The Stereotype Takes Care of Everything: The Critical Theory of Antisemitism during World War II

This article reconstructs the Institute for Social Research’s 1944-1945 study of working-class antisemitism in America. Initially, it shows, the Frankfurt School researchers understood antisemitism as an ideology amenable to reason; ultimately, they concluded it was an irrational pathology. This change, the article argues, followed from the Institute’s research method, empirical findings, and analytical concepts. Especially important was the concept of the stereotype, which mediated tensions within the Institute’s understanding of antisemitism and became central to Dialectic of Enlightenment and The Authoritarian Personality. By so arguing, the article reassesses interpretations of the Institute’s empirical research and critical theory in the 1940s.