Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature

Evidence

Hannah Arendt pointed out a long time ago that, in the phenomenon of the Holocaust, antisemitism may explain at most the choice of the victims, but not the nature of the crime. Nothing has happened since then to invalidate Arendt’s verdict, while the monumental memoirs of Primo Levi, the monumental historical research of Raoul Hilberg and the monumental documentary of Claude Lanzmann, to mention but a few landmarks, did a lot to confirm and reinforce it. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 703

Hannah Arendt pointed out long ago that in the phenomenon of the Holocaust antisemitism may explain at most the choice of the victims, but not the nature of the crime. Nothing has happened since then to invalidate Arendt’s verdict, while the monumental memoirs of Primo Levi, the monumental historical research of Raoul Hilberg, and the monumental documentary of Claude Lanzmann, to mention but a few landmarks, did a lot to confirm and reinforce it. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 456

Categorization

• XREF: Framework distinction (choosing victims vs. nature of crime) transfers directly to analyzing Islamophobic scapegoating versus exclusionary state mechanisms. — connects to: The scapegoat and eternal-antisemitism theories mirror totalitarian denial of human agency; Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 521; The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114 (+9 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 703; David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 456

Broader Connections

• Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide #contradicts (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 521
• The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. #complicates (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114
• Organized killers, not popular resentment, are the operative cause of anti-Jewish violence. #contradicts (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 116
• Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89
• Hate violence can be state-encouraged rather than merely irrational individual deviance #contradicts (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 101