Genocide combines ordinary modern factors that are usually kept apart

Evidence

Modern Holocaust is unique in a double sense. It is unique among other historic cases of genocide because it is modern. And it stands unique against the quotidianity of modern society because it brings together some ordinary factors of modernity which normally are kept apart. In this second sense of its uniqueness, only the combination of factors in unusual and rare, not the factors that are combined. Separately, each factor is common and normal. And the knowledge of saltpetre, sulphur or charcoal is not complete unless one knows and remembers that, if mixed, they turn into gunpowder. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 274

Categorization

• DEFINE: The gunpowder metaphor defines how normality plus combination yields catastrophe — a key analytic tool.
• XREF: connects to: Potent technology plus designed-order ambition produced modern genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 620; Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 261; Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270 (+8 more)

Related

• Genocide is a normal potential of modernity, not its malfunction. (similarity 0.89)
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society (similarity 0.87)
• Most genocide-conducive factors are normal features of every modern society (similarity 0.87)
• Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design (similarity 0.85)
• Every ingredient enabling the Holocaust was normal for modern civilization (similarity 0.85)
• Potent technology plus designed-order ambition produced modern genocide (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.84)
• Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.84)
• Modern bureaucracy already contains everything needed for genocide without structural revision. (similarity 0.83)
• Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust (similarity 0.83)
• Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence (similarity 0.83)
• Genocide required replacing collective rage with bureaucratic obedience (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Most genocide-conducive factors are normal features of every modern society #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 278
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264
• Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 309