Wealth without power attracts hatred because it lacks social function

Evidence

Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone. What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 65

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in statelessness and the construction of the ‘Other’ — powerlessness without social function as the target of organized hatred. — connects to: Jews were hated because they were secretly envied for embodying wealth without work — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 698
• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-shifting reframing: persecution is not mere meanness but tracks the rational perception that detached wealth serves no social function — a mechanism concept to carry into the Islamophobia field.