Adiaphorization alone cannot explain the novelty of Gulag, Auschwitz, Hiroshima

Evidence

It is true that society conceived of as an adiaphorizing mechanism offers a much better explanation of the ubiquitous cruelty endemic in human history than does the orthodox theory of the social origin of morality; it explains in particular why at a time of war or crusades or colonization or communal strife normal human collectivities are capable of performing acts which, if committed singly, are readily ascribed to the psychopathia of the perpetrator. And yet it stops short of accounting for such strikingly novel phenomena of our time as the Gulag, Auschwitz or Hiroshima. One feels that these central events of our century are indeed novel; and one is inclined (with justification) to suspect that they signify the appearance of certain new, typically modern, characteristics that are not a universal feature of human society as such and were not possessed by societies of the past. Why? — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 617

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bauman poses the limit of adiaphorization theory as a puzzle: what distinctively modern feature explains the death camps? This is the pivot to the next section’s answer (technology scale).
• XREF: connects to: Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270; Mechanical causality cannot account for qualitative change or historical novelty.; None of the societal conditions that made Auschwitz possible has disappeared. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 67

Related

• None of the societal conditions that made Auschwitz possible has disappeared. (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270
• Mechanical causality cannot account for qualitative change or historical novelty. #corroborates (0.72)