Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust

Evidence

First, ideational processes that by their own inner logic may lead to genocidal projects, and the technical resources that permit implementation of such projects, not only have been proved fully compatible with modern civilization, but have been conditioned, created and supplied by it. The Holocaust did not just, mysteriously, avoid clash with the social norms and institutions of modernity. It was these norms and institutions that made the Holocaust feasible. Without modern civilization and its most central essential achievements, there would be no Holocaust. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 251

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the scaffold of modernity’s agency that Islamophobia readings will apply to their own case: the framing device here is directly transferable. — connects to: The Holocaust demonstrated how to liquidate minority and statelessness problems; The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630; Exceptionalist Holocaust readings let the rest of the world off the hook. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 686 (+16 more)

Related

• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.91)
• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. (similarity 0.90)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.89)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.88)
• Every ingredient enabling the Holocaust was normal for modern civilization (similarity 0.87)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions (similarity 0.86)
• All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image. (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. (similarity 0.86)
• Modernity’s institutional safeguards against violence all failed during the Holocaust (similarity 0.85)
• Marginalizing the Holocaust silences its message about modern institutions (similarity 0.85)
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality applied to maximum-efficiency ends. #exemplifies (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 425
• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit #expands (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm #qualifies (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49
• Historical scholarship increasingly supports the functionalist view of Holocaust causation. #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 306