Anti-Semitic hostility targets a phantom figure, not actual Jewish people.

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. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 392

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘phantom Jew’ concept is a durable theoretical category: hostility detached from its object, applicable to modern Islamophobia and other constructed enemies (cf. Muslims in the Western Imagination).
• XREF: connects to: Group hatred targets what a person is, not what they do. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1011; Jewish mannerisms trigger visceral antisemitic reactions regardless of the person’s character — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 927; Anti-Semitism projects the subject’s own repressed impulses onto the victim — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 147 (+5 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Group hatred targets what a person is, not what they do. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1011; Jewish mannerisms trigger visceral antisemitic reactions regardless of the person’s character — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 927; Anti-Semitism projects the subject’s own repressed impulses onto the victim — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 147 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Jewish mannerisms trigger visceral antisemitic reactions regardless of the person’s character #complicates (0.78) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 927