The Cancer of English Anti-Semitism
As Arendt observes the final cruel blow is to rob people of any role - as either exploited or exploiter.
The 200 year-old arrangement - by which the Jews rendered money-lending services in return for protection and freedom of travel around the kingdom - was torn to shreds. The first sign was the sudden enforcement of the wearing of the badge of difference, the 'tabula'. Now they were marked people. Then, the towns in which they were allowed to reside, were limited; whole communities now moved elsewhere. When Edward got back from the crusade it got worse. A state on the Jews in 1275 forbade money-lending, the essential activity, whatever its odium and perils, that supported what would be otherwise indigent communities.
Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews, p. 323
This pattern keeps repeating itself - destroy a people by attacking their rights, their presence and their economic contribution. I explore this issue in more detail in The Unmaking of Man.
The same pattern can be seen in the lives of disabled people trapped in institutions. The same pattern was repeated in Hitler's Germany.
As Arendt observes the final cruel blow is to rob people of any role - as either exploited or exploiter:
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 even imply the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 5
We must protect each other's rights - with no excuses, no exceptions. But we must also guard against segregation and special badges that mark some people off as 'special'. And we must never allow anyone to be treated as if they have nothing to offer - we need everyone - everyone has something to offer.
Otherwise, horror awaits.
1275 was a particular low point for England. English anti-Semitism unleashed the trend towards the ghetto and the pogrom, a trend which spread across Europe in the centuries that followed. In turn this led to modern anti-Semitism and the death camps. We may warm our consciences by the fact that the worst excesses were not ours - but many of them started in England and spread outwards like cancer.