Jewish economic roles made them appear as capitalism’s aggressive face to oppressed masses

Evidence

The reasoning ran as follows: the Jews were particularly exposed owing to their role as money-lenders, merchants and traders, occupations which were more available to them than other people and in which, since they were forced to enjoy taking risks, they took more risks and were more successful in those they took than non-Jews. To the oppressed masses, they seemed to be the immediate cause of their misery and appeared to be displaying the expansionist and unsympathetic face of capitalism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1539 (#corroborates, 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)

From the time when, in their capacity as merchants, they helped to spread Roman civilization throughout Gentile Europe, they were the representatives—in harmony with their patriarchal religion—of municipal, bourgeois and, finally, industrial conditions. They carried capitalist ways of life to various countries and drew upon themselves the hatred of all who had to suffer under capitalism. For the sake of the economic progress which is now proving their downfall, the Jews were always a thorn in the side of the craftsmen and peasants who were declassed by capitalism. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 132 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Jews’ economic roles made them scapegoats for capitalist misery. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1539; Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146; Jews drew hatred because they carried capitalism into pre-capitalist economies — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 132 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Jews’ economic roles made them scapegoats for capitalist misery. #corroborates (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1539
• Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable #expands (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146
• Jews drew hatred because they carried capitalism into pre-capitalist economies #expands (0.88) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 132
• Petty bourgeois resentment blamed Jews for the competitive system that displaced them #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 142
• Leftist antisemitism drew strength from Jews’ actual moneylending and finance roles #corroborates (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 170
• Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism #qualifies (0.80)
• Antisemitic images of Jews function to perpetuate the rule of domination. #expands (0.78)