Chimerical images of Jewish power became dangerous public fears

Evidence

Julius Streicher, the pioneer of Nazi antisemitic propaganda, found that the most daunting of tasks his paper Der Stürmer was set up to perform, was to make the stereotype of the Jew as such’ stick to the personal images his readers held of the Jews they knew, of the Jewish neighbours, friends or business partners. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 524 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Rich yet contemptible, the Jews provided a natural lightning-rod to divert early discharges of the anti-modernist energy. They provided the point where formidable powers of money met with social disdain, moral condemnation and aesthetic disgust. This was exactly what hostility to modernity, and particularly to its capitalist form, needed for an anchor. If only capitalism could be connected to the Jew, it would stand condemned as simultaneously alien, unnatural, inimical, dangerous and ethically repulsive. The connection was easy to establish: money power was confined to the margins and (under the contemptuous name of usury) writhed under the burden of authoritative condemnation as long as the Jews stayed enclosed in the ghetto: it moved to the centre of life and (under the prestigious name of capital) claimed authority and social respect once the Jews appeared on the streets of the city centre. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racist hatred inverted the Jewish chosenness myth into fear of Jewish victory.; Propaganda struggled to override personal images of known Jews. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 524; Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146 (+3 more)

Related

• Propaganda struggled to override personal images of known Jews. (similarity 0.89)
• Jews became a symbolic target for everything the mob hated (similarity 0.83)
• Racist hatred inverted the Jewish chosenness myth into fear of Jewish victory. (similarity 0.81)
• Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable (similarity 0.79)
• Tribal antisemitism severed hatred of Jews from any actual experience of them (similarity 0.78)
• Antisemitic images of Jews function to perpetuate the rule of domination. (similarity 0.78)
• Social exclusion of Jews made abstract stereotypes replace personal knowledge. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Propaganda struggled to override personal images of known Jews. #qualifies (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 524
• Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146
• The Rothschild household made Jews fit racial blood-based ideologies #corroborates (0.72)