Organized killers, not popular resentment, are the operative cause of anti-Jewish violence.

Evidence

To make the issue more complex still, it is far from obvious that the presence of antisemitism, admittedly a necessary condition of anti-Jewish violence, can be seen as its sufficient condition. In Norman Cohn’s opinion, an organized group of ‘professional Jew-killers’ (itself a phenomenon not unconnected with antisemitism, yet in no way identical with it) is the very material and operative cause of violence; without it, resentment of the Jews, however strong, had hardly ever erupted into physical assaults against Jewish neighbours. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 116

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishing necessary from sufficient cause and positing an ‘operative cause’ device anticipates how the reader’s Islamophobia toolkit distinguishes attitudes from state/organizational machinery. — connects to: Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 682; Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 703; Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89 (+3 more)

Related

• Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them (similarity 0.81)
• Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 522
• Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89
• Anti-Jewish hatred was weaponized before any verdict existed #corroborates (0.72)
• Organized violence creates member security that validates the movement’s fictitious world #expands (0.70)