Weimar Jews’ State-party revealed a confusion of party with state

Evidence

With the help of a few non-Jews, they then founded that middle-class party which they called “State-party” (Staatspartei), the very name a contradiction in terms. They were so naively convinced that their “party,” supposedly representing them in political and social struggle, ought to be the state itself, that the whole relationship of the party to the state never dawned upon them. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 116

Categorization

• XREF: Demonstrates Arendt’s thesis of Jewish political naivete — a concrete mechanism for how the Jews’ faith in the abstract state left them helpless when the state turned against them. Echoes into how minority groups assume state protection rather than build political power.