American workers shared a uniform stereotype of Jews as exploitative merchants

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

Categorization

• XREF: This anti-Semitic labor-study data connects to the Frankfurt School’s studies of working-class consciousness and to Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality research program broadly. — connects to: American workers’ anti-Semitic image of Jews omitted the radical-communist stereotype; Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism; Jews’ partial conformity to middle-class norms fueled antisemitic resentment. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1540 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism #expands (0.85)
• Jewish economic roles made them appear as capitalism’s aggressive face to oppressed masses #corroborates (0.82)
• Jews’ partial conformity to middle-class norms fueled antisemitic resentment. #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1540
• Trade is the stranger’s natural occupation, exemplified by European Jews #expands (0.78) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 391