[Marxism] Re: Smearing Chomsky - The Guardian In The Gutter

["Paul Flewers" <trusscott.foundation@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Non-UK list members should take into consideration the fact that the 
UK-published Guardian was one of the most virulent advocates both of attacks 
upon the ex-Yugoslavia and demonisation of Serbs during the Yugoslav collapse. 
Any chance to attack someone who stands aside from the received wisdon of 
Srebrenica -- that is, who challenges the idea that the Bosnian Serb army 
carried out an unprovoked attack on the town and killed 8000 Muslim men in an 
act of genocide -- will be taken up with alacrity by the paper's 
correspondents. Hence, the paper's correspondent leapt at the chance of 
attacking Chomsky.

Some years back, the Guardian actually ran an article by Jonah Goldhagen which 
considered that 'the Serbs' were a renegade nation who needed a severe whacking 
and re-education. I wrote to the paper saying that Goldhagen's rant, condemning 
a whole people, was highly reminiscent of Hitlerite national stereotyping -- my 
letter was never printed. 

The nasty side of this is that anyone who challenges the received wisdom over 
Srebrenica gets branded explicitly or implicitly as someone on the same level 
as a Holocaust denier, or at least trying to minimise the suffering of the 
Bosnian people (Bosnian Serbs seem to excluded from this definition of 
'Bosnians'). Seeing that there are many questions about the Nazi Holocaust 
which still are legitimately debated -- such as the 
'intentionalist'/'functionalist' question, the actual number of deaths: 
estimates of the Jews killed by the Nazis run from 4.5 to 6.2 million -- a 
discussion of the Srebrenica massacre is a valid matter. 

Paul F






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