Anti-Semitic violence targets detached madmen symbolizing the Jews’ outside perspective.
Evidence
It was precisely in the most exposed section of Adorno’s essaywhere he spoke of letting oneself go in tears and in musicthat Horkheimer saw the strongest evidence for the fact that his own trains of thought and Adorno’s were mysteriously converging, even while the two men were separated. He took this passage as an occasion to throw in some ideas connected with anti-Semitism, quoting from a letter he had written to Adorno’s brother-in-law, Egon Wissing: … Their laughable faithfulness to the One God makes the Jewsin the view of the anti-Semites, not in realitysimultaneously ungainly and dangerous. The killing of madmen is the key to the Jewish pogrom. … Of course, seeing a sense of monotheism as a piece of foolishness conceals a deep reverence for it; or, rather, a superstitious fear that it is one’s own deeds which are wrong and corrupt. Madmen are not held spellbound by the goals and purposes people serve today, in the same way that proper people are. This makes them into sinister observers, who must be eliminated. The evil deed will be undone if the witnesses are killed. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1282
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Anti-Semitic victims are interchangeable outlets for objectless anger; Anti-Semitic violence targets interchangeable defenseless victims rather than specific people — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1419; Hatred of Jews became detached from any specific Jewish deeds
Broader Connections
- Anti-Semitic violence targets interchangeable defenseless victims rather than specific people
#expands(0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1419 - Anti-Semitic victims are interchangeable outlets for objectless anger
#expands(0.82) - Hatred of Jews became detached from any specific Jewish deeds
#expands(0.80)