Victims of persecution adopt self-endangering stereotypes of their all-powerful oppressors
Evidence
At the end of the war, General Eisenhower made it compulsory reading for every officer in the United States military government in Germany. … Some years later, Bettelheim published an article on `The Victim’s Image of the Anti-Semite’, based on his experiences with Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps. This tackled the explosive problem of the way in which the Jews reacted to the effective psychological mechanisms of the anti-Semites by developing reality-distorting psychological mechanisms of their own, and endangered themselves by stereotyping their opponents as simultaneously all-powerful and contemptible, since they did not see where their real chances lay. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 404
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School’s later anti-Semitism research on the ‘manipulative character’ and the objective spirit of prejudice; also resonates with Du Bois on racial ideology as rationalization. — connects to: Victims of oppression actively cope and adapt rather than only suffer damage; Victims’ stereotyped perception of their own persecution impairs their response — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 390; Victims of persecution develop distorting stereotypes that endanger their own survival chances (+5 more)
- SEED: Angle: how the psychology of the oppressed — stereotyping power as both omnipotent and contemptible — sabotages accurate assessment of where real leverage lies.
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Victims of oppression actively cope and adapt rather than only suffer damage; Victims’ stereotyped perception of their own persecution impairs their response — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 390; Victims of persecution develop distorting stereotypes that endanger their own survival chances (+5 more)