[PEN-L:9497] Rummel et al

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Max:
>I have a unique escape from these tedious debates on how many
>zillions were cruelly exterminated at the hands of fascism,
>communism, or imperialism.  I simply disclaim support for
>any of them and try to live different.  It's not that hard,
>actually.

It depends on whose ox has been gored. If somebody showed up on PEN-L
claiming that only 3 million Jews died in the Nazi concentration camps, and
that mostly due to harsh conditions rather than through gassing, etc.,
would you have the same bland, philosophical attitude? I doubt it.

The whole area of genocide demographics has taken on enormous political
consequences in recent years. Ward Churchill's indispensable "A Little
Matter of Genocide" examines the twin phenomena of denying the extent of
the Judeocide and the extermination of American Indians. Unfortunately,
some Jewish holocaust scholars have lent themselves to the cause of those
on the right-wing by denying that there was such a thing as genocide
against the Armenians or the American Indian.

In the course of battling a "leftist" holocaust denier on apst, I ran into
this phenomenon. Activists from Nizkor joined in the fight, and provided
excellent rebuttal against this character, but when it came to a discussion
of persecution of the Palestinians they didn't want to hear of it.

In the middle of this storm, a whole new one broke out over Rudy Rummel's
statistics. There is a troll on this newsgroup who first brought them up in
the context of a red-baiting attack. (This is something that really pisses
me off, by the way. Leftists who live in capitalist society try to find a
forum on the Internet where they won't be bombarded by propaganda, but the
red baiters won't stay away. In a perverse way, this is a testament to the
power of our ideas.)

Rummel's assault on the truth has a political function. It is related to
something that took root during the "Reagan revolution" and became
particularly pronounced during the visit to the Bitburg cemetery where the
American president paid his respect to Nazi murderers. Around this time,
certain German historians wanted to make the Nazi era more respectable. One
of the most important devices for doing this was to exaggerate Stalin's
crimes, so as to make him the great monster of 20th century history rather
than Hitler. This by necessity involves fabricating numbers, as Rummel does.

All these things are related politically. The Reagan counter-revolution,
which was actually initiated by Jimmy Carter and continued with Bush and
Clinton, involves cooperation with neo-fascists. The CIA worked with
Argentinian neo-fascists when it set up the contras in Honduras, then went
on to promote similar groups in Yugoslavia. It also views indigenous
peoples as inconvenient obstacles in the path of corporate profits. While
the press lavished attention on a tragic killing of 3 American indigenous
activists in Colombia, it does not report on the threat of the entire U'wa
people to commit mass suicide if American oil companies continue to
penetrate their homeland.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)