Full post: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/from-maga-prehistory-spiro-agnew
Showing posts with label spiro agnew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spiro agnew. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
From MAGA prehistory: Spiro Agnew in Jackson, Mississippi 1969
There have been stone cold reactionaries in the Republican Party for a long time before Trump came down the infamous golden escalator. The Goldwater wing of the Republican Party gave respectable opinion in both parties a shock when they took over the party in 1964. The path from there to the MAGA era is pretty straightforward. And Spiro Agnew (Vice President 1969-1973) was a major station along the pathway.
Full post: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/from-maga-prehistory-spiro-agnew
Full post: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/from-maga-prehistory-spiro-agnew
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Everyday Republican ghoulishness on the COVID-19 pandemic
Rightwing Republican Sen. Ron Johnson made his case that mass deaths from corona virus are no big deal in a USA Today column titled, As we learn more about the coronavirus, try to put things into perspective 03/30/2020.
Johnson clearly tries to minimize the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States:
Yeah, I know, that sucks that your HMO
Ain't doin' what you thought it would do
But everybody's gotta die sometime and we can't save everybody
It's the best that we can do
The first time I recall hearing a politician make this kind of argument was from then-Vice President Spiro Agnew, who brushed off antiwar critics' citing of American deaths in the Vietnam Ware by saying that more people were killed in traffic accidents in the US every year than the total number of Americans being killed in traffic accidents every year.
The argument didn't really catch on. Because even simpletons can grasp the difference between deliberate, systematic killing in war and many thousands of discreet accidents. Some war critics no doubt noticed that the number of Vietnamese dead were left out of Agnew's comparison. But even war fans were more focused on the sacrificial value of those Americans who died in combat. And the military, of course, has a moral obligation to honor the combat dead as well as a very practical reason for doing so. If people regard soldiers dying in war as pointless loss, they aren't likely to cheer for the wars or encourage family members to enlist.
Chris Hayes did a book based on his own experiences covering armed conflicts called War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002). As the title implies, it focuses heavily on how people are motivated to fight, kill, and sacrifice themselves in war. "War finds its meaning in death," he wrote. "The cause is built on the backs of victims, portrayed always as innocent. Indeed, most conflicts are ignited with martyrs, whether real or created." And the number of soldiers or innocent civilians lost in a war become the justification for continuing the war. "The cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave up their lives."
That's why it's rare to see a politician sluffing off the significance of combat deaths, as Agnew did. And politicians who did not serve in the military, or who like Donald Trump made real effort not to do so in the case of conscription during the Vietnam War, are more likely to go out of their way to praise and idolize soldiers and those killed in war, at least in their public statements.
But deaths from COVID-19? It's hard for people to imagine those as patriotic sacrifices. The combat dead of the First World War were honored by their fellow citizens as patriotic sacrifices and remembered as heroes. The victims of the "Spanish" flu epidemic at the end of the war were unfortunate, tragic deaths to be mourned.
So when Sen. Johnson and other Republicans, including the Mad King Trump himself, seek to minimize the seriousness of COVID-19 deaths, they are being callous and morbid. But they don't risk drawing immediate charges of being unpatriotic the way someone dismissed the soldiers lost in a current war would be.
The crassly partisan motives of Republicans for doing so is not hard to see. Trump has been downplaying the significance of the virus and has been recklessly irresponsible in his statements about it and his formal policy responses to it. On February 26, he made this remarkable statement, “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. ... When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done." [my emphasis] And that is only one example among many. (Aaron Blake, Timeline: Trump’s efforts to downplay the coronavirus threat Washington Post 03/31/2020)
This MSNBC Deadline report contrasts Trumps's panicky backtracking in his daily (de facto) campaign press conference yesterday, April 1. Trump’s Revisionist History On Coronavirus 04/01/2020:
Given Trump's April 1 warning that we could be seeing 100,000 to 240,000 COVID-19 deaths, maybe Sen. Ron Johnson will share with us what to him would be an acceptable US body count of deaths over the next year under which no special measures are justified.
Some reporter should also ask Sen. Johnson whether the body count for the flu that he seems to consider a purely natural result might be affected by a health insurance system which provides universal coverage so that everyone can get prompt treatment when they get flu symptoms instead of opting to tough it out for fear of getting hammered with unpayable hospital bills.
***************
As we see from the following two articles, both by Eric Litke, the Johnson article was cited by The Intellectualist with the headline, "Americans Should Go Back To Work, Because ‘Death Is An Unavoidable Part Of Life.’" Ironically, The concluding lines on the two Litke articles are different, too:
Johnson clearly tries to minimize the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States:
Each year, approximately 48,000 Americans commit suicide and an estimated 67,000 die of a drug overdose. That level of individual despair has occurred in a strong economy with near-record low levels of unemployment in virtually every demographic.Once again, I'm reminded of Steve Earle's protest song, "Amerika v. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do)::
Imagine the potential psychological and human toll if this shutdown continues indefinitely, unemployment reaches 20% or higher, as some now predict, and we sink into a deep recession or depression. ...
Every premature death is a tragedy, but death is an unavoidable part of life. More than 2.8 million die each year — nearly 7,700 a day. The 2017-18 flu season was exceptionally bad, with 61,000 deaths attributed to it. Can you imagine the panic if those mortality statistics were attributed to a new virus and reported nonstop?
Yeah, I know, that sucks that your HMO
Ain't doin' what you thought it would do
But everybody's gotta die sometime and we can't save everybody
It's the best that we can do
The first time I recall hearing a politician make this kind of argument was from then-Vice President Spiro Agnew, who brushed off antiwar critics' citing of American deaths in the Vietnam Ware by saying that more people were killed in traffic accidents in the US every year than the total number of Americans being killed in traffic accidents every year.
The argument didn't really catch on. Because even simpletons can grasp the difference between deliberate, systematic killing in war and many thousands of discreet accidents. Some war critics no doubt noticed that the number of Vietnamese dead were left out of Agnew's comparison. But even war fans were more focused on the sacrificial value of those Americans who died in combat. And the military, of course, has a moral obligation to honor the combat dead as well as a very practical reason for doing so. If people regard soldiers dying in war as pointless loss, they aren't likely to cheer for the wars or encourage family members to enlist.
Chris Hayes did a book based on his own experiences covering armed conflicts called War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002). As the title implies, it focuses heavily on how people are motivated to fight, kill, and sacrifice themselves in war. "War finds its meaning in death," he wrote. "The cause is built on the backs of victims, portrayed always as innocent. Indeed, most conflicts are ignited with martyrs, whether real or created." And the number of soldiers or innocent civilians lost in a war become the justification for continuing the war. "The cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave up their lives."
That's why it's rare to see a politician sluffing off the significance of combat deaths, as Agnew did. And politicians who did not serve in the military, or who like Donald Trump made real effort not to do so in the case of conscription during the Vietnam War, are more likely to go out of their way to praise and idolize soldiers and those killed in war, at least in their public statements.
But deaths from COVID-19? It's hard for people to imagine those as patriotic sacrifices. The combat dead of the First World War were honored by their fellow citizens as patriotic sacrifices and remembered as heroes. The victims of the "Spanish" flu epidemic at the end of the war were unfortunate, tragic deaths to be mourned.
So when Sen. Johnson and other Republicans, including the Mad King Trump himself, seek to minimize the seriousness of COVID-19 deaths, they are being callous and morbid. But they don't risk drawing immediate charges of being unpatriotic the way someone dismissed the soldiers lost in a current war would be.
The crassly partisan motives of Republicans for doing so is not hard to see. Trump has been downplaying the significance of the virus and has been recklessly irresponsible in his statements about it and his formal policy responses to it. On February 26, he made this remarkable statement, “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. ... When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done." [my emphasis] And that is only one example among many. (Aaron Blake, Timeline: Trump’s efforts to downplay the coronavirus threat Washington Post 03/31/2020)
This MSNBC Deadline report contrasts Trumps's panicky backtracking in his daily (de facto) campaign press conference yesterday, April 1. Trump’s Revisionist History On Coronavirus 04/01/2020:
Given Trump's April 1 warning that we could be seeing 100,000 to 240,000 COVID-19 deaths, maybe Sen. Ron Johnson will share with us what to him would be an acceptable US body count of deaths over the next year under which no special measures are justified.
Some reporter should also ask Sen. Johnson whether the body count for the flu that he seems to consider a purely natural result might be affected by a health insurance system which provides universal coverage so that everyone can get prompt treatment when they get flu symptoms instead of opting to tough it out for fear of getting hammered with unpayable hospital bills.
***************
As we see from the following two articles, both by Eric Litke, the Johnson article was cited by The Intellectualist with the headline, "Americans Should Go Back To Work, Because ‘Death Is An Unavoidable Part Of Life.’" Ironically, The concluding lines on the two Litke articles are different, too:
- Fact check: Did Wisconsin senator say Americans should go back to work? USA Today 04/01/2020: "We rate this a False Headline."
- Did Ron Johnson say Americans should go back to work because “death is an unavoidable part of life?” PolitiFact 04/01/2020: "We rate this Half True."
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Thoughts on the US political vocabulary about genocide
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar attracted criticism even from some of her admirers (of which I'm one) on the left with her decision to vote "Present" on a House resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923.
She issued a statement on her vote (David Brennan, Ilhan Omar Refuses to Back Turkey Armenian Genocide Vote ... Newsweek 10/30/2019):
I agree that it was a bad vote.
It‘s also a cautionary note about overly-promiscuous usage of ”genocide,“ which the Armenian case certainly was.
The UN Genocide Convention excludes ”cultural genocide“ as well as the targeting of political groups from its definition of genocide. Text here from the UN website of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
That doesn‘t mean we can‘t argue for a broader definition. The attorney Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) who is credited with inventing the term genocide (in the 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) did employ a wider definition himself. This short video from the US Holocaust Museum remembers Lemkin, Eyewitness Testimony: Raphael Lemkin:
But the wider the definition, the more examples people have to accuse countries of hypocrisy when they single out a genocide for condemnation. Jeffrey Ostler, an actual scholar of genocide, discusses at some length the challenges in applying the concept to one of the examples Congresswoman Omar used in his book, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (2019).
Comparing genocides to one another unfortunately can lead to some frivolous political rhetoric along the lines of my-genocide-is-worse-than-your-genocide. It can be a real rhetorical minefield.
I spent some time in the 1990s trying to learn about the Nazi Holocaust and to understand how it is treated in various historical narratives. That included learning about some of the polemical arguments made by people who want to minimize the seriousness of the Holocaust in some way.
One example of that produced a public discussion in Germany in the 1980s that became known as the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute). This was an argument among scholars that was conducted in the popular press. (Matthias von Hellfeld, Vor 25 Jahren: Der Historikerstreit Deutsche Welle 20.07.2011) It was kicked it off by a 1986 editorial column by Ernst Nolte, a German historian who (at least until then!) was a respected one. Nolte's earlier work on fascism, particularly his 1963 book published in English in 1965 as The Three Faces of Fascism; Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, is still regarded as an important work.
But in 1986, Nolte made the bizarre argument that I will summarize this way: because the Soviet Union had set up concentration camps, this inspired Hitler's idea of exterminating the Jews. So Stalin was responsible for the Holocaust. Other historians and the well-known Frankfurt School philosopher Jürgen Habermas criticized Nolte's piece, though there were prominent historians who were at least partly supportive of Nolte.
Nolte and his partisans didn't put it that crassly. But his argument served to shift part of the blame and responsibility for the Holocaust away from Hitler and Germany. "Did the [Soviet] 'Gulag Archipelago' not exist prior to Auschwitz?" asked Nolte, who referred to the Holocaust as an "Asiatic" act, i.e., not genuinely German or European. In other words, he used the comparison as a deflection from the historical seriousness of the Holocaust. He also wrote, "Auschwitz does not result primarily from traditional anti-Semitism and was not at its core a mere 'genocide', but rather the reaction to the extermination processes of the Russian Revolution born of fear," i.e. German fear of the Russians. In other words, the Holocaust wasn't really a "genocide", and the Commies were to blame anyway.
The Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945 also plays a role in Holocaust denier polemics. The argument is, look at how savagely the Allies bombed and killed Germans in Dresden and that shows what murderous intentions they had against all Germans, so the Holocaust was a response to those evil intentions. The decision against the far-right historian David Irving in Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstat (2000) has an excellent discussion of Irving's own revisionist and inaccurate historical accounts of the bombing of Dresden. And it describes how this can be used in a narrative that tries to minimize the Holocaust:
And this is a big reason why I currently tend toward a more conservative definition of what constitutes genocide and try to orient my view around the international law version enshrined in the Genocide Convention.
Particularly as historical awareness of the Holocaust in the US and Europe has grown over recent decades, the term "genocide" has understandably taken on an implication of the worst of all possible crimes. So there is a temptation to apply it as a superlative to more and more situations. So people talk about a genocidal war in Vietnam, a genocidal war in Yemen, the slave trade as genocide, settler colonialism in the Western Hemisphere as genocide. But the Genocide Convention established genocide as a distinct type of crime, not as something that applies to all wars or all famines or all discrimination.
And there are reasons for that. Criminal law discriminates between different degrees of illegal killing. In the US, manslaughter is distinguished from second degree murder and both are distinguished from first degree murder. There is also a category of murder "with special circumstances," i.e., killing involving unusual cruelty. These don't mean that society considers any of these kinds of killings okay. It does mean that it does make distinctions based among other things on motive and intentions.
In terms of popular polemics involving genocide, it's important to keep in mind that the more broadly a particular term is applied, the greater the risk that its meaning will become blurred, or that it will lose some of its intellectually and emotionally evocative power. To put it in a more exaggerated way, if every kind of collective violence is genocide, genocide becomes just another word for collective violence.
I've always remembered the line used by Richard Nixon's Vice President Spiro Agnew in dismissing contemporary criticisms from antiwar activists that the Vietnam War was immoral. He brushed it off by saying, "All wars are immoral." Which meant in practice, no wars are immoral. On its face, it was a radical pacifist position, though no sentient being took Agnew or Nixon to be radical pacifists. Actually, Agnew's position was also directly sneering at over a millennium of Christian religious traditions on the Just War, as well as similar traditions in other religions. And, however imperfectly the religious doctrines or international law have functioned in limiting violence, it is illegal in international law to invade another country that is not threatening the invader. The defendants in the Nuremberg Trials were accused and convicted of waging "aggressive war," the legal term used there for an illegal invasion. A secular version of the Just War doctrine, in other words.
Telford Taylor, the chief American chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, wrote in Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (1970):
And here's where Ilhan Omar's position calls attention to some important considerations, though I do wish she had voted for the resolution. If we actually consider the fate of native populations in the Western Hemisphere after European colonization as genocide, people have a substantive point in arguing that the US - and every Latin American country, for that matter - are acting hypocritically in criticizing other countries for genocide if they haven't condemned their own genocides against native peoples.
I'm going to put on my Reluctant Realist hat for a couple of minutes here and say that foreign policy, unfortunately, runs to a large degree on hypocrisy. If the US waits to condemn wrongs and injustices abroad until it has formally condemned and made just restitution for every domestic wrong, it will never condemn any foreign wrong whatsoever. And that would not be a good outcome, either.
Yes, of course, these condemnations have political considerations involved with them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ever do them. It does mean, though, that it's legitimate for Members of Congress to criticize the political considerations being applied in individual cases.
I just happen to disagree with Ilhan Omar's vote on this one.
She issued a statement on her vote (David Brennan, Ilhan Omar Refuses to Back Turkey Armenian Genocide Vote ... Newsweek 10/30/2019):
Omar said that while she believes that accountability for human rights abuses is "paramount," she also believes that "accountability and recognition of genocide should not be used as a cudgel in a political fight. It should be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull of geopolitics."This tweet by Michael Brooks retweeting a criticism by TYT reporter Ken Klippenstein is an example of criticism of her from the left:
If Congress truly wishes to acknowledge historic crimes against humanity, Omar added, it should look closer to home.
She argued that such a step "must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and the Native American genocide, which took the lives of hundreds of millions of people in this country." For this reason, Omar said she voted "present" on the bill. [my emphasis]
Trash vote and trash statement. She’s really good and there are geopolitical reasons behind the vote. She should hear from everyone how absolutely awful this is https://t.co/aUo5eXQOdT— Michael Brooks (@_michaelbrooks) October 30, 2019
I agree that it was a bad vote.
It‘s also a cautionary note about overly-promiscuous usage of ”genocide,“ which the Armenian case certainly was.
The UN Genocide Convention excludes ”cultural genocide“ as well as the targeting of political groups from its definition of genocide. Text here from the UN website of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
That doesn‘t mean we can‘t argue for a broader definition. The attorney Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) who is credited with inventing the term genocide (in the 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) did employ a wider definition himself. This short video from the US Holocaust Museum remembers Lemkin, Eyewitness Testimony: Raphael Lemkin:
But the wider the definition, the more examples people have to accuse countries of hypocrisy when they single out a genocide for condemnation. Jeffrey Ostler, an actual scholar of genocide, discusses at some length the challenges in applying the concept to one of the examples Congresswoman Omar used in his book, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (2019).
Comparing genocides to one another unfortunately can lead to some frivolous political rhetoric along the lines of my-genocide-is-worse-than-your-genocide. It can be a real rhetorical minefield.
I spent some time in the 1990s trying to learn about the Nazi Holocaust and to understand how it is treated in various historical narratives. That included learning about some of the polemical arguments made by people who want to minimize the seriousness of the Holocaust in some way.
One example of that produced a public discussion in Germany in the 1980s that became known as the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute). This was an argument among scholars that was conducted in the popular press. (Matthias von Hellfeld, Vor 25 Jahren: Der Historikerstreit Deutsche Welle 20.07.2011) It was kicked it off by a 1986 editorial column by Ernst Nolte, a German historian who (at least until then!) was a respected one. Nolte's earlier work on fascism, particularly his 1963 book published in English in 1965 as The Three Faces of Fascism; Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, is still regarded as an important work.
But in 1986, Nolte made the bizarre argument that I will summarize this way: because the Soviet Union had set up concentration camps, this inspired Hitler's idea of exterminating the Jews. So Stalin was responsible for the Holocaust. Other historians and the well-known Frankfurt School philosopher Jürgen Habermas criticized Nolte's piece, though there were prominent historians who were at least partly supportive of Nolte.
Nolte and his partisans didn't put it that crassly. But his argument served to shift part of the blame and responsibility for the Holocaust away from Hitler and Germany. "Did the [Soviet] 'Gulag Archipelago' not exist prior to Auschwitz?" asked Nolte, who referred to the Holocaust as an "Asiatic" act, i.e., not genuinely German or European. In other words, he used the comparison as a deflection from the historical seriousness of the Holocaust. He also wrote, "Auschwitz does not result primarily from traditional anti-Semitism and was not at its core a mere 'genocide', but rather the reaction to the extermination processes of the Russian Revolution born of fear," i.e. German fear of the Russians. In other words, the Holocaust wasn't really a "genocide", and the Commies were to blame anyway.
The Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945 also plays a role in Holocaust denier polemics. The argument is, look at how savagely the Allies bombed and killed Germans in Dresden and that shows what murderous intentions they had against all Germans, so the Holocaust was a response to those evil intentions. The decision against the far-right historian David Irving in Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstat (2000) has an excellent discussion of Irving's own revisionist and inaccurate historical accounts of the bombing of Dresden. And it describes how this can be used in a narrative that tries to minimize the Holocaust:
Irving has also made broader claims which tend to minimise the Holocaust. For example he has claimed that the Jews in the East were shot by individual gangsters and criminals and that there was no direction or policy in place for mass extermination to be carried out. I do, however, accept that Irving expressed himself in more measured language on this topic than in the case of the gas chambers. But he has also minimised the number of those killed by means other than gas at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Having grossly underestimated the number who lost their lives in the camps, Irving is prone to claim that a greater number than that were killed in Allied bombing raids on Dresden and elsewhere. He has, moreover, repeatedly claimed that the British Psychological War Executive ingeniously invented the lie that the Nazis were killing Jews in gas chambers in order to use it as propaganda. (p. 176) [my emphasis]So comparing genocides can be tricky.
And this is a big reason why I currently tend toward a more conservative definition of what constitutes genocide and try to orient my view around the international law version enshrined in the Genocide Convention.
Particularly as historical awareness of the Holocaust in the US and Europe has grown over recent decades, the term "genocide" has understandably taken on an implication of the worst of all possible crimes. So there is a temptation to apply it as a superlative to more and more situations. So people talk about a genocidal war in Vietnam, a genocidal war in Yemen, the slave trade as genocide, settler colonialism in the Western Hemisphere as genocide. But the Genocide Convention established genocide as a distinct type of crime, not as something that applies to all wars or all famines or all discrimination.
And there are reasons for that. Criminal law discriminates between different degrees of illegal killing. In the US, manslaughter is distinguished from second degree murder and both are distinguished from first degree murder. There is also a category of murder "with special circumstances," i.e., killing involving unusual cruelty. These don't mean that society considers any of these kinds of killings okay. It does mean that it does make distinctions based among other things on motive and intentions.
In terms of popular polemics involving genocide, it's important to keep in mind that the more broadly a particular term is applied, the greater the risk that its meaning will become blurred, or that it will lose some of its intellectually and emotionally evocative power. To put it in a more exaggerated way, if every kind of collective violence is genocide, genocide becomes just another word for collective violence.
I've always remembered the line used by Richard Nixon's Vice President Spiro Agnew in dismissing contemporary criticisms from antiwar activists that the Vietnam War was immoral. He brushed it off by saying, "All wars are immoral." Which meant in practice, no wars are immoral. On its face, it was a radical pacifist position, though no sentient being took Agnew or Nixon to be radical pacifists. Actually, Agnew's position was also directly sneering at over a millennium of Christian religious traditions on the Just War, as well as similar traditions in other religions. And, however imperfectly the religious doctrines or international law have functioned in limiting violence, it is illegal in international law to invade another country that is not threatening the invader. The defendants in the Nuremberg Trials were accused and convicted of waging "aggressive war," the legal term used there for an illegal invasion. A secular version of the Just War doctrine, in other words.
Telford Taylor, the chief American chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, wrote in Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (1970):
The lack of a satisfactory definition of "aggressive war" ... should not be taken as a sufficient argument against its use as a description of unlawful international conduct. In fact, as the discussion and application of the standard since it came into common parlance reveals, it is not significantly different from the tests for the lawful use of defensive force in our domestic criminal law. As we have already seen, the parallelism is of long standing. There is remarkable similarity between the criteria stated by Suarez and Grotius for distinguishing the just from the unjust war, and the provision of the New York Penal Law specifying. the circumstances under which force may rightfully be used: to defend one's sell, one's property or to assist other persons engaged in defending themselves or their property. [my emphasis]Agnew, in other words, watered down the concept of a war being immoral to the point of rendering it meaningless. Political speech can have that effect on the meaning of words and phrases. Actual experts on the subject, like Taylor in that case, have a more substantive take.
And here's where Ilhan Omar's position calls attention to some important considerations, though I do wish she had voted for the resolution. If we actually consider the fate of native populations in the Western Hemisphere after European colonization as genocide, people have a substantive point in arguing that the US - and every Latin American country, for that matter - are acting hypocritically in criticizing other countries for genocide if they haven't condemned their own genocides against native peoples.
I'm going to put on my Reluctant Realist hat for a couple of minutes here and say that foreign policy, unfortunately, runs to a large degree on hypocrisy. If the US waits to condemn wrongs and injustices abroad until it has formally condemned and made just restitution for every domestic wrong, it will never condemn any foreign wrong whatsoever. And that would not be a good outcome, either.
Yes, of course, these condemnations have political considerations involved with them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ever do them. It does mean, though, that it's legitimate for Members of Congress to criticize the political considerations being applied in individual cases.
I just happen to disagree with Ilhan Omar's vote on this one.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Linke Annahmen, die einer Neuformulierung bedürfen: Völkermord und nordamerikanische Indianer
Völkermord ist ein dramatisches Wort. Im gewöhnlichen Gebrauch beruft sie sich auf die vorsätzliche Zerstörung einer ganzen Gruppe von Menschen oder den Versuch, dies zu tun. Der bekannteste Fall, den praktisch jeder als Völkermord versteht, ist der Versuch Hitlers und der Nazis, die Juden Europas zu ermorden. Oder ganz allgemein der Holocaust, der sechs Millionen Juden und einer ähnlichen Anzahl anderer Gruppen das Leben kostete, die die Nazis als minderwertig oder gefährlich betrachteten.
Der Völkermord an den Armeniern von 1915 bis 1923, der von der türkischen Regierung verübt wurde, ist auch weithin bekannt und als Völkermord anerkannt.
Aber das Wort „Völkermord", wie „Holocaust", wird auch für eine Vielzahl anderer historischer Ereignisse und Schrecken verwendet, die nicht nur eine Erweiterung seiner Anwendung bedeuten können, sondern auch eine Verwässerung seiner Bedeutung und eine Verringerung seiner Potenz als ein Wort, das die stärkste Verurteilung impliziert.
Es ist üblich geworden, dass Menschen auf der linken Seite des politischen Spektrums den jahrhundertelangen Prozess der Eroberung und Vertreibung der Ureinwohner Nord- und Südamerikas durch die Europäer als Völkermord (genocide) bezeichnen. Auf der Netroots Nation 2019 Tagung, an der ich letzte Woche in Philadelphia teilnahm, haben mehrere Redner auf den „Völkermord" der uramerikanischen Indianer hingewiesen. Und auch die Tatsache, dass wir uns auf gestohlenem Land trafen, das einst einheimischen Indianern gehörte.
Ich arbeite an einigen weiteren Beiträgen zur Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Siedlung und der Indianerkriege, die sich über Jahrhunderte erstreckten. Aber hier möchte ich nur kurz sagen, dass ich generell zu einer sorgfältigen Anwendung des Begriffs Völkermord neige. Die Menschen auf der linken Seite bezeichnen auch Kriege oft als Völkermord, einschließlich des aktuellen saudischen Krieges im Jemen. Der afrikanische Sklavenhandel und die Sklaverei in der westlichen Hemisphäre werden manchmal auch als Völkermord oder afrikanischer Holocaust bezeichnet.
Das führt manchmal auch zu einem verbalen Wettbewerb darüber, wessen Holocaust schlimmer sei. Das ist selten. Aber es geschieht. In die aktuellen amerikanische Diskussionen über Reparationen für die Sklaverei, Leute, die ernsthaft darüber diskutieren, sind sich dieses Problems bewusst. Reparationen für den Nazi-Holocaust sind ein wichtiger Präzedenzfall für Reparationen für die Sklaverei. Seriöse Diskussionsteilnehmer rahmen ihre Argumente so ein, dass es Kritikern schwer fällt, mit diesen Argumenten Propagandabehauptungen zu machen, die die Befürworter sagen, „Na ja, die Juden bekommen Reparationen, warum können wir nicht?
Ich nehme am Ende eine Reihe von Links zu Beiträgen auf, die ich damals gemacht habe, als ich ein Baby-Blogger war, zumindest im Vergleich zu jetzt. Sie beschäftigen sich mit Ward Churchill, einem Kontroversen gelehrten indianischen Angelegenheiten, der 2005 zu einem Lieblingsbuhman der Republikaner wurde. Ein Beitrag einige Jahre später sprach auch über seinen wissenschaftlichen Ruf, Remember Ward Churchill? 04/10/2009. Die Rechten griffen Churchill als linken Kritiker der amerikanischen Gesellschaft an. Aber wie ich in den unten verlinkten Beiträgen von 2005 gezeigt habe, deuteten Churchills Argumente darauf hin, dass sein Ansatz eher eine rechts-ethnisch-nationalistische Perspektive war und einige beunruhigende Ähnlichkeiten mit Argumenten der Holocaust-Leugnung aufwies. Was für jemanden, dessen wissenschaftliche Arbeit das Argument betont, dass die Behandlung von Nordamerikanern gegen die Ureinwohner einem Völkermord gleichkomme, überraschend klingen mag.
Und seine Arbeit war einflussreich für diejenigen, die diesen Fall vorbringen. Jeffrey Ostler macht sehr ernsthafte und interessante Arbeit an der Frage des Völkermords im Fall der indigenen Völker in der westlichen Hemisphäre. In seinem Buch Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (2019), schreibt er:
In einem Artikel in der Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (Genocide and American Indian History 2015), Ostler stellt fest: „In erheblichem Maße sind Meinungsverschiedenheiten über die Verbreitung von Völkermord in der Geschichte der postkolumbianischen westlichen Hemisphäre im Allgemeinen und die US-Geschichte im Besonderen ein Schwerpunkt auf Definitionen von Völkermord."
Zusammen mit der inhärenten Grausamkeit des Themas kann die Notwendigkeit, Definitionen von Völkermord und ihre Anwendbarkeit zu analysieren, leicht bürokratisch-kaltblütig klingen. Dennoch ist es wichtig, sich daran zu erinnern, dass Völkermord ein spezifisches Verbrechen ist, das im Völkerrecht definiert ist. Sie umfasst nicht jeden bösartigen, mörderischen und illegitimen Akt der Massengewalt.
Ostlers Enzyklopädie-Artikel gibt einen guten Überblick über die relevanten Themen bei der ernsthaften Bewertung, wie sich die heimatliche Geschichte in den USA in den Völkermord-Rahmen einfügt. In seinem Buch argumentiert er, dass das Argument eines Völkermords im Falle von Einzelfällen am stärksten ist, wie die Ausrottung der Pequots, des Indianerstammes, nach dem Captain Ahabs verdammtes Schiff in Moby Dick benannt ist. Die rabiate und blutige Vertreibung der einheimischen kalifornischen Stämme, die durch den Goldrausch initiiert wurde, ist eine andere, für die er den Völkermord-Fall als „besonders stark" ansieht.
Aber er ist auch nicht bereit, die Überlegung zurückzuweisen, dass die amerikanische Politik gegenüber die Indianern in größerem Maßstab als Völkermord betrachtet werden sollte:
Mein eigener Ansatz besteht derzeit darin, mich auf die Definition der Völkermordkonvention zu verlassen. Auch aus dem Enzyklopädie-Artikel scheint Ostler diese Definition als konservative Perspektive zu identifizieren, während der wissenschaftliche Bereich, der für die Verstehung des Völkermords verwendet wird, breiter gefasst ist:
Wir sollen uns der Gefahr bewusst bleiben, dass eine zu große Ausweitung der Definition von Völkermord ihre öffentliche Bedeutung in einer Weise verringern könnte, die die Natur des Völkermords im Sinne der Genocide Convention verschleiern könnte. Wenn wir den „Völkermord" rhetorisch um alles drehen, von einem Versäumnis, zweisprachige Bildung zu bieten („kultureller Völkermord“), bis hin zu vorsätzlichem Massenmord, der auf eine bestimmte "nationale, ethnische, rassische oder religiöse Gruppe" abzielt, kann dies diesen Effekt haben.
Beiträge über Ward Churchill:
Der Völkermord an den Armeniern von 1915 bis 1923, der von der türkischen Regierung verübt wurde, ist auch weithin bekannt und als Völkermord anerkannt.
Aber das Wort „Völkermord", wie „Holocaust", wird auch für eine Vielzahl anderer historischer Ereignisse und Schrecken verwendet, die nicht nur eine Erweiterung seiner Anwendung bedeuten können, sondern auch eine Verwässerung seiner Bedeutung und eine Verringerung seiner Potenz als ein Wort, das die stärkste Verurteilung impliziert.
Es ist üblich geworden, dass Menschen auf der linken Seite des politischen Spektrums den jahrhundertelangen Prozess der Eroberung und Vertreibung der Ureinwohner Nord- und Südamerikas durch die Europäer als Völkermord (genocide) bezeichnen. Auf der Netroots Nation 2019 Tagung, an der ich letzte Woche in Philadelphia teilnahm, haben mehrere Redner auf den „Völkermord" der uramerikanischen Indianer hingewiesen. Und auch die Tatsache, dass wir uns auf gestohlenem Land trafen, das einst einheimischen Indianern gehörte.
 |
| Gravur des Pequot-Krieges von 1636-38 (Library of Congress) |
Das führt manchmal auch zu einem verbalen Wettbewerb darüber, wessen Holocaust schlimmer sei. Das ist selten. Aber es geschieht. In die aktuellen amerikanische Diskussionen über Reparationen für die Sklaverei, Leute, die ernsthaft darüber diskutieren, sind sich dieses Problems bewusst. Reparationen für den Nazi-Holocaust sind ein wichtiger Präzedenzfall für Reparationen für die Sklaverei. Seriöse Diskussionsteilnehmer rahmen ihre Argumente so ein, dass es Kritikern schwer fällt, mit diesen Argumenten Propagandabehauptungen zu machen, die die Befürworter sagen, „Na ja, die Juden bekommen Reparationen, warum können wir nicht?
Ich nehme am Ende eine Reihe von Links zu Beiträgen auf, die ich damals gemacht habe, als ich ein Baby-Blogger war, zumindest im Vergleich zu jetzt. Sie beschäftigen sich mit Ward Churchill, einem Kontroversen gelehrten indianischen Angelegenheiten, der 2005 zu einem Lieblingsbuhman der Republikaner wurde. Ein Beitrag einige Jahre später sprach auch über seinen wissenschaftlichen Ruf, Remember Ward Churchill? 04/10/2009. Die Rechten griffen Churchill als linken Kritiker der amerikanischen Gesellschaft an. Aber wie ich in den unten verlinkten Beiträgen von 2005 gezeigt habe, deuteten Churchills Argumente darauf hin, dass sein Ansatz eher eine rechts-ethnisch-nationalistische Perspektive war und einige beunruhigende Ähnlichkeiten mit Argumenten der Holocaust-Leugnung aufwies. Was für jemanden, dessen wissenschaftliche Arbeit das Argument betont, dass die Behandlung von Nordamerikanern gegen die Ureinwohner einem Völkermord gleichkomme, überraschend klingen mag.
Und seine Arbeit war einflussreich für diejenigen, die diesen Fall vorbringen. Jeffrey Ostler macht sehr ernsthafte und interessante Arbeit an der Frage des Völkermords im Fall der indigenen Völker in der westlichen Hemisphäre. In seinem Buch Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (2019), schreibt er:
Obwohl Raphael Lemkin 1944 den Begriff Völkermord prägte, wurde die Frage des Völkermords in Amerika erst fast hundert Jahre später zu einer wissenschaftlichen und öffentlichen Debatte. Die Debatte begann zur Zeit des Kolumbus-Entdeckungs 500. Jubiläum im Jahr 1992, als Aktivisten und Schriftsteller eine feierliche Erzählung von der „Entdeckung der Neuen Welt" in Frage stellten, indem sie argumentierten, dass die europäische Invasion der westlichen Hemisphäre konsequent völkermordend sei. Zwei Werke waren besonders einflussreich: David Stannard’s American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (1992) and Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (1997). Wie ihre Titel ankündigten, argumentierten Stannard und Churchill für eine Äquivalenz mit dem Holocaust. Ihre Erzählerstrategie bestand darin, schreckliche Ereignisse nach schrecklichen Ereignisse (Massaker, Versklavungen, Epidemien) zu schildern, Europäer und europäische Amerikaner für ihre Gier, ihren Rassismus und ihre Blutlust anzuklagen und diese mit Statistiken zu verknüpfen, die den drastischen Rückgang der Indigene Bevölkerungen in Amerika. Auf diese Weise erweckten sie den Eindruck eines unerbittlichen, absichtlichen und eindeutig bösen Prozesses, der der systematischen Vernichtung der Juden durch die Nazis so nahe wie möglich ähnelte. Sie waren eine Geschichte von Völkermord, Völkermord und Völkermord, und es gab wenig Platz für alles andere. [mein Hervorhebungen](Alle Übertragungen aus dem Englischen in diesem Beitrag sind meine.)
In einem Artikel in der Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (Genocide and American Indian History 2015), Ostler stellt fest: „In erheblichem Maße sind Meinungsverschiedenheiten über die Verbreitung von Völkermord in der Geschichte der postkolumbianischen westlichen Hemisphäre im Allgemeinen und die US-Geschichte im Besonderen ein Schwerpunkt auf Definitionen von Völkermord."
Zusammen mit der inhärenten Grausamkeit des Themas kann die Notwendigkeit, Definitionen von Völkermord und ihre Anwendbarkeit zu analysieren, leicht bürokratisch-kaltblütig klingen. Dennoch ist es wichtig, sich daran zu erinnern, dass Völkermord ein spezifisches Verbrechen ist, das im Völkerrecht definiert ist. Sie umfasst nicht jeden bösartigen, mörderischen und illegitimen Akt der Massengewalt.
Ostlers Enzyklopädie-Artikel gibt einen guten Überblick über die relevanten Themen bei der ernsthaften Bewertung, wie sich die heimatliche Geschichte in den USA in den Völkermord-Rahmen einfügt. In seinem Buch argumentiert er, dass das Argument eines Völkermords im Falle von Einzelfällen am stärksten ist, wie die Ausrottung der Pequots, des Indianerstammes, nach dem Captain Ahabs verdammtes Schiff in Moby Dick benannt ist. Die rabiate und blutige Vertreibung der einheimischen kalifornischen Stämme, die durch den Goldrausch initiiert wurde, ist eine andere, für die er den Völkermord-Fall als „besonders stark" ansieht.
Aber er ist auch nicht bereit, die Überlegung zurückzuweisen, dass die amerikanische Politik gegenüber die Indianern in größerem Maßstab als Völkermord betrachtet werden sollte:
Völkermord war nicht die ganze Zeit präsent, und so wäre es einfach, die Frage des Völkermords für diesen Teil der amerikanischen Geschichte mit einem absoluten „Ja" zu beantworten. Aber mit einem absoluten „Nein" zu antworten, würde viel übersehen. Es würde nicht nur die eigenen Ansichten der Indianer zu diesem Thema nicht ernst nehmen, es würde auch viele andere übersehene Dimensionen dieser Geschichte vermissen. Sie würde nicht ganz mit der Tatsache rechnen, dass Regierungsbeamte konsequent Genoziddrohungen benutzten, um die Zustimmung zu erhalten, und sie würde weiterhin die Tatsache ignorieren, dass die Vereinigten Staaten eine Politik der Vernichtung von Indianern verfolgten, die sich ihren Forderungen widersetzten. Die Abweisung eines Völkermords könnte uns auch daran hindern, die Tiefen der indianischen Abschiebung zu ergründen. Zu einer Zeit dachte ich, ethnische Säuberung war wahrscheinlich der beste Begriff für die US-Politik der indianischen Entfernung, aber als ich begann, die volle Wirkung der Entfernung zu erfassen, wie es für mehr als zwanzig Jahre verfolgt wurde (von den 1830er Jahren bis in die 1850er Jahre), als ich kam zu einem besseren Verständnis von der demografische Katastrophen, die es so vielen Nationen zugefügt, und als ich erkannte, dass diese Katastrophen das direkte Ergebnis einer Politik waren, die von Regierungsbeamten fortgesetzt wurde, die wussten, was vor sich ging, konnte ich nicht der Überzeugung entkommen, dass das, was ich war, Zeuge war als Völkermord zu betrachten. [mein Hervorhebungen]Die offizielle Definition von Völkermord findet sich in der United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [Konvention über die Verhütung und Bestrafung des Völkermordes] (1948). Es gibt eine internationale Rechtsprechung, die Fälle von Völkermord nach dieser Definition eindeutig identifiziert hat, hauptsächlich aus den Verurteilungen des Nürnberger Tribunals und Fällen, die sich mit Ruanda und den Balkankriegen der 1990er Jahre befassen. Einer der Faktoren, die in Ostlers Analyse groß sind, ist die Tatsache, dass die Genozid-Konvention „kulturellen Völkermord" ausschließt. Sie schließt auch Maßnahmen aus, die auf politische Gruppen abzielen: „Völkermord bedeutet jede der folgenden Handlungen, die mit der Absicht begangen werden, eine nationale, ethnische, rassische oder religiöse Gruppe ganz oder teilweise zu zerstören." Absicht ist ein entscheidender Faktor für das Verbrechen des Völkermords, wie es dort definiert ist, wie das letzte Zitat von Ostler anerkennt. Wie er in seinem Enzyklopädie-Artikel anführt, „konzentrieren sich Debatten darüber, ob bestimmte Fälle und Phasen als Völkermord gelten, typischerweise auf diese Themen: die Absichten historischer Akteure (einschließlich, aber nicht beschränkt auf Regierungen), das Ausmaß der Entvölkerung von besonderer Gruppen und die Ursachen ihrer Entvölkerung."
Mein eigener Ansatz besteht derzeit darin, mich auf die Definition der Völkermordkonvention zu verlassen. Auch aus dem Enzyklopädie-Artikel scheint Ostler diese Definition als konservative Perspektive zu identifizieren, während der wissenschaftliche Bereich, der für die Verstehung des Völkermords verwendet wird, breiter gefasst ist:
Konservative Definitionen betonen absichtliche Handlungen und Strategien von Regierungen, die zu sehr großen Bevölkerungsverlusten führen, in der Regel durch direkte Tötung. Liberalere Definitionen erfordern weniger strenge Kriterien für Absichten, die sich stärker auf die Ergebnisse konzentrieren. Sie erfordern nicht notwendigerweise eine direkte Sanktion durch staatliche Behörden; vielmehr identifizieren sie gesellschaftliche Kräfte und Akteure.Mein Ziel in diesem Beitrag ist es, das Problem zu stellen und in einer allgemeinen Weise die Notwendigkeit der Vorsicht bei der Verwendung des Genozid-Etiketts zu erklären. Als ich anfing, mich mit Politik zu beschäftigen, war Spiro Agnew Vizepräsident unter Richard Nixon. Seine Antwort auf Antikriegsargumente, der Vietnamkrieg sei unmoralisch, war zu sagen: „Alle Kriege sind unmoralisch." Das war keine pazifistische Stimmung. Es war ein zynischer Spott. Denn wenn alle Kriege unmoralisch sind, ist keiner unmoralisch. Oder zumindest bedeutet es, dass moralische Kriterien nicht auf Fragen von Krieg und Frieden angewendet werden sollten. Damit sind nicht nur das Völkerrecht, sondern auch fast zwei Jahrtausende westlicher religiöser Traditionen auf den gerechten Krieg hinausgeworfen werden.
Wir sollen uns der Gefahr bewusst bleiben, dass eine zu große Ausweitung der Definition von Völkermord ihre öffentliche Bedeutung in einer Weise verringern könnte, die die Natur des Völkermords im Sinne der Genocide Convention verschleiern könnte. Wenn wir den „Völkermord" rhetorisch um alles drehen, von einem Versäumnis, zweisprachige Bildung zu bieten („kultureller Völkermord“), bis hin zu vorsätzlichem Massenmord, der auf eine bestimmte "nationale, ethnische, rassische oder religiöse Gruppe" abzielt, kann dies diesen Effekt haben.
Beiträge über Ward Churchill:
- Chuckie Watch 85: Ole Chuckie shore is smarter than them professers 02/01/2005
- What have the Republicans done for us lately? 02/10/2005
- The Red Lake shooting and rightwing extremism 03/24/2005
- And this is *respectable* Republican commentary... 03/28/2005
- More on Ward Churchill, who's already gotten way more attention than he deserved 04/11/2005
Friday, July 19, 2019
Left assumptions in need of reformulation: Genocide and Native Americans
Genocide is a dramatic word. In ordinary usage, it invokes the deliberate destruction of an entire group of people, or attempting to do so. The most familiar case that virtually everyone understands as genocide is the attempt by Hitler and the Nazis to murder the Jews of Europe. Or, more generally the Holocaust, which took the lives of six million Jews and a similar number of other groups the Nazis regarded as inferior or dangerous.
The Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923 carried out by the Turkish government is also widely known and recognized as genocide.
But the word “genocide,” like “Holocaust,” is also used for a variety of other historical incidents and horrors that can mean not only a widening of its application but a diluting of its meaning and a reduction of its potency as a word implying the strongest condemnation.
It has become common for people on the left side of the political spectrum to refer to the centuries-long process of conquest and displacement by Europeans of the aboriginal peoples of North and South America as genocide. At the Netroots Nation 2019 convention I attended last week in Philadelphia, several speakers I heard made reference to the "genocide" of native North Americans. And also to the fact that we were meeting on stolen land that once belonged to local Indians.
I'm working on some further posts on the history of the North American settlement and the Indian Wars which stretched over centuries. But here I just want to say more briefly that I generally lean toward a careful use of the concept of genocide. People on the left also often refer to wars as genocidal, including the current Saudi war in Yemen. The African slave trade and slavery in the Western Hemisphere are also sometimes called a case of genocide, or an African Holocaust.
This also sometimes leads to a verbal competition as to whose Holocaust is worse. This is rare. But it does happen. We see in the current discussions of reparations for slavery that those discussing it in a serious way take care in discussing the precedents for reparations, which include reparations for the Nazi Holocaust, to frame their arguments in a way that makes them hard for critics to twist into an accusation that they are making a pitch of, well, the Jews get reparations, why can't we?
I'm including at the end a series of links to posts I made back when I was a baby blogger, at least compared to now. They deal with Ward Churchill, a controversal scholar of Native American affairs who became a favorite bogeyman of Republicans back in 2005. A post several years later also talked about his scholarly reputation, Remember Ward Churchill? 04/10/2009. Rightwingers attacked Churchill as a left critic of American society. But as I showed in the 2005 posts linked below that in significant ways, Churchill's arguments suggested that his approach was more of a rightwing ethnic-nationalist perspective and had some disturbing similarities to Holocaust-denial arguments. Which may sound surprising for someone whose scholarly work emphasizes the argument that the treatment of North Americans amounted to genocide.
And his work has been influential for those making that case. Jeffrey Ostler is doing very serious and interesting work on the question of genocide in the case of indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere. In his book Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (2019), he writes:
Along with the inherent grimness of the subject, the need to parse definitions of genocide and their applicability can easily sound bureaucratically cold-blooded. Nevertheless, it's important to remember that genocide is a specific crime defined in international law. It does not include every vicious, murderous, and illegitimate act of mass violence.
Ostler's encyclopedia article gives a good overview of the relevant issues in making a serious evaluation of how native history in the US fits into the genocide framework. In his book, he argues that the case for genocide is strongest in the case of individual cases, like the extermination of the Pequots, the Indian tribe for which Captain Ahab's doomed ship in Moby Dick is named. The rabid and bloody displacement of native California tribes initiated by the Gold Rush is another, for which he considers the genocide case "particularly strong."
But he also is unwilling to dismiss the consideration that American Indian policy on a larger scale should be considered genocide:
My own approach at this time is to rely on the Genocide Convention definition. Also in the encyclopedia article, Ostler seems to identify that definition as the conservative outlook, while the scholarly range used for understanding genocide is broader:
We need to be mindful of the risk that expanding the definition of genocide too far could reduce its public meaning in a way that could obscure the nature of genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention. If we turn "genocide" rhetorically to include everything from a failure to provide bilingual education (cultural genocide) to intentional mass killing targeted on a particular "national, ethnical, racial or religious group," it can have that effect. In other words, if everything is genocide, nothing is genocide. That is, genocide as a concept loses its current meaning.
Posts on Ward Churchill:
The Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923 carried out by the Turkish government is also widely known and recognized as genocide.
But the word “genocide,” like “Holocaust,” is also used for a variety of other historical incidents and horrors that can mean not only a widening of its application but a diluting of its meaning and a reduction of its potency as a word implying the strongest condemnation.
It has become common for people on the left side of the political spectrum to refer to the centuries-long process of conquest and displacement by Europeans of the aboriginal peoples of North and South America as genocide. At the Netroots Nation 2019 convention I attended last week in Philadelphia, several speakers I heard made reference to the "genocide" of native North Americans. And also to the fact that we were meeting on stolen land that once belonged to local Indians.
|
| 19th Century Engraving of the Pequot War of 1636-38 (Library of Congress) |
This also sometimes leads to a verbal competition as to whose Holocaust is worse. This is rare. But it does happen. We see in the current discussions of reparations for slavery that those discussing it in a serious way take care in discussing the precedents for reparations, which include reparations for the Nazi Holocaust, to frame their arguments in a way that makes them hard for critics to twist into an accusation that they are making a pitch of, well, the Jews get reparations, why can't we?
I'm including at the end a series of links to posts I made back when I was a baby blogger, at least compared to now. They deal with Ward Churchill, a controversal scholar of Native American affairs who became a favorite bogeyman of Republicans back in 2005. A post several years later also talked about his scholarly reputation, Remember Ward Churchill? 04/10/2009. Rightwingers attacked Churchill as a left critic of American society. But as I showed in the 2005 posts linked below that in significant ways, Churchill's arguments suggested that his approach was more of a rightwing ethnic-nationalist perspective and had some disturbing similarities to Holocaust-denial arguments. Which may sound surprising for someone whose scholarly work emphasizes the argument that the treatment of North Americans amounted to genocide.
And his work has been influential for those making that case. Jeffrey Ostler is doing very serious and interesting work on the question of genocide in the case of indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere. In his book Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (2019), he writes:
Although Raphaël Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1944, it was not until almost fi fty years later that the question of genocide in the Americas became a matter of scholarly and public debate. The debate began at the time of the Columbus Quincentennial in 1992, when activists and writers challenged a celebratory narrative of the “discovery of the New World” by arguing that the European invasion of the Western Hemisphere was consistently genocidal. Two works were particularly influential: David Stannard’s American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (1992) and Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (1997). As their titles announced, Stannard and Churchill made their case by arguing for an equivalence with the Holocaust. Their narrative strategy was to relate horrific event after horrific event (massacres, enslavements, epidemics), indict Europeans and European Americans for their greed, racism, and bloodlust, and link these to statistics underscoring the drastic decline of Indigenous populations in the Americas. In this way, they created the impression of an unrelenting, intentioned, and unambiguously evil process that resembled as closely as possible the Nazis’ systematic annihilation of the Jews. Theirs was a story of genocide, genocide, and genocide, and there was little room for anything else. [my emphasis]In an article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (Genocide and American Indian History 2015), Ostler notes, "To a significant extent, disagreements about the pervasiveness of genocide in the history of the post-Columbian Western Hemisphere, in general, and U.S. history, in particular, pivot on definitions of genocide."
Along with the inherent grimness of the subject, the need to parse definitions of genocide and their applicability can easily sound bureaucratically cold-blooded. Nevertheless, it's important to remember that genocide is a specific crime defined in international law. It does not include every vicious, murderous, and illegitimate act of mass violence.
Ostler's encyclopedia article gives a good overview of the relevant issues in making a serious evaluation of how native history in the US fits into the genocide framework. In his book, he argues that the case for genocide is strongest in the case of individual cases, like the extermination of the Pequots, the Indian tribe for which Captain Ahab's doomed ship in Moby Dick is named. The rabid and bloody displacement of native California tribes initiated by the Gold Rush is another, for which he considers the genocide case "particularly strong."
But he also is unwilling to dismiss the consideration that American Indian policy on a larger scale should be considered genocide:
Genocide was not present all the time, and so to answer the question of genocide for this part of American history with an absolute “yes” would be simplistic. But replying with an absolute “no” would overlook a great deal. Not only would it fail to take seriously Indians’ own views on the matter, it would miss many other overlooked dimensions of this history. It would fail to fully reckon with the fact that government officials consistently used genocidal threats to secure consent, and it would continue to ignore the fact that the United States adopted a policy of exterminating Indians who resisted its demands. Dismissing genocide might also prevent us from fathoming the depths of Indian removal. At one time, I thought ethnic cleansing was probably the best term for the U.S. policy of Indian removal, but as I began to grasp the full impact of removal as it was pursued for more than twenty years (from the 1830s into the 1850s), as I came to a better understanding of the demographic catastrophes it inflicted on so many nations, and as I realized that these catastrophes were the direct result of a policy that was continued by government officials who knew what was happening, I could not escape the conviction that what I was witnessing had to be considered genocide. [my emphasis]The official definition of genocide is found in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). There is international case law that have clearly identified instances of genocide under this definition, largely from the Nuremburg Tribunal convictions and cases dealing with Rwanda and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. One of the factors that looms large in Ostler's analysis is the fact that the Genocide Convention excludes "cultural genocide." It also excludes action targeting political groups: "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Intent is a critical factor in the crime of genocide as defined there, as the last quote from Ostler recognizes. As he indicates in his encyclopedia article, "debates about whether or not specific cases and phases qualify as genocide typically center on these issues: the intentions of historical actors (including but not limited to governments), the extent of depopulation of particular groups, and the causes of their depopulation."
My own approach at this time is to rely on the Genocide Convention definition. Also in the encyclopedia article, Ostler seems to identify that definition as the conservative outlook, while the scholarly range used for understanding genocide is broader:
Conservative definitions emphasize intentional actions and policies of governments that result in very large population losses, usually from direct killing. More liberal definitions call for less stringent criteria for intent, focusing more on outcomes. They do not necessarily require direct sanction by state authorities; rather, they identify societal forces and actors.My purpose in this post is to pose the problem and explain in a general way the need to be careful in using the genocide label. When I first began engaging with politics, Spiro Agnew was Vice President under Richard Nixon. His answer to antiwar arguments that the Vietnam War was immoral was to say, "All wars are immoral." That wasn't a pacifist sentiment. It was a cynical sneer. Because if all wars are immoral, none are immoral. Or at least, it means that moral criteria should not be applied to questions of war and peace, thus casually tossing out not only international law but also nearly two millennia of Western religious traditions on the just war.
We need to be mindful of the risk that expanding the definition of genocide too far could reduce its public meaning in a way that could obscure the nature of genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention. If we turn "genocide" rhetorically to include everything from a failure to provide bilingual education (cultural genocide) to intentional mass killing targeted on a particular "national, ethnical, racial or religious group," it can have that effect. In other words, if everything is genocide, nothing is genocide. That is, genocide as a concept loses its current meaning.
Posts on Ward Churchill:
- Chuckie Watch 85: Ole Chuckie shore is smarter than them professers 02/01/2005
- What have the Republicans done for us lately? 02/10/2005
- The Red Lake shooting and rightwing extremism 03/24/2005
- And this is *respectable* Republican commentary... 03/28/2005
- More on Ward Churchill, who's already gotten way more attention than he deserved 04/11/2005
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