Sustained antisemitism emerged only in the medieval persecuting society

Evidence

A strong case can be made, therefore, that the first widespread and sustained animosity against the Jews as Jews occurred during the medieval period. If persecution was at most sporadic and rarely murderous before then, the question is: why the radical change in attitudes and responses? It has been argued by Moore that “In the early middle ages as in the later, persecution began as a weapon in the competition for political influence, and was turned by the victors into an instrument for consolidating their power over society at large.” The twelfth century renaissance led to “the tremendous extension of the power and influence of the literate” and, alongside the “emergence of a bureaucratic regime,” enabled the formation of a persecuting society as well as the positive achievements of this age within Western Europe. Moore points out that it was not only Jews who were persecuted in the early middle ages but also those constructed as heretics, lepers, and sodomites who “for all imaginative purposes… were interchangeable… [and] presented the same threat: through them the Devil was at work to subvert the Christian order and bring the world to chaos” (Moore, 1987:65,140,146,153). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 499

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Moore’s thesis — persecution as a weapon in political competition later consolidated into a ‘persecuting society’ with interchangeable target categories (Jews, heretics, lepers, sodomites) — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting lens on how institutionalized bigotry originates and sustains itself.
• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s finding that moral panics function as class/identity/political signaling — persecution here too serves intra-elite power consolidation, not just intergroup hatred.
• STORYSTEM: The idea of a medieval persecuting society where Jews, heretics, lepers, and sodomites are ‘interchangeable’ threats could ground a fantasy-historical narrative about how a society manufactures its own demonic Others from whatever categories it has at hand.