Genocide required replacing collective rage with bureaucratic obedience

Evidence

Thorough, comprehensive, exhaustive murder required the replacement of the mob with a bureaucracy, the replacement of shared rage with obedience to authority. The requisite bureaucracy would be effective whether manned by extreme or tepid anti-Semites, considerably broadening the pool of potential recruits; it would govern the actions of its members not by arousing passions but by organizing routines; it would only make distinctions it was designed to make, not those its members might be moved to make, say, between children and adults, scholar and thief, innocent and guilty; it would be responsive to the will of the ultimate authority through a hierarchy of responsibility – whatever that will might be. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 260

Categorization

• XREF: The replacing of passion with routine and moral distinction with designed category is a core scaffold concept to carry into readings on bureaucratic rationality and exclusion. — connects to: Systematic bureaucratic destruction replaced spontaneous atrocity in the camps; 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 (+9 more)

Related

• Systematic bureaucratic destruction replaced spontaneous atrocity in the camps (similarity 0.91)
• Modern bureaucracy already contains everything needed for genocide without structural revision. (similarity 0.88)
• Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design (similarity 0.87)
• Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence (similarity 0.86)
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society (similarity 0.86)
• Instrumental rationality cannot prevent mass atrocities and normalizes social engineering. (similarity 0.85)
• Bureaucratic ‘doing’ orientation enables genocide without personal hatred of victims. (similarity 0.85)
• Public indifference, not hatred, greased the machinery of genocide (similarity 0.85)
• Genocide is a normal potential of modernity, not its malfunction. (similarity 0.84)
• Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme (similarity 0.84)
• Racist worldviews require modern bureaucracy to implement extermination (similarity 0.84)
• Potent technology plus designed-order ambition produced modern genocide (similarity 0.83)
• Genocide combines ordinary modern factors that are usually kept apart (similarity 0.83)
• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality, not a rupture from it. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 309
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264
• Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 261
• Civility coordinated the genocide and prompted bystander passivity rather than resistance #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 320
• Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 268