Cultural racism travels and can be adopted without local Jewish populations

Evidence

Modernization processes seem to move in our days away from Europe. Though some sort of boundary-defining device seemed to be necessary in the passage to modern, ‘garden-type’ culture, as well as during the most traumatic dislocations in societies undergoing the modernizing change, the selection of Jews for the role of such a device was in all probability dictated by the particular vicissitudes of European history. The connection between Judeophobia and European modernity was historical – and, one may say, historically unique. On the other hand, we know only too well that cultural stimuli travel relatively freely, if also unaccompanied by structural conditions closely related to them in their place of origin. Stereotype of the Jew as an order-disturbing force, as an incongruous cluster of oppositions that saps all identities and threatens all efforts at self-determination, has been long ago sedimented in the highly authoritative European culture and is available for export and import transactions, like everything else in that culture which is widely recognized as superior and trustworthy. This stereotype, like so many other culturally framed concepts and items before, can be adopted as a vehicle in the solution of local problems even if historical experience of which it was born has been locally missing; even if (or perhaps particularly if) societies which adopt it have had no previous first-hand knowledge of the Jews. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 225

Categorization

• XREF: Directly reusable for Islamophobia studies: how the Orientalist/anti-Muslim stereotype travels and is adopted as a vehicle for local anxieties. — connects to: ‘Free-floating’ cultural racism sustains racial hierarchy without naming race at all. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 175; Racialization can proceed from cultural traits without any phenotypic difference — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88; Cultural racism substitutes cultural traits for biological ones in racializing groups. (+7 more)
• QUESTION: Bauman says cultural stereotypes travel freely without their originating structural conditions — worth chasing how this applies to Islamophobia beyond Muslim-majority regions.
• SEED: Essay angle: the stereotype as boundary-defining device that gets imported by societies with no firsthand contact with its target.

Related

• Antisemitism survives and re-targets other populations after Jews disappear (similarity 0.81)
• ‘Free-floating’ cultural racism sustains racial hierarchy without naming race at all. (similarity 0.80)
• Racism’s language is recycled against immigrant workers in Western states. (similarity 0.79)
• Both Jews and Muslims have been racialized by majority populations in modern Europe. (similarity 0.79)
• Cultural racism locks groups into immutable genealogies just as biological race did. (similarity 0.79)
• Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish stereotyping operates through racialization rather than mere religious prejudice. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Cultural racism substitutes cultural traits for biological ones in racializing groups. #corroborates (0.95)
• Racialization can proceed from cultural traits without any phenotypic difference #corroborates (0.85) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88
• Interpreting Islamophobia solely as cultural racism essentialises and reduces the faith #complicates (0.80) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 773
• Biological racism and cultural differentialism are racism’s two registers, not separate systems #expands (0.80)
• A society is either racist or not; gradations are evasions. #contradicts (0.75)
• Racism exists as a variable spectrum, not a single invariant form #expands (0.72)
• Racism has no universal structure but only historically specific forms #expands (0.72)