Common oppression does not necessarily unify the oppressed

Evidence

It must therefore be emphasized that the common submission to a ruling power by no means always leads to unification but, if the submission occurs under certain conditions, to the very opposite of it. For instance, English legislation directed a number of measures and exclusions concerning military service, the right to vote, ownership, and government positions, against non-Conformists, that is, against Presbyterians, Catholics, and Jews alike. The member of the state church thus used his prerogative to give equal expression to his hatred of all these groups. But this did not fuse the oppressed into a community of any sort; on the contrary, the hatred of the Conformist was even surpassed by the Presbyterian’s hatred of the Catholic, and of the Catholic’s of the Presbyterian. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 335

Here we seem to deal with a psychological “threshold phenomenon.” There is a measure of enmity between social elements which becomes ineffectual if they experience a common pressure: it then yields to external, if not internal, unification. But if the original aversion surpasses a certain limit, a common oppression has the opposite effect. This has two reasons. The first is that once there is a dominating resentment in a certain direction, any irritation, no matter from what source it may come, only intensifies the general irritation and, contrary to all rational expectation, flows into the already existing river bed and thereby enlarges it. The second, even more important reason is that common suffering, though pressing the suffering elements closer together, reveals all the more strikingly their inner distance and irreconcilability, precisely by virtue of this enforced intimacy. Where unification, however it be created, cannot overcome a given antagonism, it does not preserve this antagonism at its former stage, but intensifies it. In all fields, contrast becomes sharper and more conscious in the measure in which the parties concerned come closer together. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 336

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the essay’s theme of solidarity failures among the targeted — parallels how categorized out-groups (per Lofland) may fragment rather than unite, and to theories of horizontal hostility among subordinated groups. — connects to: Communal philosophy need not imply unanimous belief among members; Whiteness does not guarantee affinity with white supremacist violence; Popular culture belongs to an alliance of oppressed classes (+8 more)
• SEED: Angle: common-enemy solidarity is contingent, not automatic — a counterpoint to ‘the enemy of my enemy’ folk wisdom with historical examples from religious and colonial exclusions.
• QUESTION: This threshold idea — aversions under a certain strength resolve under common pressure, above it they sharpen — could apply to Julius’s forced intimacy with New York crowds.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 335; Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 336

Related

• Popular culture belongs to an alliance of oppressed classes (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Whiteness does not guarantee affinity with white supremacist violence #corroborates (0.75)
• Communal philosophy need not imply unanimous belief among members #expands (0.70)