Jews were uniquely targeted as both below and above civilization.

Evidence

As distinct from women, blacks, aboriginals, gypsies, and so on, the Jews contrasted with civilization not only downwards, towards undominated nature, but also upwards, towards the mind or spirit raising itself above nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 364

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The doubled opposition — simultaneously too natural and too spiritual — is the structural core of Horkheimer and Adorno’s account of why antisemitism differs from other racisms, and it genuinely resists a quick summary.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier chapters on the culture industry and the manipulative character type, and to Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew on the antisemite’s need for an inescapable enemy.