France’s weak industrial development made leftist antisemitism mistake Jewish bankers for capitalism itself.

Evidence

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: Jewish banking ties to state loans turned class resentment into political antisemitism; Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism; Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146 (+1 more)

Related

• Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism (similarity 0.92)
• Jewish banking ties to state loans turned class resentment into political antisemitism (similarity 0.89)
• Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable (similarity 0.83)
• Jewish economic roles made them appear as capitalism’s aggressive face to oppressed masses (similarity 0.83)
• Jews’ partial conformity to middle-class norms fueled antisemitic resentment. (similarity 0.82)
• Jews became a symbolic target for everything the mob hated (similarity 0.81)
• Jews’ economic roles made them scapegoats for capitalist misery. (similarity 0.81)
• Jews drew hatred because they carried capitalism into pre-capitalist economies (similarity 0.80)
• Nobility contempt for industry branded Jewish modernization as a national calamity (similarity 0.80)
• Antisemitism among the lower middle class arose from fear of proletarianization (similarity 0.79)
• Leftist antisemitism drew strength from Jews’ actual moneylending and finance roles (similarity 0.79)
• Economic grievance against merchant roles triggered anti-Semitic violence. (similarity 0.78)
• Jews were attacked simultaneously from left and right as capitalist and liberal symbols (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Jewish banking ties to state loans turned class resentment into political antisemitism #expands (0.85)
• Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism #corroborates (0.80)
• Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146
• Nobility contempt for industry branded Jewish modernization as a national calamity #corroborates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 152