Anti-communism replaced anti-Semitism as the object of displaced aggression.

Evidence

The decline in anti-Semitism in the United States did not, therefore, give any comfort to the people at Berkeley or to Adornoall the less so since a substitute had long ago been found: anti-communism. … During the last several years all the propaganda machinery of the country has been devoted to promoting anticommunist feeling in the sense of an irrational scare' and there are probably not many people, except followers of the party line’, who have been able to resist the incessant ideological pressure. At the same time, during the past two or three years it may have become more `conventional’ to be overtly opposed to anti-Semitism, if the large number of magazine articles, books, and films with wide circulation can be regarded as symptomatic of a trend. The underlying character structure has little bearing on such fluctuations. If they could be ascertained, they would demonstrate the extreme importance of propaganda in political matters. Propaganda, when directed to the antidemocratic potential in the people, determines to a large extent the choice of the social objects of psychological aggressiveness. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1812

Categorization

• QUESTION: Adorno’s claim that character structure ‘has little bearing’ on shifts between anti-Semitic and anticommunist targets seems to sit oddly with The Authoritarian Personality’s whole premise — worth tracing how he reconciles this.
• XREF: Connects to later analyses of how McCarthyism and the Red Scare channeled authoritarian character structures toward new targets. — connects to: Anti-communism replaced anti-Semitism as America’s acceptable prejudice outlet. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1812; Postwar currency reform and Marshall aid signaled anti-communism replacing anti-fascism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1724; Anti-Semitism projects the subject’s own repressed impulses onto the victim — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 147 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Practicing Islam functionally replaced Communism as the most threatening subversive activity #corroborates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 476
• European antisemitism has been displaced onto Muslims through a parallel trajectory of dehumanization #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 858
• Anti-Semitism projects the subject’s own repressed impulses onto the victim #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 147