[PEN-L:9532] RE: Rummel et al

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>
>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....
>
>mbs

Let me disagree with Comrade Max: it is not inappropriate and not
unconstructive to call the treatment of native Americans by
English-speaking immigrants from Europe "genocide." I do think that
we need another, different word for the Middle Passage because its
point was not to destroy whole populations but to enslave them (or,
rather, to enslve the half that survived given the "economically
efficient" mode of transportation that was used). I don't know what
that word is, but we need to give it the same emotional loading that
"genocide" carries. And I don't think that anyone can understand
America today without grasping the crimes committed by followers of
the Patriarchal-Master-Race brand of democracy that was America's.
Claims of "genocide" are a useful rhetorical instrument.

And they have the additional advantage of telling the history like it
really happened...


Brad DeLolng