Antisemites depicted Jewish financiers as mysterious rootless newcomers

Evidence

To these newcomers Drumont’s charge applies (Les Trétaux du succès, Paris, 1901, p. 237): “Those great Jews who start from nothing and attain everything …they come from God knows where, live in a mystery, die in a guess… They don’t arrive, they jump up… They don’t die, they fade out.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2118

Categorization

• DEFINE: Drumont’s phrasing crystallizes the trope of the Jew as a rootless, mysterious intruder — the discursive construction Arendt is documenting.
• SHARE: A perfect capsule quote for anyone working on the rhetorical construction of the outsider as rootless adventurer.