Jews’ state-loan role fused lower-middle-class resentment with politics

Evidence

To this social-economic element, however, another was quickly added which in the long run proved to be more ominous. The position of the Jews as bankers depended not upon loans to small people in distress, but primarily on the issuance of state loans. Petty loans were left to the small fellows, who in this way prepared themselves for the more promising careers of their wealthier and more honorable brethren. The social resentment of the lower middle classes against the Jews turned into a highly explosive political element, because these bitterly hated Jews were thought to be well on their way to political power. Were they not only too well known for their relationship with the government in other respects? Social and economic hatred, on the other hand, reinforced the political argument with that driving violence which up to then it had lacked completely. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 145

Categorization

• XREF: Explains why Jewish financial roles became politically explosive — connects forward to the Islamophobia readings on how economic mediation of state power becomes racialized. — connects to: Jews’ economic roles made them scapegoats for capitalist misery. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1539; Jews’ partial conformity to middle-class norms fueled antisemitic resentment. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1540; Bank-crisis exposure predicted later pogroms and deportations of Jews. — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 30