Russian pogroms pushed Jewish emigrants into South African finance’s mob

Evidence

It is also significant that it was precisely the mob element among the Jewish people who turned into financiers. It is true that the discovery of gold mines in South Africa had coincided with the first modern pogroms in Russia, so that a trickle of Jewish emigrants went to South Africa. There, however, they would hardly have played a role in the international crowd of desperadoes and fortune hunters if a few Jewish financiers had not been there ahead of them and taken an immediate interest in the newcomers who clearly could represent them in the population. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 520

Categorization

• XREF: Connects the mob element concept to the later chapters on race-thinking and statelessness as part of the biography of superfluous men.