Antisemitism functioned as a structuring political concept, not a private prejudice

Evidence

So, shorn of ridiculous hyperbole, antisemitism showed itself for what it really is: not a mere piece of crankiness, a mental quirk, but a major political concept. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2136

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition for the scaffolding toolkit: antisemitism as political concept rather than psychological quirk — centrally relevant to how the Islamophobia field frames analogous phenomena as structural.
• XREF: connects to: Vandalizing cemeteries is anti-Semitism’s essence, not an excess — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 142; Anti-Semites merely voice a society whose official norms legitimize prejudice — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1791