Sean Andrews writes: On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 18:11, Marv Gandall <[email protected]> wrote:
We needed reminding of that. But all imperialists are invariably racists, though not all are fascist. It's possible in this case, too, the savage assault on a people of colour was was a consequence of the regime's imperialist pretensions , rather than a cause of it, as was the planned genocide of the Nazis against the Jews.
uh oh! now we've got a whole other thing to consider. what is a genocide? I don't know if that should be the characteristic that divides these formula. After all, is it necessary for a genocide to be carefully planned to be called a genocide? Rwanda wasn't carefully planned--just a deeply ingrained hatred along with careful stoking by propaganda (radio) and hunger. The same could be said of other more sporadic forays into ethnic cleansing, many of which rely far less on a central apparatus organizing either the army or the dispossession of the "Other:" all that is necessary is a state that generally agrees not to prosecute those who kill its hated minority (does this make early 20th century US genocidal for not stopping informal lynching or was that to small scale?) or to simply allow that hated minority to die (as in Ethiopia of Live Aid era, or as Mike Davis argues in the text below, as the British did in India during the famines of the late 19th century)? ================================================== What constitutes genocide is the subject of much debate, as Sean indicates. My own view is that it's the conscious intent to liquidate an entire population to the last child. The industrialized genocide conducted by the Nazis was carefully planned and organized; that in Rwanda much less systematic and more spontaneous. Ethnic cleansing, on other hand, is designed to expel rather than exterminate, using the threat of extermination for that purpose and always with the potential to develop into genocide. I think the many crimes committed by the British and European empires and by the US and other settler states are easily condemned in their own right, although there is evidence of genocidal intent in selected cases such as the distribution of smallpox infected blankets by local officials and military commanders. But it seems to me that the kind of criminal neglect at the very top which allows widespread famine, disease, and other natural disasters to proceed unchecked among the poor and the powerless has not been not restricted to conquered peoples but has been characteristic of state behaviour in class society both at home and abroad. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
