example, the liberal institutions and the doctrine of the completely failed to Rule of Law, protect equality and liberty for the vulnerable groups erroneously identified as enemies of the state. According to Kren & Rappoport, what makes the Holocaust so disturbing in hindsight is the awareness that this massive scale of violence is now the range of “within human possibility.” While this is true, the fear that ought to linger in the minds of Westerners today is that despite the fact that academics, historians, theologians and philosophers have contemplated the Holocaust and despite the fact that late to death, modernity continues to lay the framework for totalitarian politics, has not the West attempted to focus on how to, or even that it ought to, take steps to mitigate modernity’s despotic tendencies. If the barriers to violent ambition and unscrupulous power have proven “modern ineffective,” has a serious cause for concern. This paper intends to illustrate that the West continues to be as vulnerable to mistaken beliefs and totalitarian politics the West at least as it was pre-Holocaust through a comparison of surveillance technologies used by the Nazis with those available today. This paper seeks to explain why remains the West complacent to the latent, yet draconian, potential of current surveillance practices. Finally, this paper seeks to explore the moral imperatives for the legal community in light of modernity’s genocidal tendencies. 2. Nazi surveillance techniques Before any group can be targeted for marginalization and eventual extermination, they must first be identified. Thus, the fact that German Jews were among the most assimilated Jews in Europe posed a significant problem to the Nazis. Occupying
example, the liberal institutions and the doctrine of the Rule of Law, completely failed to protect equality and liberty for the vulnerable groups erroneously identified as enemies of the state. According to Kren & Rappoport, what makes the Holocaust so disturbing in hindsight is the awareness that this massive scale of violence is now “within the range of human possibility.” While this is true, the fear that ought to linger in the minds of Westerners today is that despite the fact that academics, historians, theologians and philosophers have contemplated the Holocaust to death, and despite the fact that late modernity continues to lay the framework for totalitarian politics, the West has not attempted to focus on how to, or even that it ought to, take steps to mitigate modernity’s despotic tendencies. If the “modern barriers to violent ambition and unscrupulous power have proven ineffective,” the West has a serious cause for concern. This paper intends to illustrate that the West continues to be at least as vulnerable to mistaken beliefs and totalitarian politics as it was pre-Holocaust through a comparison of surveillance technologies used by the Nazis with those available today. This paper seeks to explain why the West remains complacent to the latent, yet draconian, potential of current surveillance practices. Finally, this paper seeks to explore the moral imperatives for the legal community in light of modernity’s genocidal tendencies. 2. Nazi surveillance techniques Before any group can be targeted for marginalization and eventual extermination, they must first be identified. Thus, the fact that German Jews were among the most assimilated Jews in Europe posed a significant problem to the Nazis. Occupying
CTokarPaper.docx