Philosemitism and antisemitism are intertwined responses to Jewish social visibility

Evidence

Ever since the Dreyfus Affair and its political threat to the rights of French Jewry had produced a social situation in which Jews enjoyed an ambiguous glory, antisemitism appeared in Europe as an insoluble mixture of political motives and social elements. Society always reacted first to a strong antisemitic movement with marked preference for Jews, so that Disraeli’s remark that “there is no race at this present …that so much delights and fascinates and elevates and ennobles Europe as the Jewish,” became particularly true in times of danger. Social “philosemitism” always ended by adding to political antisemitism that mysterious fanaticism without which antisemitism could hardly have become the best slogan for organizing the masses. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 274

Categorization

• XREF: The insight that overt affection and hostility toward a group can be two faces of the same positioning of them as ‘Other’ carries directly into the Islamophobia field’s analysis of how ‘philo-Islamic’ discourse mirrors anti-Muslim discourse. — connects to: Jewish social alienation differed from class alienation in being inescapable across generations — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 17
• QUESTION: Arendt asserts social philosemitism ‘always’ escalates political antisemitism into fanaticism — worth probing whether this mechanism generalizes or is specific to the European Jewish case.