Social factors, not just politics, turned antisemitism into extermination

Evidence

The deciding forces in the Jews’ fateful journey to the storm center of events were without doubt political; but the reactions of society to anti-semitism and the psychological reflections of the Jewish question in the individual had something to do with the specific cruelty, the organized and calculated assault upon every single individual of Jewish origin, that was already characteristic of the antisemitism of the Dreyfus Affair. This passion-driven hunt of the “Jew in general,” the “Jew everywhere and nowhere,” cannot be understood if one considers the history of antisemitism as an entity in itself, as a mere political movement. Social factors, unaccounted for in political or economic history, hidden under the surface of events, never perceived by the historian and recorded only by the more penetrating and passionate force of poets or novelists (men whom society had driven into the desperate solitude and loneliness of the apologia pro vita sua) changed the course that mere political antisemitism would have taken if left to itself, and which might have resulted in anti-Jewish legislation and even mass expulsion but hardly in wholesale extermination. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 273

Categorization

• XREF: This mechanism — that social/psychological factors beyond mere political ideology escalate persecution toward extermination — connects to later biopolitics and necropolitics readings (Mbembe, Foucault) in the Islamophobia field toolkit. — connects to: Systematic bureaucratic destruction replaced spontaneous atrocity in the camps; Scientific antisemitism was layered in façade institutions hiding the extermination authority — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 912; Antisemitism acted as a catalyst for Nazi rule, world war, and genocide (+10 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces the distinction between ‘mere political antisemitism’ and the social-psychological dimension that turns it mortal — a key conceptual distinction to carry forward.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 273

Broader Connections

• The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. #responds-to (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114
• Popular antisemitism contributed to the Holocaust chiefly through induced apathy. #exemplifies (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 115