Modernity itself can enable rather than counter genocidal racial hatred

Evidence

The unspoken terror permeating our collective memory of the Holocaust (and more than contingently related to the overwhelming desire not to look the memory in its face) is the gnawing suspicion that the Holocaust could be more than an aberration, more than a deviation from an otherwise straight path of progress, more than a cancerous growth on the otherwise healthy body of the civilized society; that, in short, the Holocaust was not an antithesis of modern civilization and everything (or so we like to think) it stands for. We suspect (even if we refuse to admit it) that the Holocaust could merely have uncovered another face of the same modern society whose other, more familiar, face we so admire. And that the two faces are perfectly comfortably attached to the same body. What we perhaps fear most, is that each of the two faces can no more exist without the other than can the two sides of a coin. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 54 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In this way Adorno neatly turns the tables on prejudice theory. Prejudice theory sees racial prejudice as an archaic residue, operating in the substructure of the personality, and which under certain conditions might be mobilized by political ideologies such as fascism to overwhelm rational thought. Adorno suggests that it is the very form of Western rationality that constructs the Jew as the bearer of atavistic impulses and gives rise to racism as its necessary false consciousness. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1327 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The two most notorious and extreme cases of modern genocide did not betray the spirit of modernity. They did not deviously depart from the main track of the civilizing process. They were the most consistent, uninhibited expressions of that spirit. They attempted to reach the most ambitious aims of the civilizing process most other processes stop short of, not necessarily for the lack of good will. They showed what the rationalizing, designing, controlling dreams and efforts of modern civilization are able to accomplish if not mitigated, curbed or counteracted. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racial statecraft is normal to modernity, not an aberration — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1703; Modern civility is racially structured at its foundations; Racism is eliminable because it is historically contingent rather than culturally permanent (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Modernity’s admired and genocidal faces belong to one inseparable body #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 54
• Racism arises from Western rationality itself, not as its archaic residue #corroborates (0.93) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1327
• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270
• Racism is eliminable because it is historically contingent rather than culturally permanent #complicates (0.82)