Antisemitism thrived where Germans had almost no contact with Jews

Evidence

Because of the general anti-Semitic social representation associated with Volkstum, many Jews had left Germany for safer havens elsewhere. Thus, most of what people knew (or thought they knew) about Jews was based on social consensus, not actual experience. As Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory argues, social reality becomes paramount when physical reality provides few, if any, cues upon which one can base an opinion. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 926

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how social consensus fills voids of actual contact — the imaginary Jew as a purely social-representational construct, applicable to present-day conspiracy theories about groups one never meets.
• XREF: connects to: German group identity was defined by being least like outgroups — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 913; Antisemitism survives and re-targets other populations after Jews disappear — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 226; Antisemitic hatred peaked precisely when Jewish political importance declined — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 134 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Antisemitism survives and re-targets other populations after Jews disappear #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 226
• Antisemitism persisted even after its economic basis vanished #corroborates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 527
• Antisemitic hatred peaked precisely when Jewish political importance declined #corroborates (0.82) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 134
• Antisemitism peaked after Jews had already lost economic influence #corroborates (0.82)