A "state" wishing to eradicate "unpredictability of human affairs" --as both Hitler and Mussolini were said to have attempted -- must make of its own apparatus an inhuman machine utterly lacking empathy. SS members become mere interchangeable parts in a killing machine. Master and slave alike cease to be entirely human. This is the state as machine. Such a state requires its Auschwitz, its Abu Ghraib, its Guantanamo. |