The Holocaust was rational social management in scientific dress

Evidence

To sum up: well before they built the gas chambers, the Nazis, on Hitler’s orders, attempted to exterminate their own mentally insane or bodily impaired compatriots through ‘mercy killing’ (falsely nicknamed ‘euthanasia’), and to breed a superior race through the organized fertilization of racially superior women by racially superior men (eugenics). Like these attempts, the murder of Jews was an exercise in the rational management of society. And a systematic attempt to deploy in its service the stance, the philosophy and the precepts of applied science. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 207

Categorization

• XREF: Frames genocide as applied rationality — the central thesis carried through the whole book; connects to later biopolitical readings of states managing populations. — connects to: The Holocaust demonstrated how to liquidate minority and statelessness problems; Scientific antisemitism was layered in façade institutions hiding the extermination authority — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 912; Manipulating Holocaust memory threatens the future’s human habitability — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 708 (+16 more)

Related

• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality applied to maximum-efficiency ends. (similarity 0.90)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.86)
• Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust succeeded partly through victims’ rational actions. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality, not a rupture from it. (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.84)
• Instrumental rationality cannot prevent mass atrocities and normalizes social engineering. (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust reveals civilization’s capacity for industrialized destruction as inseparable from its progress. (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone (similarity 0.84)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.84)
• Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme (similarity 0.84)
• Nazi power operated by crafting a rational make-believe world for victims (similarity 0.83)
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 224
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 21
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust #corroborates (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 251
• The Holocaust succeeded partly through victims’ rational actions. #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 386