Disintegration

The stereotype of disintegration is conceived as the Jewish tendency for “activity directed towards separation or destruction” of a community or state. Originally used to designate chemical or biological processes that oppose the process of “composition,” the expression underwent a change of meaning when linguistic images of such processes were projected onto developments in social and political spheres. The idea of a disintegrating quality is attributed to Jews in an essentialising way as a habitual, formative behaviour that aims at the dissolution of state, social and spiritual order. The central moment of the stereotype of disintegration manifests itself in the idea of a people as a single organism that can only carry out its activities if all its parts or members are intact and work together. Jews are excluded from this organism as foreign bodies, frequently portrayed in biological terms as “viruses” or “parasites.” Jewish participation in that organism supposedly poses a threat of “infection,” “decay” and finally “dissolution.”