Assimilation paradoxically produced Jewish chauvinism as a perverted individualistic nationalism.

Evidence

Secularization, therefore, finally produced that paradox, so decisive for the psychology of modern Jews, by which Jewish assimilation—in its liquidation of national consciousness, its transformation of a national religion into a confessional denomination, and its meeting of the half-hearted and ambiguous demands of state and society by equally ambiguous devices and psychological tricks—engendered a very real Jewish chauvinism, if by chauvinism we understand the perverted nationalism in which (in the words of Chesterton) “the individual is himself the thing to be worshipped; the individual is his own ideal and even his own idol.” From now on, the old religious concept of chosenness was no longer the essence of Judaism; it became instead the essence of Jewishness. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 240

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines chauvinism via Chesterton as the individual worshipping himself — a usable conceptual tool for analyzing identity-based exclusion.
• XREF: The assimilation-produces-chauvinism paradox is a mechanism the reader can carry to how minority assimilation under Islamophobia can engender defensive group consciousness.