Sunday, April 26, 2009
This is a must-read from start to finish:
Survivors of the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur spoke in Geneva this week at the parallel conference on human rights to counter the UN Durban II event. Listening to them describe how they were systematically demonized by the killers made it clear that genocide does not happen in a vacuum. The hate condition of a population willing and anxious to commit genocide needs nurturing. Genocide must be framed positively to get the necessary broad public support.
Common to the framing of all genocide is a very specific kind of demonization. In Rwanda, the Hutus taught that the Tutsis were cockroaches and snakes. Tutsi women were portrayed as cunning seductresses who used beauty and sexual power to conquer the Hutus. In Bosnia, a fictitious news report said Muslims were feeding Serb children to animals at the Sarajevo zoo. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a warning that Hutus were about to be attacked by Tutsis, to convince the Hutus that they needed to attack first to protect themselves.
This demonization included two specific components. First, the victims had to be perceived as a clear and present threat, so that the killers were convinced they were acting in self-defense. Second, the victims were dehumanized, so that the killers convinced themselves that they were not destroying real human beings.
A decent person will not join in a murder of innocents, but a decent person might join in the killing of a subhuman who is threatening his very existence. Framing genocide as self-defense can turn decent people into killers. Protection of children and family can turn a calm neighbor into a passionate murderer, because self-defense is always justified.
In Darfur and Rwanda, all that was necessary to turn a society of ordinary people into killers was to convince them that they were in danger, and that the people endangering them were less than human...
You know where this is going:
...A poll after last year's murders of eight teenage yeshiva students found that "84 percent of Palestinians support the terror attack killing eight young students in a Jerusalem yeshiva on March 6, 2008" (Poll by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, The New York Times, March 19, 2008). How can an entire Palestinian society support the murder of children? Clearly, the framing of Jews and Israelis as mortally dangerous to Palestinians has been totally successful.
Israel now faces a society that is very possibly past the stage of genocide framing and at the point of seeing the killing of Israelis, even teens, as justified. All that would be necessary for the population to go along with the final script, detailed so many times by its leaders, would be the means.
I've been saying for years that the Arabs have been psyching themselves up to do it, while the Europeans have been psyching themselves up to accept it.
Oh amen.
The commentary on American blogs has become increasingly ugly too, and I think it's the result of an organized effort to dehumanize first Israelis, then "Zionists", the "Israel lobby" - finally - Jews per se.
I don't think there is any one source for this however - there are Arab sources but also "realists" and far right wingers - Buchanan's blog featured Holocaust deniers recently. On the Left it's clearly the proPalestinian activists who are prominent but also the 9/11 "troofers". People claiming the US is run by Israel and/or Jews are found on both Left and Right.
When I was actively posting on DU it was clear a lot of the anti-Israel/anti-Jewish posting was coming from overseas and it has become increasingly mainstream and increasingly ugly and explicit in tone.
It's hard to argue that this isn't deliberate though unfortunately not from any one source.
The British media are infested with antisemitism and that shocks and upsets me most of all because high British ideals make anti-Zionist, antisemitic remarks appear "respectable".
So, I was happy to read President Obama's eloquent speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Unfortunately just recognizing the problem won't make it go away but at least it's a start. And thankfully people didn't ignore Durban II but spoke out loud and clear.
We need to keep speaking out, not only abroad but here at home.
One thing I can't agree on is that this creeping antisemitism and anti-Zionism is happening on left and right. Yes, there are the paleo-cons like Buchanan and others on the far-right, but they've always been there.
The real shock is how much of this there is on the mainstream left sites. Look in the comment threads of ANY even remotely pro-Israel post on HuffPo or any other left site and you'll see ugliness you never see on the mainstream right of center. It's ugly, and it's shot through the things. It's the real growth industry. I was almost going to post a link to another pro-Israel article on HuffPo and tell people to go look at the comments again, but I just couldn't stomach it. It's ugly, and it's a real growth industry, and it's dangerous because it's absolutely perverting so much important language and so many standards (I won't go into this as I think you know what I'm talking about here). The right doesn't trade in this language as much, but the left tosses it around like it's going out of style, and the fact that it's all being co-opted the way it is by these vicious forces we're seeing, and that this is being consumed voraciously by the mainstream is frightening. Very frightening.
I agree that it's frightening; perhaps as you say we always knew it was there among certain factions but on the Left, which is supposedly "anti-racist" and prides itself on being idealistic, it's shocking.
To be honest I can't bear to read most of the "left wing" blogs anymore, and feel like a political orphan much of the time.
From Marx's unambiguous invocation of "racial trash" and a "revolutionary holocaust" that was similarly racially cast, at least in substantial part, and onward to the racialist cast of so much derivative, au courant leftist sentiment and praxis, when has the Left ever been anti-racist in any more probative sense?
Rhetorically intended, but when? Never. Even prior to Marx and after the French Revolution there was a prominent strain of racism and racially based presumption, e.g., in a colonial mold.
E.g., here (youTube, though other, more scholarly references are available). Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's no longer readily controlled and contained.
The New Left is especially racist and trades in group resentment.
Im not trying to undermine the clear observation that anti Semitism is rampant on the Left, these days.
But this is only an extension of their anti Western bent. The West and European Whites (also Males and Christians) have been villified in a highly organized and mainstream fashion by the Left for at least half a century and especially post New Left 60s.
This is Mainstream Leftwing politics. The New Left is the establishment....you reap what you sow. People have been trying to tell you this for decades. Hate and resentment mongering for votes to stick it to the Western Imperialist Racist Democracies....and policies to undermine them...(think immigration policy).
What a shame! Sorting this out is going to be ugly....and its clear that much of the Left is going to continue with their anti Westernism, and the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
Hopefully the Decent Left will continue trending Neo Con, but I have a feeling they dont have the stomach for the huge conflict which will require making hard choices and allying with less than perfect groups. Much like the Cold War, they will just sit this one out as well, and criticize from the sidelines.