The Holocaust’s exceptional status, not the event, was produced by the theology of progress

Evidence

This is true, but it would make better sense not to limit the explanation to political strategizing but rather to view this particular phenomenon as integral to the overall narrative of progress that made of the Holocaust an exception, not only because of the well-known sensitivity of the issue, but because to argue, as the sociologist Sigmund Bauman, Hannah Arendt, and others have, that the Holocaust is a manifestation and an inherent feature of modernity is to invite further investigations into the deeper levels of modernity’s destructiveness, including a meaningful look at structural genocide, the historical basis of the modern project itself. Here as well, the core issue lies not in politics but in thought structures. The Holocaust as a “paradigmatic” event, structure, and narrative was as such made as the immediate result not of Nazi evil but rather of the modern theology of progress. Nazi evil indeed brought out the modern potentiality into actuality, but the exceptionalizing was the handmaiden of this theology. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 423

Categorization

• XREF: Inverts the standard Bauman/Arendt frame: not merely that the Holocaust is a product of modernity, but that its exceptionalization serves modernity’s progress narrative.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 423