The Institute feared American antisemitic potential could exceed Germany’s

Evidence

If only a minority of the Germans had been anti-Semitic (as the report emphasized), if latent, smouldering anti-Semitism formed part of Western civilization, if the anti-Semitic minority in Germany had been able, within a few years, to push forward anti-Semitism to the stage of industrialized mass murder, must it not be feared that in the USAwith its far more advanced capitalist structures, which had not been called into question by any socialist labour movement, with its much more all-encompassing and frustrating culture industry, with its more pronounced ethnocentrism and with its history marked by open violencea far more extensive and severe anti-Semitic potential might already have become capable of suddenly turning into open, violent anti-Semitism, under far less critical political and economic conditions than in Germany? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1546

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes ch38’s claim that most German émigré intellectuals abandoned the fascism-capitalism link by 1939—here Horkheimer privately retained the more radical version. — connects to: Horkheimer’s logic implied the USA carried a greater fascist potential than Germany. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1546
• SEED: An essay angle: how exiled theorists’ unprintable fear about America—that its anti-Semitic potential might exceed Germany’s—was suppressed for the host country and sponsors.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer’s logic implied the USA carried a greater fascist potential than Germany. #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1546