Antisemitism functioned as generalizable political hatred of society and the state

Evidence

If Bernanos, with reference to the Dreyfus Affair, describes antisemitism as a major political concept, he is undoubtedly right with respect to the mob. It had been tried out previously in Berlin and Vienna, by Ahlwardt and Stoecker, by Schoenerer and Lueger, but nowhere was its efficacy more clearly proved than in France. There can be no doubt that in the eyes of the mob the Jews came to serve as an object lesson for all the things they detested. If they hated society they could point to the way in which the Jews were tolerated within it; and if they hated the government they could point to the way in which the Jews had been protected by or were identifiable with the state. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 310

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism directly anticipates the toolkit concept of the Jew as scapegoat-object — the signifier onto which the mob projects both class and state resentment; connects to how Islamophobia names a similarly flexible Other. — connects to: Nationalist anti-Semitism channels religious fanaticism’s energy into race hatred — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 133; Anti-Semitism deflects class hatred onto merchants who embody the whole system’s exploitation.
• DEFINE: Defines the productive emptiness of antisemitism as a political concept: the Jew is hated not for any trait but as a standing ‘object lesson’ both for hatred of society and hatred of the state.