How Tenderness Leads to the Gas Chamber

The police want law and order too. The people also want law and order, and if the police are sometimes a bit over zealous, well, you know what they say, “If you’re not breaking the law there’s nothing to worry about.” So the people knuckle under. They don’t mind if things are a bit strict, because that’s the price you pay for law and order.

The problem is, there are still threats and difficulties. The foreigners and the terrorists are still causing trouble so the leader calls for all the people of a certain religion or ethnic group to be rounded up and detained so the police can ascertain which of them are terrorists and which ones are not. The problem is that this produces even more terrorists because people don’t like being rounded up and detained against their will. Therefore the police can’t tell which ones are terrorists and which ones are not. In fact, most of them are potential terrorists, so they have to be detained a bit longer.

But it is expensive to detain them. They have to be fed, housed, given medical care and protected. So the leader says the people who are being detained should work to earn their keep. They will work in factories and on road projects. But they don’t like working. They sabotage the bridges and wreck the factories and destroy what they are supposed to be making. So the idea of them working is quietly forgotten.

Then the longer they are detained the more unhappy they become. The leader has created a big problem. He can’t deport them all and he can’t release them because now there are millions of them who are very angry and very radical and he has created even more terrorists. What can he do about this problem that he has created?

Then one of his advisors comes up with a solution.

It’s the final solution.

If you would like to see a historic discussion of the problem I recommend the film Conspiracy.

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