Scapegoating a Jewish parasite class let the corrupt system continue unchanged
Evidence
Rich yet contemptible, the Jews provided a natural lightning-rod to divert early discharges of the anti-modernist energy. They provided the point where formidable powers of money met with social disdain, moral condemnation and aesthetic disgust. This was exactly what hostility to modernity, and particularly to its capitalist form, needed for an anchor. If only capitalism could be connected to the Jew, it would stand condemned as simultaneously alien, unnatural, inimical, dangerous and ethically repulsive. The connection was easy to establish: money power was confined to the margins and (under the contemptuous name of usury) writhed under the burden of authoritative condemnation as long as the Jews stayed enclosed in the ghetto: it moved to the centre of life and (under the prestigious name of capital) claimed authority and social respect once the Jews appeared on the streets of the city centre. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146 (
#contradicts, via linked claim)
There appear few causal links more transparent than that between antisemitism and the Holocaust. The Jews of Europe have been murdered because the Germans who did it, and their local helpers, were Jew-haters. The Holocaust was the spectacular climax of a centuries-long history of religious, economic, cultural and national resentment. This is the explanation of the Holocaust that first comes to mind. It ‘stands to reason’ (if one is allowed to indulge in paradoxes). And yet the apparent clarity of the causal link does not survive closer examination. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism; The scapegoat and eternal-antisemitism theories mirror totalitarian denial of human agency; The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114 (+1 more)
Related
- The scapegoat and eternal-antisemitism theories mirror totalitarian denial of human agency (similarity 0.85)
- Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism (similarity 0.85)
- Jews became a symbolic target for everything the mob hated (similarity 0.81)
- Capitalist anti-Semitism is the bourgeoisie’s self-hatred displaced onto Jews (similarity 0.80)
- Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable (similarity 0.80)
- The Jew-capital link survived because later movements absorbed and refashioned it (similarity 0.79)
- Antisemitism among the lower middle class arose from fear of proletarianization (similarity 0.79)
- A society wholly commercialized condemns Jews as materialists it has itself become. (similarity 0.78)
- Antisemitism peaked after Jews had already lost economic influence (similarity 0.78)
- Anti-Semitism deflects class hatred onto merchants who embody the whole system’s exploitation. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- The scapegoat and eternal-antisemitism theories mirror totalitarian denial of human agency
#expands(0.78) - Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable
#contradicts(0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146 - The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny.
#corroborates(0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114