The Nazi accomplishment was neutralizing universal moral inhibition against killing

Evidence

Whatever else the Nazi state has achieved, it certainly succeeded in overcoming the most formidable of obstacles to systematic, purposeful, non-emotional, cold-blooded murder of people – old and young, men and women: that ‘animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering’. We do not know much about the animal pity, but we do know that there is a way of viewing the elementary human condition which makes explicit the universality of human revulsion to murder, inhibition against inflicting suffering on another human being, and the urge to help those who suffer; indeed, of the very personal responsibility for the welfare of the other. If this view is correct, or at least plausible, then the accomplishment of the Nazi regime consisted first and foremost in neutralizing the moral impact of the specifically human existential mode. It is important to know whether this success was related to the unique features of the Nazi movement and rule, or whether it can be accounted for by reference to more common attributes of our society, which the Nazis merely skilfully deployed in the service of Hitler’s purpose. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 520

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bauman leaves open whether this neutralization is Nazi-specific or a general modern capacity—a question worth carrying forward.
• XREF: connects to: Absolute evil reveals evil’s radical essence by exceeding comprehensible motives; Intense Nazi indoctrination failed to override conventional, nonracial loyalties; Older Nazi officials retained moral qualms the genocidal machine overrode (+7 more)

Related

• Absolute evil reveals evil’s radical essence by exceeding comprehensible motives (similarity 0.86)
• Older Nazi officials retained moral qualms the genocidal machine overrode (similarity 0.85)
• Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives. (similarity 0.84)
• Intense Nazi indoctrination failed to override conventional, nonracial loyalties (similarity 0.83)
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them (similarity 0.81)
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.81)
• The Nazi race concept was deliberately kept supranational to license internal extermination (similarity 0.80)
• Genocide’s moral invisibility recruits far more participants than conscience-stifling does (similarity 0.79)
• Nazi power operated by crafting a rational make-believe world for victims (similarity 0.79)
• Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. (similarity 0.79)
• The Holocaust’s moral categories grew more contested after consensus about the facts settled (similarity 0.79)
• The extermination machinery aimed to eliminate personal sadism and reduce cruelty (similarity 0.78)
• Authorization, routinization, and dehumanization erode moral inhibitions against violence (similarity 0.78)
• Morality dies when social distance replaces proximity, enabling mass murder (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Moral inhibition is neutralized by making victims remote and invisible #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 550
• Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives. #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 528