Exceptionalist Holocaust readings let the rest of the world off the hook.

Evidence

The reader would easily conclude that it was precisely because the Germans were not ‘more or less like us’ that the Holocaust happened. And since ‘being unlike’ is a symmetrical relation, the next conclusion is equally easy: because all the rest of us are not ‘more or less like Germans’, nothing ‘remotely approximating’ the Holocaust-style genocide can be perpetrated by anybody else and anywhere else. Holocaust was, is, and will remain the German problem, and so the rest of the world has nothing to fear, can put conscience to rest and stop the vexing soul-scratching. In other words, nothing that we can possibly learn from the event called ‘the Holocaust’ can teach us anything about ourselves, the world we live in, or, indeed, anything else – except German guilt. Quod erat demonstrandum. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 686

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘exception-alizing’ move this reader will likely trace into Islamophobia discourse, where the Other is similarly quarantined as uniquely culpable. — connects to: The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630; Zionism perpetuates Jewish exceptionalism and tells a version of Jewish history disconnected from others. — Jewish challenges to Zionism on the rise in the US; The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 68 (+2 more)

Related

• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. (similarity 0.88)
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.85)
• All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust question must keep its full weight and horror (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust rendered Western civilization itself incomprehensible, not just the event. (similarity 0.84)
• Comprehending the Holocaust requires breaking its own unfamiliar code (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.83)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.83)
• Marginalizing the Holocaust silences its message about modern institutions (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust reveals sociology’s inadequacy more than sociology explains the Holocaust (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust failed to transform sociology’s self-understanding of modern civilization. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. #complicates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust #complicates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 251
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology #complicates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 39
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. #complicates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 68