[PEN-L:9528] RE: RE: RE: Rummel et al

[sawicky@xxxxxxxxxx (Max Sawicky)]

>> Max wrote:
I think this war over terminology --
was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse.

Max,

I'm sorry but it really hurts to see something like this. Genocide is indeed
a present not just past reality all over the world for Indigenous Peoples. I
use the term genocide on the basis of the definition of genocidal acts
contained in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide:
>>

Jim,
NOWHERE do I assert that any particular genocide anyone
cares to describe is not a reality.  (Note my phrase,
"that doesn't mean the term is inappropriate") What
is "problematic," (meaning not *necessarily* untrue)
in my words, is ascription of genocide to capitalism,
just as it would be for socialism or communism.  The
reality is one thing, and the ways it is used are
another.  I was addressing the latter, specifically
with reference to what I see as an overbroad indictment
of capitalism and bourgeois democracy in the context of
discussions of genocide.

I do not dismiss Stalin and Mao because they were
communists.  I dismiss them because they appear to have
been personally responsible for killing a lot of innocent
people.  I reject communism in its likely forms for other
reasons.

>> . . .
So as someone who lives daily in Indian Country, I can say without
equivocation or duplicity that GENOCIDE is the only appropriate term for the
past and present-day realities of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world
and it is not a rhetorical device or even rhetoric in the classical sense
(persuasion) to use that term when applied to Indigenous Peoples and
African-Americans in the US.
>>

Just as Jews have exploited the European holocaust
for the sake of advancing the interests of Israel,
with the best of intentions in many cases, I would
reiterate that the bloody shirt of genocides is
waved to debunk capitalism.  It's not that the shirt
isn't bloody or the intentions are always suspect.
It is the extrapolation that is in my view fallacious
and politically inexpedient.  Or as H. Kissinger would
say, it has the dual disadvantages of being untrue and
not useful.  That's why I stay out of the genocide
accounting debates, per Perelman's remark, aside
from the fact that I'm not a historian.

>>
Take care, Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa (We are all related)
Jim
>>

Same to you.
Max