Modern genocide thrives on bureaucratic indifference, not on active hatred

Evidence

For every villain of Goldhagen’s book, for every German and non-German who killed his victims with pleasure and enthusiasm, there were dozens and hundreds of Germans and non-Germans who contributed to the mass murder no less effectively without feeling either way about their victims and about the nature of the actions involved. While we know quite well that prejudice threatens humanity, and we know a little how to fight and constrain the ill intentions of people tainted with prejudice, we know next to nothing of how to stave off the threat of a murder which masquerades as the routine and unemotional function of orderly society. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 452

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Adorno’s ‘manipulative type’ as the most dangerous fascist personality and to bureaucracy-enabled genocide in the Frankfurt School volume. — connects to: Majority ambivalence toward Jews, not indifference, enabled genocide — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 521
• ADDENDUM: Reinforces the ‘On Sacrifice’ framing: orderly institutional violence can outstrip passionate killing; the banality of bureaucratic murder parallels Adorno’s analysis of the ‘manipulative type.’
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 452