Bosnia etc

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

I've been mulling over just why it is the multiculturalists and Third
Campists get so worked up over Bosnia. Not that the sight of thousands of
people dying for debased reasons isn't horrifying - but there are people
dying all over the place (e.g. Africa, Bedford-Stuyvesant) to much less
vocalized distress.

Here's what comes to mind.

First, the war in the former Yugoslavia is very hard for multiculturalists
to explain without demonizing the Serbs as the perps. In MC theory, racism
is an ideology of domination; MCism generally avoids things like hostility
between African-Americans and Korean-Americans. So, Bosnia could not have
been destroyed by long-dormant ethnic hostilities, but only by Serbs hot on
genocide.

Second, admitting that the collapse of Communism has had bad effects is
also difficult for those who spent 40 years bashing Commies. Now I could
make a list of the failings of formerly existing socialism almost as long
as the next guy, but you have to admit that Communist Yugoslavia was a
place where people of many different ethnic groups lived peaceably
together. No doubt some will explain this as a side-effect of repression,
but I don't think Yugoslavia was all *that* repressive a regime. Those who
spent decades calling for the destruction of the USSR and its Eastern
European clone regimes spent very little time musing on what might take its
place. (I made this point once to Bogdan Denitch when he & shared a radio
slot, and he responded with his usual noises, citing some obscure Serbian
economist whose name now escapes me as a font of post-Communist ideas. I'd
never heard of the guy, and while I'm no scholar, I think his obscurity is
a function of the Third Campists' preference for Commie bashing over "what
is to be done?" reflections.) So rather than admit that Communism had any
positive aspects, better to indict the Serbs as the embodiment of evil.

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
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