Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology

Evidence

Another way – apparently pointing in an opposite direction, yet leading in practice to the same destination – is to present the Holocaust as an extreme case of a wide and familiar category of social phenomena; a category surely loathsome and repellent, yet one we can (and must) live with. … When viewed in this fashion, and accompanied with the proper citation of other historical horrors (the religious crusades, the slaughter of Albigensian heretics, the Turkish decimation of the Armenians, and even the British invention of concentration camps during the Boer War), it becomes all too convenient to see the Holocaust as ‘unique’ – but normal, after all. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 39

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘banalization via comparison’ move parallels later debates about comparing colonial genocides and the Holocaust; connects to the Islamophobia toolkit’s handling of comparison as defusing critique. — connects to: The Holocaust question must keep its full weight and horror — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 4; Exceptionalist Holocaust readings let the rest of the world off the hook. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 686; Marginalizing the Holocaust silences its message about modern institutions — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 27 (+6 more)

Related

• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. (similarity 0.90)
• All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image. (similarity 0.87)
• Exceptionalist Holocaust readings let the rest of the world off the hook. (similarity 0.87)
• Both dominant readings of the Holocaust leave sociology’s theory of modernity unchallenged (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust question must keep its full weight and horror (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust failed to transform sociology’s self-understanding of modern civilization. (similarity 0.86)
• Academic sociology has structurally avoided engaging the Holocaust as a disciplinary challenge. (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. (similarity 0.85)
• Marginalizing the Holocaust silences its message about modern institutions (similarity 0.85)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49