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Modernity and Totalitarianism

According to a standard definition of modernity, its essential elements are industrialization, rationalization and bureaucratization. As such, modernity is at best a Zivilisation, but not quite a Kultur. Not surprisingly, Zygmunt Bauman has argued that the Holocaust was a rare but crucial test "of the hidden possibilities of modern society."¹ He goes on to write that, without modern society, "the Holocaust would be unthinkable. It was the rational world of modern civilization that made it conceivable. The Nazi mass murder of European Jewry was not only the technological achievement of an industrial society but also the organizational achievement of bureaucratic...