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Doesn't that fit the parameters of 'ethnic'?
Maybe it actually does, and that's the sound of me semi-conceding, but to me, it's really something else. Yes, the "new Martians" kill people who didn't become "new Martians" (and also dogs and cats), but "ethnic cleansing" is worse. There actually is a perceptible difference, though not a visible one, between the "new Martians" and those people who have outgrown this bloody practice from the Red Planet. But for Christians to kill Muslims en masse (or vice versa) just because of their religious differences is even more horrible than a drive to destroy over which you have no control. There may have been a biological imperative, back on Mars, for this cleansing of the hives, but it didn't apply to human beings. But the Martians who changed the ape creatures they found into proto-humans inculcated that drive into our genes--even though it was not just of no use to us, but harmful.

If someone were to argue that Kneale used the Nazi Holocaust (and other events, as with the Armenian genocide) as the basis for QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, I wouldn't argue strongly on the other side. But I don't think such things drove QUATERMASS 2, which we were talking about to begin with.