[PEN-L:9537] RE: Rummel et al

[sawicky@xxxxxxxxxx (Max Sawicky)]

All right.  Just one more.

I said, among other things:
>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....

To which Professor Brad says:

.. . . 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." . . .
>>>

Now am I losing my mind, or does the phrase
"That doesn't mean the term is inappropriate . . . "
where the antecedent for 'the term' is 'genocide'
not mean that I am allowing, in my wishy-washy way,
that the term COULD be appropriate?

I will acknowledge saying that use of the term
tended to be unconstructive in political debates,
and I do think the rest of BDL's response has a
better view, in terms of seeking a way to talk
about what has happened and is happening that
does more to foster constructive discussion.
I am confident that hyperbolic rhetoric, nor
analytical over-reaching (i.e., capitalism =
genocide) are not solutions.

>> 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.
>>

mbs