Another idea presented by Simona Forti in New Demons: Rethinking Power and Evil Today is that of the "Jewish parasite." I theorize that this image lies at the core of Nazi ideology and of genocide. This image embodied the fantasy that Jews were sucking the blood of the German people; consuming the body politic.

The "parasite on the body of the people" symbolized none other than the German nation itself. This image represented the other side of the coin of the ideology of sacrifice. Hitler imagined sacrifice to be good and noble, claiming Germans willingly gave their blood for the nation. Hitler recognized on some level, however, that blood sacrifice was pathologically destructive.

It was into the Jew that Hitler projected the negative experience of his sacrificial ideology; realization that blood sacrifice meant that the German nation was sucking the blood of the German people. 

The "Jewish parasite on the body of the people" was was none other than Germany. 

It was the German nation itself (requiring blood sacrifice) that was parasitic upon the German people. The Jew symbolized the German nation itself in its destructive guise, devouring the German body politic; sucking the blood out of the German people.

Richard Koenigsberg

Abstract: The term "parasite" gives voice to the fear of Verjudung, the specter of Judaization that haunted the German imagination--as one of omnipotent political and economic dominion, and a fear of mental and cultural "contagion." When the Romantic emphasis on the "organic" was  united  with  metaphors  taken from the natural sciences, the figure of the  Volkskorper—often understood  by  the  conservative parties  as  "racial body"—found  a perfect correlate in the image of poisonous penetration.

Allusions to the "parasite" were something everyone could agree on. Biologists,  medical  doctors,  eugenicists, anthropologists, an excited and frightened middle class, —a large, variegated  array of Germans—were finally able to give a name, function, and face to the secret, corrosive power held, in their eyes, by the Jews. It was a parasite that was intent on destroying the body of the race by means of Bolshevism, capitalism, or intellectualism, as circumstances dictated; in any case, the Jew was eating away at the integrity of the German Volkskorper.

The hatred toward those who suck blood, going back to the medieval blood libel fantasies, was redoubled by contempt and resentment for those who were believed to exploit the host nation.

Simona Forti is Professor of History of Political Philosophy at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy. professor in Modern History  Read more about her on Wikipedia. Video of Conference on Nietzsche and Arendt. Forti's presentation begins at 39:01.   Book by Simona Forti For information on ordering through Amazon, PLEASE CLICK HERE. NEW DEMONS: Rethinking Power and Evil Today "Simona Forti is one of the most interesting Italian philosophers today. She is known for her studies on Arendt, and lately for her philosophical work on "totalitarian thanatopolitics." Her latest monograph is a challenging and innovative book that is destined to become an unavoidable point of orientation for studies and scholarly investigations on the topic." (Adriana Cavarero Political Theory) TABLE OF CONTENTS HERE

FROM CHAPTER 4, "Thanatopolitics & Absolute Victims

The word “parasite” entered—along with its derogatory character—into the lexicon of European languages and became synonymous with a contemptible human type who lives at other people's expense.

The German term Schmarotzer indicates the dual meaning that it would later bear: it is the equivalent of the English "sponger" and the Italian scroccone, with a morally negative connotation, but it also denotes a parasite understood in the biological sense, making its entrance into the natural sciences, starting in the eighteenth century, first in botany and then in animal biology.

The parasite is an example of the phenomenon in biology that takes the name of symbiosis, allowing a constant relationship to be established between two organisms from different species.

A parasitical relationship is one in which the relation is advantageous for one of the two symbionts—the parasite, of course—and harmful to the other, who in technical terms is known as the host.

The term parasite therefore designates an organism that lives at the expense of an organism from another species, establishing itself on the outside of its host (ecto­parasite), or inside (endoparasite).

In any case, the parasite is an organism that lives by feeding off its host, thereby causing harm; but unlike what happens in the relationship between a predator and its prey, which brings about immediate death, the damage is invisible and delayed.

This brings us to the last phase of animalization through "deficiency," with references to clearly demarcated natural realms populated by viruses, bacteria, mosquitoes, lice,  and ticks as well as weeds and fungi. Their description, however, is never neutral and detached, and carries connotations of a dirty, ugly, dejected world.

In short, in this realm of organisms killing is no more than an act of defense necessary for the health and survival of the "host." This is why parasite, more than any other term, lent itself to this dual scientific and moral meaning that was eventually put into play for describing the enemy.

The term gives voice better than any other to the fear of Verjudung, the specter of Judaization that haunted the German imagination, both as a specter of omnipotent political and economic dominion and a fear of mental and cultural "contagion." When the emphasis that Romanticism put on the "organic" was  united  with  metaphors  taken from the natural sciences, starting as early as the late eighteenth century, the figure of the  Volkskorper—often understood  by  the  conservative parties  as  "racial body"—found  a perfect correlate in the image of poisonous penetration.

In the mixture of volkisch (folkish) ideology, social Darwinism, eugenicism, and "Nordic racism" that typified Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century, allusions to the  parasite  were  something  everybody  could agree on. Biologists,  medical  doctors,  eugenicists, anthropologists, an excited and frightened middle class, rabble rousers—a large, variegated  array of Germans—were finally able to give a name, function, and face to the secret, corrosive power held, in their eyes, by the Jews. It was a parasite that was intent on destroying the body of the race by means of Bolshevism, capitalism, or intellectualism, as circumstances dictated; in any case, the Jew was eating away at the integrity of the German Volkskorper.

The hatred toward those who suck blood, going back to the medieval blood libel fantasies, was redoubled by contempt and resentment for those who were believed to exploit the host nation. The Jew became responsible for the disasters caused by industrialization, modernization, and capitalism; he was the negative pole in the opposition between Kultur and Civilisation, between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft that sparked European antimodernism.

From Heinrich von Treitschke's heroic nationalism to the provocative brilliance of Otto Weininger, from the sociology of Ferdinand Tonnies to the economics of Werner Sombart, passing through the social philosophy of the brilliant Georg Simmel, even the respectable face of the German intelligentsia launched the culture of the twentieth century with the well-known opposition between the community spirit of the Germans versus the "disintegrative" power of the uprooted Jews.

It was an opposition that would perpetuate itself in a long series of dichotomies, at whose head the adversaries now loomed starkly in battle, face to face: the Judentum versus the Deutschtum. This is the dichotomous vision that tied the Jew to economic, political, and intellectual abstraction and decadence, presenting the Jewish people as a corrosive force eating away at the authentic and the concrete, with the capacity to drag everything toward nothingness.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the French repertoire provided by the likes of Alphonse Toussenel and Edouard Drumont passed into German hands. Out of the reprehensible  name "Jew"—already developed as a concept—they were able to shape a veritable category of the spirit, embodied  by the figure of the parasite, which  became the  vehicle for an exterminatory racism.

If it is true—as the promoters of genocide as a hygienic act of disinfestation argue—that zoological and biological metaphors were made literal, their naturalistic innocence was immediately tainted by guilt. In other words, these naturalistic metaphor were projected onto a moral universe so powerful that the fight of good against evil stopped at nothing. This is the aspect overshadowed today by the interpretation of political evil in terms of biopower.