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There wasn't a revolution going on in S. Africa in the 1980s? I beg to differ. Nonetheless these unfortunate acts were a part of spontaneous mob violence driven by their bitter hatred of their dismal conditions of oppression, not acts directed from above. Thus, why not talk about the violence of the apartheid regime, something decidedly a matter of conscious policy? So, politically speaking in that context they are counter-revolutionary horror stories, part of the political media offensive of the Boers and their supporters to give them moral cover and shift the onus away from apartheid. Louis talked about not dredging up stuff from 10 years before he was born (and I say in my defense I'm not the one who brought this stuff up, "I didn't start it"), so surely we're treading on thin ice in getting into the Jacobins, but if you must raise this issue, I suggest those who are interested check out Thomas Paine's defense of the French Revolution, "The Rights of Man", in response to precisely this argument when first raised by Edmund Burke over 200 years ago. And if you remember there was also a revolution in Haiti at that time. Are you now going to complacently ignore the reality of colonial slavery and talk about the murder of plantation families or of perhaps incidents of people killed by masses who rightly or wrongly thought to be collaborators? What about Sherman's March to the Sea? What about the partisans in France who killed people believed to be collaborators, but due to mistake weren't? Are we going to condemn them as terrorists as many right wing people in France and Germany still do to this day without talking about the Nazis? Give us a break. On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 7:00 PM, Shane Mage <shm...@pipeline.com> wrote: > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== > > > > On Aug 1, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Tom Cod wrote: > > ...like I was saying that was a good thing. > > Obviously not...revolution and civil war are not perfect and...many > > unsavory things occur... > > Oh. You were talking about "necklacing" *suspected* informers in > South Africa (where there was, in the proper sense of those words, > neither a revolution nor a civil war going on) and described all > references to such facts as "right-wing horror stories." > I took that as manifesting a certain, all-too-common, attitude toward > the Robespierres and Jeffersons and their Revolutionary successors. > > Shane Mage > > > > > > > > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
