Genocide is a normal potential of modernity, not its malfunction.

Evidence

Not being an immanent attribute of modern society, they are not an alien phenomenon either. As far as modernity goes, genocide is neither abnormal nor a case of malfunction. It demonstrates what the rationalizing, engineering tendency of modernity is capable of if not checked and mitigated, if the pluralism of social powers is indeed eroded – as the modern ideal of purposefully designed, fully controlled, conflict-free, orderly and harmonious society would have it. Any impoverishment of grass-root ability to articulate interests and self-govern, every assault on social and cultural pluralism and the opportunities of its political expression, every attempt to fence off the untramelled freedom of the state by a wall of political secrecy, each step towards the weakening of the social foundations of political democracy make a social disaster on a Holocaust scale just a little bit more feasible. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 332

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that genocide is neither abnormal nor malfunction but the capability of modernity’s rationalizing tendency, plus the cumulative list of pluralism-eroding steps that make disaster ‘a little bit more feasible,’ resists one-sentence summary and reframes how to weigh assaults on pluralism.
• XREF: This connects to the reader’s planned toolkit category on how modern bureaucratic rationality enables mass exclusion. — connects to: The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82; Heterophobia and boundary anxieties do not directly cause genocide. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 232; Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 268 (+6 more)

Related

• Genocide combines ordinary modern factors that are usually kept apart (similarity 0.89)
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society (similarity 0.88)
• Heterophobia and boundary anxieties do not directly cause genocide. (similarity 0.88)
• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.87)
• Most genocide-conducive factors are normal features of every modern society (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.87)
• Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme (similarity 0.85)
• Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred (similarity 0.85)
• Instrumental rationality cannot prevent mass atrocities and normalizes social engineering. (similarity 0.85)
• Modern bureaucracy already contains everything needed for genocide without structural revision. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.85)
• Genocide required replacing collective rage with bureaucratic obedience (similarity 0.84)
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology (similarity 0.84)
• Every ingredient enabling the Holocaust was normal for modern civilization (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm #qualifies (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264
• Genocide combines ordinary modern factors that are usually kept apart #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 274