Modernity and the Holocaust

This book is a very well-written, in-depth anaylsis of how the modern, "civilized" mindset enabled normal, everyday Germans (businessmen, professors, soldiers, journalists -- just like your average U.S. citizens) to either actively participate or stand by and do nothing while the leaders of their nation murdered millions of people (the vast majority of whom -- 14 million out of 20 million -- were political opponents, not Jews -- 6 out of 20 million). As the U.S. government is currently murdering millions of people over in the Middle East, everyday Americans are standing around -- either supporting it or doing nothing. For instance 2.5 million people died in the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, tens of thousands of people still die each year in Laos from all of the leftover cluster bombs dropped there by the U.S. (look up "laos plain of jars"), and over 2 million people (500,000 of whom are children) have died in Iraq since the first Persian Gulf War as a result of economic sanctions and U.S. aerial strikes (look up "madeline albright iraq sanctions")--- this is just slightly under the number of Jews that the Nazi regime killed, and it's only three of the U.S.'s dozens of wars that took place during the 20th century. This is the topic of this book -- what causes everyone to stand around and justify large scale, state sanctioned murder? Is it cowardice, cruelty, or something else?

This is one of those rock-em, sock-em books that seems to have a startling insight on every page. Bauman's thesis is that the Holocaust is not an aberration, peculiar to a particular time and place, but a general symptom of modernity. In other words, events akin to the Holocaust are capable of happening again and again in the modern world. The book is thus frightening and sobering. Bauman argues that modern institutions are characterized by dispassionate bureaucratic efficiency assisted by technology. Large government and corporate bureaucracies function in such a way that individual responsibility for the actions of the bureaucracy are dispersed. In other words, the buck is passed through the system, without a Harry Truman to say, "The buck stops here." The danger, according to Bauman, is that if a Hitler rises to the top of such a bureaucracy, he can set the system rolling toward an inhumane goal (the destruction of the Jews in Europe), and it is possible that nobody within the system or outside it will be able (or interested enough) to do much to stop it. The book highlights (for me) the crucial importance of checks and balances within systems, and strong investigative journalism as an important component to a functioning democracy. It also suggests to me the importance of keeping authoritarians out of high public office. They can set large systems rolling in disastrous directions.

Zygmunt Bauman argues that the modern society we accept as normal and the highest form as civilization, contains the seed, soil and water of the Holocaust. He argues that the Holocaust is not an anomaly but a warning and sign of what we, as human beings, have become. The Holocaust would not have happened save for modern civilization. Technological know how is important, but not the only important factor.Mass atrocity requires three things: that violence be authorized by a legitimate authority, that the violent actions be routinized, and that the victims be dehumanized. Bauman recounts the experiments of Stanley Milgram in support of his argument. I add that, after weeks of chanting "Kill, kill, kill" over and over, and of hearing the "enemy" described as "dinks", "slopes", "gooks", "japs", "women", "niggers" and "injuns", I was able to sit through a lecture on the "law of war" in which my medic class was instructed that one of our jobs would be to execute wounded prisoners. Yes, that's illegal, immoral, and something terrorists do. Military training works. (If you respond that "war is hell" and that such things are normal, think of the fuss we put up about how our prisoners are treated.)Military training works because normal socialization prepares us for it. Society, Bauman writes, silences morality. Rather than supporting our innate morality, society replaces it, teaching us what is good and what is bad, who is good and who is bad. It divides the world into the "moral universe", relatively small, and the universe in which we are encouraged to to act with amoral abandon. Take, for instance, the example of "family values". The moral universe cannot shrink much further. Yes, we should obey the law, if practicable, but only until we change it to allow us to do what we want. We certainly aren't responsible for anyone outside the family. Family values? Christ pointed out that even the heathen support that.The answer to the social design and engineering which created the Holocaust is, Bauman suggests, unconditional responsibility. We, each of us as a moral agent, are responsible for and to everyone regardless of whether we believe them to be good or evil. We and they are human. It's a tough sell, but Bauman's argument that the alternative led to the Holocaust and will lead to more similar atrocities is convincing.Bauman makes his arguments without jargon, with style and passion. This is a most important and compelling book. If you're going to read only one book this year, make it this one.

Peruse any mega-bookstore for works on the Holocaust and you will likely find yourself in a section called "Jewish Studies" or "Holocaust Studies." This is indicative of a general attitude that the Holocaust was merely a gross aberration in the advancement of western civilization, that it is exclusively a Jewish problem or, at best, an anomalous eruption of the irrational latent in the German psyche. In this stunning, bold, and original work, Professor Bauman challenges this conventional wisdom. The Holocaust is not the story of European civilization gone awry; rather it embodies the most salient principles of modernity itself. It was "horrifyingly normal." The logic of self-interest, rational management, modern bureaucratic order, technological efficiency, the relegation of values to the realm of subjectivity, science as intrinsically instrumental and value-free: such are the values comprising the shared vision of western civilization set in motion during the Enlightenment. And Bauman identifies the sum of these values as the necessary (but not sufficient) cause of the Holocaust. The SS exploited the logic of rational self-interest by making the cooperation of prisoners a condition for self-preservation. Death camps utilized the applied technology of mass production and transportation. The Third Reich was the picture of modern bureaucratic efficiency. All of this was done by highly trained engineers, technicians and doctors within an ethical framework consistent with modernity's moral relativism. And each of these conditions is still present today. This is a sobering, thought-provoking study of the Holocaust and its haunting resonance with the values of modern thought.

This book explains "sameness" and "otherness", two powerful dimensions in contempt and values, so clear a five year old can get it. Zygmund also talks about doubt. An unpleasant state of mind seeking comfort and where this human machinery (doubt/comfort) is pushing most of us.