National Socialism radicalized modernity’s own logic of scientific problem-solving

Evidence

Indeed, one must agree with Detlev Peukert that National Socialism merely “pushed the Utopian belief in all-embracing ‘scientific’ final solutions of social problems to the ultimate logical extreme”. The determination and the freedom to go “all the way” and reach the ultimate was Hitler’s, yet the logic was construed, legitimized, and supplied by modernity. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 400

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to Bauman’s thesis in Modernity and the Holocaust — the Holocaust as an outgrowth, not a rejection, of modern rational bureaucracy and scientific planning.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the ‘modernity thesis’ of the Holocaust — genocide as the extreme end of Enlightenment-era scientific utopianism, not a regression to barbarism.

Related

• Nazi genocide extended modernity’s utopian logic rather than deviating from it. (similarity 0.91)
• Nazi extermination was a legitimate offspring of the modern spirit, not a regression (similarity 0.85)
• Modernist urges toward social perfection, not barbarism, powered totalitarian atrocities (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions (similarity 0.82)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust failed to transform sociology’s self-understanding of modern civilization. (similarity 0.81)
• Both dominant readings of the Holocaust leave sociology’s theory of modernity unchallenged (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.80)
• Nazi eugenics differed from other nations’ versions only in being implemented (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.79)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.79)
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology (similarity 0.79)
• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality, not a rupture from it. (similarity 0.79)