Engineered suffering can be presented as mercy, legitimizing escalation
Evidence
Exploitation and starvation perform a further, truly astonishing, feat: they disguise inhumanity as humanity. There is ample evidence of local Nazi chiefs asking their superiors for permission to kill some Jews under their jurisdiction (well before the signal was given to start mass killings) in order to spare them the agony of famine; as the food supplies were not available to sustain a mass of ghettoized population previously robbed of wealth and income, killing seemed an act of mercy – indeed, the manifestation of humanity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 544
Categorization
- XREF: The mechanism of manufactured crises legitimizing harsher measures echoes critiques of how security emergencies get used to expand exclusion. — connects to: Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 309; Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing; Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264 (+6 more)
Related
- The extermination machinery aimed to eliminate personal sadism and reduce cruelty (similarity 0.81)
- Rationality and order produce inhumanity, not merely contain it (similarity 0.79)
- Forcing survival to require soiled hands manufactures accomplices over time (similarity 0.79)
- Instrumental rationality cannot prevent mass atrocities and normalizes social engineering. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing
#complicates(0.82) - Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design
#expands(0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 309 - Rationality and order produce inhumanity, not merely contain it
#corroborates(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 435 - Moral philosophy is now being deployed to facilitate war
#exemplifies(0.78) - Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society
#complicates(0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264 - Technical remoteness from victims enables moral substitution
#qualifies(0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 459 - Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility
#expands(0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 441 - Punishment is designed to maximize apparent suffering while minimizing real pain.
#exemplifies(0.72) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 15 - Ideological commitment requires willed moral blindness to human suffering
#complicates(0.72)