The Nazi movement’s novelty was organizing the racial idea, not inventing it

Evidence

In this conception of social engineering as a scientifically founded work aimed at the institution of a new, and better, order (a work which necessarily entails the containment, or preferably elimination, of any disruptive factors), racism was indeed resonant with the world-view and practice of modernity. And this, at least, in two vital respects. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 197 (#expands, via linked claim)

At no point of its long and tortuous execution did the Holocaust come in conflict with the principles of rationality. The ‘Final Solution’ did not clash at any stage with the rational pursuit of efficient, optimal goal-implementation. On the contrary, it arose out of a genuinely rational concern, and it was generated by bureaucracy true to its form and purpose. We know of many massacres, pogroms, mass murders, indeed instances not far removed from genocide, that have been perpetrated without modern bureaucracy, the skills and technologies it commands, the scientific principles of its internal management. The Holocaust, however, was clearly unthinkable without such bureaucracy. The Holocaust was not an irrational outflow of the not-yet-fully-eradicated residues of pre-modern barbarity. It was a legitimate resident in the house of modernity; indeed, one who would not be at home in any other house. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nazi racism was consonant with modern social-engineering worldviews rather than a medieval relapse — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 197; The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82

Related

• Nazi racism was consonant with modern social-engineering worldviews rather than a medieval relapse (similarity 0.91)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust was rational social management in scientific dress (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.83)
• Racism is a thoroughly modern weapon serving pre-modern struggles (similarity 0.83)
• Nazi social policy extended breeding logic to urban improvement and elimination. (similarity 0.82)
• Nazi extermination was a legitimate offspring of the modern spirit, not a regression (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.81)
• Nazi design treated Jewish absence as instrumental to a perfect world (similarity 0.81)
• Modernist urges toward social perfection, not barbarism, powered totalitarian atrocities (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality, not a rupture from it. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust reveals civilization’s capacity for industrialized destruction as inseparable from its progress. (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions (similarity 0.79)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Nazi racism was consonant with modern social-engineering worldviews rather than a medieval relapse #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 197
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. #expands (0.70) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82