Most genocide-conducive factors are normal features of every modern society

Evidence

Gordon names several factors which had to come together to produce the Holocaust; radical (and, as we remember from the last chapter, modern: racist and exterminatory) antisemitism of the Nazi type; transformation of that antisemitism into the practical policy of a powerful, centralized state; that state being in command of a huge, efficient bureaucratic apparatus; ‘state of emergency’ – an extraordinary, wartime condition, which allowed that government and the bureaucracy it controlled to get away with things which could, possibly, face more serious obstacles in time of peace; and the non-interference, the passive acceptance of those things by the population at large. Two among those factors (one can argue that the two can be reduced to one: with Nazis in power, war was virtually inevitable) could be seen as coincidental – not necessary attributes of a modern society, though always its possibility. The remaining factors, however, are fully ‘normal’. They are constantly present in every modern society, and their presence has been made both possible and inescapable by those processes which are properly associated with the rise and entrenchment of modern civilization. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 278

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘state of emergency’ factor connects directly to the necropolitics toolkit and to later Islamophobia readings on exceptionalism and counterterrorism powers. — connects to: Every ingredient enabling the Holocaust was normal for modern civilization — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 59; Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264; Genocide combines ordinary modern factors that are usually kept apart — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 274 (+3 more)

Related

• Genocide is a normal potential of modernity, not its malfunction. (similarity 0.87)
• Genocide combines ordinary modern factors that are usually kept apart (similarity 0.87)
• Every ingredient enabling the Holocaust was normal for modern civilization (similarity 0.86)
• Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust fused antisemitism with social and political mechanisms of an entirely different character. (similarity 0.81)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust resulted from an unchained state wielding violence and engineering ambitions (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.80)
• Heterophobia and boundary anxieties do not directly cause genocide. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.80)
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society (similarity 0.80)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust question must keep its full weight and horror (similarity 0.80)
• Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit (similarity 0.80)
• Modern society’s own attributes can enable holocaust-style genocide, not just racial prejudice. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Genocide is a normal potential of modernity, not its malfunction. #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 332
• Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 261
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 39