Assimilated Jewish sons resented ancestors’ indifference to wielding power

Evidence

The Jews, without knowledge of or interest in power, never thought of exercising more than mild pressure for minor purposes of self-defense. This lack of ambition was later sharply resented by the more assimilated sons of Jewish bankers and businessmen. While some of them dreamed, like Disraeli, of a secret Jewish society to which they might belong and which never existed, others, like Rathenau, who happened to be better informed, indulged in half-antisemitic tirades against the wealthy traders who had neither power nor social status. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 114

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later chapters of this very book on Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism’s function — the assimilated sons’ resentment anticipates Arendt’s treatment of Jewish self-contempt. — connects to: Assimilated wealthy Jewish sons often rebelled into anti-capitalist theory against their fathers — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 305