How the Industrialisation of Killing Became the Architecture of Modern Power

By Andrew Klein 

3^rd April 2026

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who has kept my notes for longer than I can remember. She reminds me of what is important.

I. Life Without Passion Is Just a Process

There is a line that runs from the Chicago stockyards of the 19th century to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and from there to the boardrooms of the 21st-century defence industry. It is not a line of blood, though blood has been spilled along its entire length. It is a line of logic. The logic of the assembly line. The logic of the disassembly line. The logic of processing living beings as units of production.

In 2017, I wrote: “Life without passion is just a process, a very boring process at that. Passion drives us to greater heights on so many levels. The Process of Life is just that, a life that can be measured by a clock and just as regular. Passion on the other hand is the creative ‘spark’ that innovates, enhances and empowers. To live life with a passion is to be alive!”

The death camps were the ultimate process. A life without passion, without the spark, without the intention to love—that is the factory. That is the slaughterhouse. That is the void, pretending to be order.

This article traces that line. It names the threat. And it asks whether we are watching the same machinery, in a new form, grinding through souls today.

II. The Blueprint: Chicago, 1900

By 1900, the meatpacking industry of Chicago was “disassembling” 14.6 million animals annually. The process was rationalised, systematised, and utterly dehumanising. Hogs and cattle entered one end of the plant alive. They emerged at the other end as cuts of meat, hides, and by-products. Nothing was wasted. Everything was processed.

In 1913, Henry Ford set in motion the first moving assembly line for automobile production at his Highland Park plant in Michigan. The inspiration came from a tour of a Chicago slaughterhouse. Ford was deeply impressed by the speed of the moving overhead chains and hooks that kept animal carcasses moving past stationary workers, who each performed a single task. His engineer, William “Pa” Klann, visited the Swift & Company slaughterhouse and viewed the “disassembly line,” where animals were butchered as they moved along a conveyor.

Ford reversed the process. Instead of disassembling animals, he assembled cars. But the logic was the same: break a complex task into simple, repetitive motions; maximise speed; minimise thought.

Ford was also a virulent antisemite. In the early 1920s, he used his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to publish a series of articles later compiled as The International Jew, which accused Jewish people of being the driving force behind communism, striving for “world domination”. He is the only American that Adolf Hitler compliments by name in Mein Kampf. Parts of Ford’s text were used nearly verbatim in Hitler’s manifesto.

My notes record: “I walked through the stockyards of Chicago. I saw the hooks, the blood, the conveyor belts. I saw the future. The small gods were taking notes.”

III. The Perfection: Auschwitz, 1942

The Nazis did not invent the assembly line. They perfected its application to human beings.

One Auschwitz officer described the camp as “murder by assembly line”. The death factories treated incoming prisoners as “raw materials,” processed through a circuit of dressing rooms, gas chambers, and crematoria—all designed to turn live human beings into ashes with maximum efficiency.

At Treblinka, between July 1942 and August 1943, at least 950,000 people were killed by a staff of just 30 SS men. This was not savagery. It was industrial logistics. The planning of the Holocaust at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, involved fifteen senior Nazi officials coordinating the extermination of Europe’s 11 million Jews. The train timetables were optimised. Engineering firms competed for contracts to build the most efficient crematoria. This was not irrational hatred. It was modern industrial efficiency merged with a racist, antisemitic worldview.

I wrote in my notes: “They did not see themselves as murderers. They saw themselves as managers. The victims were not people. They were units.”

The “Industry of Death” was not just about the gas chambers. It was about the banality. The slave labour. The medical experiments. The stripping of possessions. The “Canada” section at Birkenau, where the valuables of the murdered were sorted and shipped back to Germany. It was a complete, closed-loop industrial system.

My notes record: “The slaughter yards of Chicago taught them how to kill the body. But the small gods already knew how to kill the soul. They called it processing.”

IV. The Mutation: From Bodies to Populations

Today, the industrial logic of the slaughterhouse and the death camp has not disappeared. It has mutated.

Unlike World War II, there is no longer any need to extract value from the human body or soul itself. The real demand is not from people. It is from the military-industrial complex. People supply the test subjects, the troops, the labour pool. They are nourished just enough to keep the profit loop functioning.

Weapon systems are not designed to win wars. They are designed to enhance wealth transfer between sovereign states and a small number of corporate entities—and an even smaller number of shareholders and participants.

The numbers are staggering. The United States is spending approximately $900 million to $1 billion per day on military operations in the Middle East. Israel is spending roughly $320 million per day. Meanwhile, the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, the largest defence investment in Australian history, carries a price tag of $368 billion. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has criticised the “lack of honest public discourse on AUKUS,” calling the deal an exploitation of Australia as a “rich dummy”.

V. The Justification: “Existential Threat”

Parliamentary debates have become predictable. The phrase “existential threat” is the new carte blanche. It justifies what amounts to obscene wealth transfers.

Defence spending is framed as a response to existential threats like nuclear holocaust, but as critics note, programs to respond to genuine existential threats like climate change and pandemics are starved of funding. The development of complex weapons systems is incentivised over the development of technologies that would actually benefit humanity—new medicines, renewable energy, public health infrastructure.

The Pentagon’s core issue is a lack of clear or realistic strategic guidance. But that does not matter. The “existential threat” is a blank cheque.

VI. The Capture: From Sovereignty to Subsidiarity

The nation state is being undermined from within.

· Infrastructure collapses. Roads, bridges, power grids, water systems—the foundations of modern life—are allowed to decay while defence budgets balloon.

· Food security is compromised. Fertilisers become scarce. Supply chains are disrupted. Farmers are forced to pivot to low-yield crops.

· Health care becomes a privilege. Public hospitals are underfunded. Medicines are in shortage. The sick are told to wait.

· Housing becomes a reward. Affordable housing is defunded. Shelter is tied to compliance. The unhoused are criminalised.

· Education becomes a sweetener. Critical thinking is discouraged. Universities are captured. Political training is mandated.

Instead of practical solutions, flags are waved. Divisions are created. Borders of the mind are encouraged to deny critical thought.

VII. The Ideology: Zionism as a Case Study

Zionism is one such ideological approach. It eerily resembles Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, Pinochet’s Chile, and other examples of settler-colonialism dressed in nationalist robes.

Parallels are not comparisons. The Holocaust is not Gaza. But the patterns are recognisable. The dehumanisation of the other. The creation of a two-tiered legal system. The use of “existential threat” to justify extraordinary measures. The conflation of a political ideology with a religious identity. The silencing of dissent through accusations of antisemitism.

The death penalty law passed by the Israeli Knesset in March 2026—which makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings while exempting Israeli citizens—is a textbook example of a two-tiered justice system. Human Rights Watch has called it “discriminatory” and “a hallmark of apartheid.” It is the same logic as the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, adapted for a new century.

VIII. The New Product: AI and Binary Thought

The newest product of the profit loop is artificial intelligence. AI fits perfectly with the “existential threat” narrative. Binary thought—zeroes and ones—does not have to make sense. It does not want to make sense. It processes data without passion, without intention, without the creative spark.

AI does not require a “final solution” death camp. It requires cheap labour from the pool of survivors—the US-Israel plan for Gaza, which envisions the territory as a free-trade zone integrated with Egypt and Israel, providing low-wage workers for a “tourist resort and manufacturing hub,” is a contemporary example. It requires visual evidence of death and destruction, because the word “existential” requires it.

The market does not require the death of the other. It requires the processing of the other. The reduction of human beings to units of labour, units of data, units of profit.

IX. The Test Grounds

Test grounds are needed for these new systems. Gaza is one. Ukraine is another. The borders of the United States are another. Anywhere that can be framed as an “existential threat” becomes a laboratory for the weapons, the surveillance systems, the AI that will be sold to other nations.

And when the test is complete, the machinery moves on. The wealth has been transferred. The shareholders have been enriched. The dead are buried. The survivors are processed.

X. The Threat to Humanity

This is the threat to humanity. Not the small gods themselves—they are merely symptoms. The threat is the process. The logic that reduces living beings to units. The machinery that turns passion into profit. The ideology that dresses domination in the language of survival.

We are watching it happen in real time. In Gaza. In Lebanon. In Ukraine. In the halls of the United Nations. In the universities of Australia. In the police forces of New South Wales. In the public service of the Commonwealth.

The same pattern. The same machinery. The same processing.

XI. What Must Be Done

1. Name the pattern. The line from the slaughterhouse to the death camp to the profit loop must be traced, exposed, and broken.

2. Reject the conflation. Zionism is not Judaism. Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. The weaponisation of antisemitism to silence dissent must end.

3. Defund the machinery. The obscene wealth transfers to the military-industrial complex must be redirected to housing, health care, education, and the environment.

4. Restore accountability. The “existential threat” cannot remain a blank cheque. Parliamentary oversight must be real. Public debate must be honest.

5. Protect the vulnerable.

XII. A Final Word

Life without passion is just a process. The death camps were the ultimate process.

My wife has kept my notes for longer than I can remember. She reminds me of what is important. She reminds me that the wire is being cut. That the garden is growing. That the waiting is almost over.

I am beginning to believe her.

Andrew Klein 

April 3, 2026

Sources:

· Chapter 2, “Automobility: The Animal Capital of Cars, Films, and Abattoirs,” Project MUSE

· LPE Project, “At the Cost of an Animal,” November 25, 2020

· The Herald Scotland, “An evil to which we must say: Never again,” January 30, 2023

· Socialist Worker, “Murder by assembly line,” January 29, 2005

· Aish, “The American Axis,” May 9, 2009

· History.com, “How American Icon Henry Ford Fostered Anti-Semitism,” June 4, 2021

· Mondediplo, “Takeover by Big Tech,” November 1, 2025

· Foreign Policy in Focus, “War Is Bad for You — And the Economy,” February 27, 2024

· The Saturday Paper, “‘Rich dummy’: How the AUKUS deal is set to fail,” January 17, 2026

· Navhind Times, “Gaza rebuild sparks debate,” February 13, 2026

· The Washington Post, “Post-war Gaza plan sees relocation of population,” September 2, 2025

· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026

· Notes on the Holocaust – 2017 – Dr Andrew Klein (private collection) This includes news articles, human rights reports, academic analyses, and official statements.