It must be recognized, as it is rarely in the histories of the Jews, that expressed resentment and indictments against the Jews were not entirely fictitious libels or maliciously revived and activated stereotypes simply disseminated by paranoid hate merchants from the grab bag of the antisemitic premodern past. There was just enough empirical truth in these negatives, overblown, and over-generated images to give them persuasive force.

Norman Cantor (Jewish historian) “The Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews”, 1994