Anti-Semitism originates in repressed envy of Jews’ persistent nomadism

Evidence

At a very early stage of the history of humanity, the Jews either scorned the transition from nomadism to settled habitation and remained nomadic, or went through the change inadequately and superficially, in a kind of pseudomorphosis. The biblical story ought to be analysed in detail for this. It seems to me to be full of hints on it. The most important of these are the exodus from Egypt and the prelude to it, the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey, together with the brevity of the Jewish kingdom and its immanent weakness … The survival of nomadism among the Jews might provide not only an explanation for the nature of the Jew himself, but even more an explanation for anti-Semitism. The abandonment of nomadism was apparently one of the most difficult sacrifices demanded in human history. The Western concept of work, and all of the instinctual repression it involves, may coincide exactly with the development of settled habitation. The image of the Jews is one of a condition of humanity in which work is unknown, and all of the later attacks on the parasitic, miserly character of the Jews are mere rationalizations. The Jews are the ones who have not allowed themselves to be `civilized’ and subjected to the priority of work. This has not been forgiven them, and that is why they are a bone of contention in class society. … This holding firm to the most ancient image of happiness is the Jewish utopia. It does not matter whether the nomadic condition was in fact a happy one or not. In all probability, it was not. But the more the world of settled habitationa world of workproduced repression, the more the earlier condition must have seemed to be a form of happiness which could not be permitted, the very idea of which must be banned. This ban is the origin of anti-Semitism, the expulsions of the Jews, and the attempt to complete or imitate the expulsion from Paradise. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1143

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the Frankfurt School’s psychoanalytic-sociological thesis that settled habitation and work/civilization, not religious difference, explains anti-Semitism.
• SEED: Could be spun into an article tracing how the Frankfurt School’s account of anti-Semitism as repression of forgotten nomadism prefigures later critiques of civilization and work.
• XREF: Connects to Freud’s ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’ and the Moses and Monotheism thesis, plus Adorno/Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. — connects to: Adorno traced anti-Semitism to the Jews’ refusal of settled work and civilized repression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1143; Anti-imperial and antisemitic ideology fused Semites with desert nomadism; Capitalist anti-Semitism is the bourgeoisie’s self-hatred displaced onto Jews — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 132 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-imperial and antisemitic ideology fused Semites with desert nomadism #expands (0.85)
• Racial theories conflated antisemitism with colonial justifications against nomads #corroborates (0.80) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 136
• Anti-Semitism is pathological projection stripped of self-reflection, not projection itself #qualifies (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 150
• Capitalist anti-Semitism is the bourgeoisie’s self-hatred displaced onto Jews #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 132