The first written exclusion rule already sealed the fate of the Jews.

Evidence

Hilberg has suggested that the moment the first German official had written the first rule of Jewish exclusion, the fate of the European Jews was sealed. There is a most profound and terrifying truth in this comment. What bureaucracy needed was the definition of its task. Rational and efficient as it was, it could be trusted to see the task to its end. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 307

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the biopolitics claim that the administrative definition of a category initiates its fate — a founding insight for later readings.