Re: Auschwitz in Bulgaria (on political language)

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <Gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

En relación a Re: Auschwitz in Bulgaria,
el 1 Sep 00, a las 12:55, Johannes Schneider dijo:

> Louis Proyect quoted:
>
> > AUSCHWITZ NEAR SOFIA...
> >
> > By Ivan Angelov, born 1943; International Relations Graduate (1969);
> > Ph.D. (1975); Associate Professor (1988)
> >
...
>
> I think its rather inapropiate to compare the results of capitalist
> privatization in Bulgaria to the Nazi holocaust.

I can understand the position by Johannes. Though I share it somehow,
there is something that should be taken into account. Peoples who are
suffering the onslaught that followed defeat during the late 80s /
early 90s tend to have some kind of dark consciousness that they are
subject to a systemic murder.

In Argentina, for example, the adjective "genocide" has been
consistently misused to blame the military who after the 1976 coup
killed and made disappear tens of thousands of fellow countrymen.
This was an obvious mistake, since these people were not killed or
persecuted because they belonged to a particular ethnic group thus no
"genocide".

The mistake, however, installed the word in our political book. Now,
some are beginning to speak of "genocide" in reference to the awesome
levels of malnutrition and infant mortality. This is less a mistake
than before, but still a mistake, and still the use of the word
implies a strong conviction in the _structural_, so to say, character
of this crime. And in a strong sense they are right, because though
nobody has consciouscly planned a Holocaust of Argentinians, we are
facing a Herodian Catch 22, something well captured by an old
Argentinian saying, "No te morirás, pero te irás secando" ("Maybe you
won't die, but you will dry away"). In this sense, and for the
victims, the word "genocide" is not so wrong. Probably in Bulgaria
the reference to Oswieczim (where, by the way, they will install a
new night-club, isn't this wonderful!) has same sense

Words do sometimes have a strength -for those who suffer the crime-
that those who are outside the tragedy, as we are, cannot always
perceive.


>
> The holocaust was a consciously planned, complete and bureaucratically
> exectuted extermination of whole peoples. I do not think one needs
> much intellectual capacities to understand, that its something
> different than what is happening in Bulgaria today.
>
> Its obvious that such a comparision belittles the holocaust. At the
> same time it does not help the resistance againts the reintroduction
> of private capitalism in Eastern Europe, because such comparisions
> have the effect that the rest of the article can easily be dismissed
> as wrong as well.
>
> Johannes
>



Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx