European Totalitarianism

A few things about Europe (and totalitarianism). The left (populists) believed the “others” (or the Rich Jews) were conspiring to take over Europe. The mid-17th century was the transition from classist feudalism (peasant and nobility) to nation states (government and workers). Generally, workers and Christians saw money lending as unsavory, having to do with religious biases and ignorant bigotries around interest rates (usury) and not understanding basic economics (like the time value of money, or risk-reward ratios). Europe was ripe for classism (resenting the rich), resenting finance/bankers, other tribes: Jews were all of these. Anti-semitism, classist envy and religious bigotries all blur into the same thing for them. The U.S. culture evolved mostly from European descendants and picked up a lot of those biases.

Conclusion

In the U.S. we lost much of our resentment of the Jews, and Jews were free'er to do more things in the U.S. so they integrated a bit more. The bigotries still remained in a slightly moderated form, but a lot of the ignorant bigotry against CEO's, shop owners, or Rich/Republicans stems from these old world ignorant bigotries: magnified through the democrat/Marxist lense of miseducated college classes.

📚 References The Origins of Totalitarianism : Hannah Arendt. Written in 1951 by a Jewish Woman who barely escaped the Nazi's, and went on to become the first Woman to hold the rank of full Professor at Princeton University.