Visible success made Jews appear capable of causing Germany’s economic woes

Evidence

Prior stereotypes informed the Nazis’ causal analysis and lent plausibility to the notion that the Jews had both the ability and the intention to cause Germany’s woes. … Visible Jewish success in banking and the media within Germany fed into a secular equivalent of this stereotype, with powerful Jews seen as exerting dangerous influence over the economy and German culture (Friedländer, 1997). … In short, prior stereotypes characterized the Jews as possessing an uncanny ability and a fiendish desire to undermine German society and the economy in a way that stereotypes of alternative targets, such as the Gypsies, did not. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 798

Categorization

• XREF: Empirical anchor for the envied-outgroup thesis: visible competence (banking, media) fed the ability attribution. — connects to: Bank-crisis exposure predicted later pogroms and deportations of Jews. — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 30; Germans believed Jews’ power and capacity to cause harm was colossal. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 498; Jews’ economic roles made them scapegoats for capitalist misery. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1539 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Germans believed Jews’ power and capacity to cause harm was colossal. #corroborates (0.95) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 498
• Jewish economic roles made them appear as capitalism’s aggressive face to oppressed masses #expands (0.95)
• Jews’ economic roles made them scapegoats for capitalist misery. #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1539
• Bank-failure exposure predicts later anti-Semitic persecution across German cities. #corroborates (0.85) — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 278
• Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism #expands (0.85)