Modernity generated a meta-incongruity whereby Jews symbolized the very disorder that unsettled everyone.

Evidence

On the other hand, however, the rise of modernity was accompanied by processes pointing in an exactly opposite direction. It seemed as if the already entrenched incongruity, having marked its carrier as a ‘viscous’, semantically disturbing and subversive factor in the otherwise transparent and orderly reality, tended to accommodate to new conditions and to expand itself through attacking new incongruities; it acquired new, modern dimensions, and the lack of mutual connection between them turned into an incongruity in its own right, a meta-incongruity of sorts. The Jews, already construed as ‘slimy’ in religious and class dimensions, were more than any other category vulnerable to the impact of new tensions and contradictions which the social upheavals of the modernizing revolution could not fail to generate. For most members of society, the advent of modernity meant the destruction of order and security; and once again, the Jews were perceived as standing close to the centre of the destructive process. Their own rapid and incomprehensible social advancement and transformation seemed to epitomize the havoc visited by advancing modernity upon everything familiar, habitual and secure. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 142

Categorization

• XREF: The concept of a group perceived to epitomize modernity’s destructive flux directly anticipates analyses of Muslims as embodying threatening change; also echoes Bauman’s liquid-modernity themes. — connects to: The conceptual Jew occupied every boundary conflict of Western modernity — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 134; Jews became a symbolic target for everything the mob hated; Chimerical images of Jewish power became dangerous public fears (+1 more)

Related

• The conceptual Jew occupied every boundary conflict of Western modernity (similarity 0.81)
• Jews became a symbolic target for everything the mob hated (similarity 0.80)
• Defeated anti-modern resistance persists latently and eventually uses modernity’s own tools (similarity 0.80)
• Before modernity, segregated class perspectives kept hostile stereotypes of Jews from merging. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Jews became a symbolic target for everything the mob hated #expands (0.85)
• Hatred of Jews became detached from any specific Jewish deeds #expands (0.80)
• Chimerical images of Jewish power became dangerous public fears #expands (0.78)