the Jews are money-crazy, selfish, grabby, take advantage of others, cheat, chisel, lie, are ruthless, unscrupulous, and so on. Most workers plainly refuse to acknowledge the existence of a large group of Jewish workers. Either there are no Jewish workers, or they don’t work, and merely pretend to be workers. In addition Jewish workers are accused of escaping hard work, passing the buck, catering to the bosses, doing everything for individual advancement, doing nothing for their fellow-workers. Finally they are reproached with displaying superior attitudes, having bad manners, knowing everything better, being ambitious and arrogant. All the war-time accusations … have been found in our sample … The curious exception is that our interviewers met practically no worker who blamed the Jews for being mainly radicals and communists. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1560 (#expands, via linked claim)

To reach an accurate assessment of results such as these and of possible counter-measures, it seemed to be necessary to distinguish between working-class anti-Semitism and middle-class anti-Semitism, as Adorno, in particular, emphasized in his suggestions for the report on the labour project. Might it not be the case that genuine experiences played a fundamentally larger part in the negative attitudes taken by workers towards Jews than was so for social classes higher up the scale? Must some account not be taken of the fact that workers, in their statements and behaviour, were less liable to put pseudo-democratic restrictions on themselves than members of the middle and upper classes? This might lead one to suppose that there was less covert anti-Semitism among the workers than in other classes, and that the anti-Semitic attitudes were less irrational among them and would be more easy to combat, through educational measures offering economic and political information, than was the case for the other classes. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1562 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: American workers shared a uniform stereotype of Jews as exploitative merchants — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1560; Jews were historically overrepresented among revolutionary socialists and communists — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 946; Anti-Jewish prejudice attached to modernity and revolution across the political spectrum (+2 more)

Related

• American workers shared a uniform stereotype of Jews as exploitative merchants (similarity 0.93)
• Working-class anti-Semitism may stem more from real experience than middle-class hatred (similarity 0.83)
• Jews faced opposing attacks as both capitalist symbols and liberal values incarnate. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• American workers shared a uniform stereotype of Jews as exploitative merchants #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1560
• Anti-Jewish prejudice attached to modernity and revolution across the political spectrum #expands (0.75)
• Working-class anti-Semitism may stem more from real experience than middle-class hatred #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1562
• Jews were historically overrepresented among revolutionary socialists and communists #responds-to (0.72) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 946