Socialist neglect of the Jewish question ceded the field to antisemites

Evidence

The seeming paradox had a solid basis in fact. What non-Jewish society demanded was that the newcomer be as “educated” as itself, and that, although he not behave like an “ordinary Jew,” he be and produce something out of the ordinary, since, after all, he was a Jew. All advocates of emancipation called for assimilation, that is, adjustment to and reception by, society, which they considered either a preliminary condition to Jewish emancipation or its automatic consequence. In other words, whenever those who actually tried to improve Jewish conditions attempted to think of the Jewish question from the point of view of the Jews themselves, they immediately approached it merely in its social aspect. It has been one of the most unfortunate facts in the history of the Jewish people that only its enemies, and almost never its friends, understood that the Jewish question was a political one. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 194 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even well-meaning emancipation advocates reduced the Jewish question to a social one — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 194; Vienna simultaneously hosted Hitler’s antisemitism model and Austro-Marxist socialism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 203

Related

• Even well-meaning emancipation advocates reduced the Jewish question to a social one (similarity 0.90)
• Antisemitism only conserved Jewish identity after emancipation and assimilation. (similarity 0.82)
• Socialists avoided the Jewish question until full-blown antisemitism forced it on them (similarity 0.81)
• Assimilated Jews diverted antisemitic antipathy onto poorer immigrant brethren (similarity 0.81)
• Jewish intellectual assimilation shifted Jews from inter-European traders to national citizens seeking social admittance (similarity 0.80)
• Political antisemitism and social discrimination arise from opposite emancipation aspects (similarity 0.80)
• Emancipation threatened assimilated Jews’ social distinction more than their persecution (similarity 0.80)
• Assimilated Western European Jews were more preoccupied with Jewish birth than traditional communities were. (similarity 0.80)
• Enlightenment emancipation reframed Jewish persistence as blameworthy obstinacy rather than ending victim-blaming. (similarity 0.79)
• Jewish emancipation simultaneously meant equality and the extension of group privileges (similarity 0.79)
• Assimilated Jewish pride was matched by ignorance of Jewish life (similarity 0.79)
• Society preferred unassimilated Jews precisely because their alienness fed its imagination (similarity 0.79)
• Prussian emancipation of Jews followed from equal-citizenship ideology, not economic interest (similarity 0.79)
• Jewish political neutrality vanished with assimilation, and Zionists had independent politics. (similarity 0.79)
• Social acceptance of a group becomes self-conscious and conditional once civil equality arrives. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Even well-meaning emancipation advocates reduced the Jewish question to a social one #expands (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 194