Nation-states require racialized others to justify their claimed homogeneity

Evidence

Religious interest groups in Israel and other supporters elsewhere of a restrictively ethnohomogeneous Israel consequently are concerned to control the conception and administration of “the true and pure Jew.” This is a commitment not that logically far removed in the end from the likes of the “one drop rule.” This idea of Israel requires “the Palestinian problem” to justify itself as the Jewish state, much as Germans required the racial logics of “the Jewish problem” and America “the Negro problem” to constitute themselves in earlier moments as self-projectedly homogeneous. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 585

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘Negro problem’ framing the reader encountered elsewhere in US racial theory; also parallels the structure of moral panics requiring a folk devil. — connects to: State homogenization programs bred contradictory nationalist claims that spur secession — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1021
• DEEPTHINKING: The symmetry drawn across Germany, America, and Israel around needing an internal threat to constitute projected homogeneity is dense and paradigm-shifting in its comparative sweep.