Civility coordinated the genocide and prompted bystander passivity rather than resistance

Evidence

The protracted, and often painful, civilizing process failed to erect a single foolproof barrier against the genocide. Those mechanisms needed the civilized code of behaviour to co-ordinate criminal actions in such a way that they seldom clashed with the self-righteousness of the perpetrators. Among the bystanders, the civilized disgust of inhumanity did not prove strong enough to encourage an active resistance to it. Most bystanders reacted as civilized norms advise and prompt us to react to things unsightly and barbaric; they turned their eyes the other way. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 320

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reverses the assumption that civility is moral: civilizing manners actively coordinated mass murder and sanctioned turning away — a dense inversion worth sitting with.
• ADDENDUM: Parallels ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ — both show a cultural code (manners, dress) serving class/identity functions rather than the moral function claimed for it.
• XREF: connects to: Prejudice is neither necessary nor sufficient for genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 702; Public indifference, not hatred, greased the machinery of genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 215; Early silent compliance precluded later resistance to genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 216 (+4 more)

Related

• Public indifference, not hatred, greased the machinery of genocide (similarity 0.83)
• Early silent compliance precluded later resistance to genocide (similarity 0.80)
• Civility veils socially sanctioned violence rather than ending it. (similarity 0.79)
• Genocide’s moral invisibility recruits far more participants than conscience-stifling does (similarity 0.79)