Jews formed a state-defined group outside the class system

Evidence

Where the Nazis were most successful was in the depersonalization of the Jews. The more the Jew was forced out of social life, the more he seemed to fit the stereotypes of a propaganda which intensified, paradoxically, its campaign against ‘Jewry’ the fewer actual Jews there were in Germany itself. Depersonalization increased the already existent widespread indifference of German popular opinion and formed a vital stage between the archaic violence and the rationalized ‘assembly line’ annihilation of the death camps. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 531 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Jews existed between social classes rather than within any one of them.; The nation-state needed Jewish credit and so preserved Jews as a separate group; Jews were socially suspended in a void defined by the state (+12 more)

Related

• Society preferred unassimilated Jews precisely because their alienness fed its imagination (similarity 0.83)
• Jewish cultural productivity derived from their inter-European non-national role. (similarity 0.82)
• Jews served Europe as a non-national international element valued precisely for their unboundness. (similarity 0.82)
• The Jews’ stateless international status made them permanently useful to the nation-state. (similarity 0.82)
• Jewish social position derived from state relationship rather than class, leaving them socially void. (similarity 0.81)
• The totalizing aim of Entfernung paradoxically preserved Jewish communal structure. (similarity 0.81)
• Jewish emancipation simultaneously meant equality and the extension of group privileges (similarity 0.80)
• Jews occupied no class position because the state, not class relations, defined them (similarity 0.80)
• Social exclusion of Jews made abstract stereotypes replace personal knowledge. (similarity 0.80)
• A stable state’s need for them kept Jews a separate protected group (similarity 0.80)
• Tribal antisemitism severed hatred of Jews from any actual experience of them (similarity 0.80)
• No degree of conformity made Jews’ social membership secure in Weimar Germany (similarity 0.79)
• Jews were the only inter-European element in a nationalized Europe (similarity 0.79)
• Pre-modern caste structure made Jewish separation a normal rather than exceptional status (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Jews could merge with neither a class nor a nationality in the nation-state #expands (0.90)
• Eastern European Jews formed a middle class without productive functions #expands (0.85)
• A stable state’s need for them kept Jews a separate protected group #expands (0.80)
• Jews served states best by remaining outsiders working for them #expands (0.80)
• Social exclusion of Jews made abstract stereotypes replace personal knowledge. #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 531
• State benevolence toward Jews deliberately preserved their felt separateness #expands (0.78)
• Pre-modern caste structure made Jewish separation a normal rather than exceptional status #qualifies (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 126