Illouz

"If a true German was someone of Aryan ancestry – that is, if citizenship became a matter of biological lineage – it was far easier to turn, overnight, bona fide citizens into non-citizens. Nazis thus illustrated what sociologists know: namely, that groups do not have intrinsic or natural boundaries. These boundaries – between “us” and “them” – can be easily shifted. Jews viewed themselves as full members of the German or French nations until these nations “reclassified” them according to ethnic or racial criteria. The Nazi notion of race divided humanity into un-mixable human groups, making mixing itself a crime, the sign of a degenerate humanity".

"A distinctive characteristic of evil regimes in general is the belief in the need to preserve the racial or ethnic or religious purity of the dominant group, with minority groups – be they “Jews,” “Muslims,” “Tutsis” or “Armenians” – becoming a qualitatively distinct group, a compact entity perceived to be radically “other,” distinct from the majority by dint of some invisible and powerful criterion..."

"Such polarization between social groups, de Swaan says, are not born overnight. The capacity to divide sharply between “us” and “them,” and to view the “them” as a foreign element in our midst, is the product of a historical process through which new modes of thought are acquired".

Eva Illouz