Disjointed rambling about genocide
When the war crimes tribunal for the Khmer Rouge genocide finally got underway, there were intimations that some perpetrators would defend themselves by claiming that what happened in Cambodia wasn't really genocide under international law.
They do have a point of sorts... although I don't think there is ultimately a case to be made that genocide as it's legally defined didn't happen in Cambodia. This excellent overview of "meanings and definitions of genocide" quotes the International Criminal Court's definition of genocide:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Many of the outright murders, and the deaths by starvation and overwork that took place in the killing fields weren't directed at any particular "national, ethnical, racial or religious group" -- unless one argues that it was a case of a small group of Cambodians seeking to wipe all Cambodians off the face of the earth. Which actually, there's probably a decent argument there.
But people were murdered for belonging to groups of other kinds -- for being educated/"intellectuals," for being "middle class," for being "elite," for being insufficiently dedicated to revolutionary ideals, for breaking a rule, for complaining, etc. For varying in the tiniest way from the only group that it was acceptable to be a member of, basically.
Of course, the Khmer Rouge also murdered ethnic Cham, and ethnic Vietnamese, and Buddhist monks, and anyone who was religious in any way, so there ya go -- the legal definition of genocide. No one can say the KR wasn't thorough.
But shouldn't all the other stuff be defined as genocide too? The overview goes on to provide a "common definition" of genocide:
The intentional killing (murder) by government of people because of their group identity. Regardless of the legal definition and doubtlessly influenced by the Holocaust, ordinary usage and that by some researchers have tended to wholly equate it with the murder and only the murder by government of people due to their specified or perceived group membership, which for some researchers may include political and other groups. This way of viewing genocide has become so ingrained in the public mind that it seems utterly false to claim genocide for nonlethal mental or physical conditions imposed on a group.
Note that by this definition, the destruction of the group need not be intended. To kill Jews en masse because they are Jews, Christians because they are Christians, Chinese because they are Chinese would by this common definition be genocide. On this there is confusion, however, for while researchers may mention in their explicit definition that the destruction of the group is intended, in actual application they often include as genocide cases for which this intention is not made explicit (such as for the Stalin made Ukrainian famine and deportation of minority groups, Indonesia's mass murder in East Timor, and the killing fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia), while the murder of people by virtue of group membership is clear.
The wider definition of groups people might identify with makes more sense to me than the groups in the legal definition, although I'm not sure why the "by government" part would be necessary. One implicit distinction is that the "group" not be a military group, but rather a civilian group. In distinguishing genocide from war, Ron Rosenbaum contrasts slavery (possibly genocide) with the Civil War (not genocide):
Yes, war may have civilian casualties in great numbers. But defeating an army is not committing genocide. Deliberately destroying civilian populations is. The North didn't intend to murder all slaveholding Southern whites, only to end the secession and (belatedly) to free the slaves. Intention matters, and it's hard to have useful discussion if terms are so far apart.
The whole Slate piece is pretty good, if you haven't come across it yet. It asks a lot of questions I don't have answers for, but maybe you do? (If genocide "demands both immediate action and blame for inaction," what kinds of action are demanded? In what circumstances, and by whom?)
And it also points to something I sort of obsess about, maybe because I spend a lot of time immersed in the stories of Cambodian refugees for my job, stories that often seem to be invisible in the US. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, some leading intellectuals on the left minimalized and/or denied what was happening. Could that happen again with Iraq?
If things get worse in Iraq after the US withdraws, will liberals do the same thing that conservatives have done regarding their pet war: stick their fingers in their ears and pretend everything is better? Will liberals dismiss genocide, as long as US troops aren't present, as not really being a big deal?
Or will liberals feel that the US has a moral obligation to do anything it can that might reasonably be helpful -- if indeed there *is* anything the US can do -- perhaps not direct military intervention, but maybe financial aid, or petitioning the UN to intervene in some way, or opening up more immigration slots for people trying to leave, or...
Kind of a speculative question, I guess. Who knows, maybe things in Iraq will only get better after the US leaves -- but if the situation deteriorates, I hope we won't end up "getting comfy with genocide," as Rosenbaum puts it.
More disjointed stuff inspired by your own. :-) There's two thoughts/issues that your post raised for me that I find interesting/troubling.
The first is that I think of anti-genocide international law as happening for a very specific reason, and when people start trying to use the label for other mass murder and mayhem, it starts losing the ability for a majority of the world population to agree on it and loses support for it. It's this: that it should be limited to an attempt to expunge a certain gene pool, tribe or culture from the earth. Why is this different/worse from other kinds of war or murder? It's hard for me to describe it without sounding crass, the best I can do is say it's because it's like extinction of animal species, it an attempted robbery of humankind of gene diversity or cultural diversity, and hope readers get my drift. Perhaps someone can come up with a better way of saying it.
In this, genocide as a crime is problematic in the same way as specially designated hate crimes are problematic and arguable for some. With both, you can prosecute/punish the actual physical crimes already in other ways. You want to put a special label on them to show special disapproval of the intent involved. That's adding a political act/statement by a community (world community if genocide) that this has especially heinous intent, one that harms the community as a whole, not just the physical victims.
And indeed, as you point out, the Cambodian situation of Cambodians killing Cambodian intellectuals or educated is iffy as to fitting that definition, unless the majority all came from a certain tribe (the latter twas a little bit of the situation in Rwanda, no? There were major class issues between Hutu & Tutsi.)
Think of it this way: the idea of genocide against Americans seems like an oxymoron in many ways, even if mass murder of Americans happened, because we are so many mixed tribes.
Second, with Iraq, related but turning all the issues upside down. The class issues are complex. Leaving out the Kurds, much of the educated class, the professionals and upper class and even much of the middle class and many with the financial werewithal, many without financial werewithal but with some special wits to work around that, have gotten out is out of the country already! And a lot of what's left is fighting tribes, very tribal, with grudges and criminals and the masses of poor and uneducated left behind the innocent victimes. Some of the tribes probably have genocidial vengeance on their mind, but things seem so anarchic that genocide seems impossible, and many of the tribes have diaspora waiting to come back, actually some of the smarter members of those tribes. So the genetic definition of genocide really doesn't seem likely ever to fit? Unless you consider genocide as differently defined. That's because like the U.S., Iraq as a nation was never really one based on unified genes or even culture.
Strange (or not) that the soon-to-be-famous-and-notorious op-ed in today's New York Times by 7 American soldiers just ending their tour in Iraq addresses a few of the criminal responsibility issues by coincidence, yet specifically, quite well. They talk about the arming or empowering of all the different tribal groups, and how that has been the very source of problems for American troops. In a way, doesn't this situation preclude the possibility of "real" genocide, and instead show promise of massive murder and mayhem that stops short of genocide, until only a few of each tribe are left?
It is hard to find genocide in anarchy? It just seems to require either some central ruling power aiding it, or that one group has some kind of substantial advantage over the other? Genocide does not seem to be something the U.S. can be blamed for if we leave Iraq as it is now? Lots of other horrors, but not that? It almost cries out for a new designation of special crime-leaving behind the poor uneducated to be slaughtered or dragged further down the path of tribalism?
August 20, 2007 4:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's this: that it should be limited to an attempt to expunge a certain gene pool, tribe or culture from the earth.
I think that trying to destroy a "tribe or culture" in whole or in part is, on the one hand, the main thing genocide definitions are trying to get at, but on the other hand, the way "tribe or culture" is addressed in the legal definition of genocide (trying to destroy a "national, ethnical, racial or religious group") is kind of arbitrary. But then it's a pretty hard thing to define...
Um, yeah... I don't really know what I'm saying, but so here are a couple examples where the legal definition seems troubling to me:
You can't destroy a religious group, right, but what if someone decided to round up all the atheists and murder them? Atheism might not be an ethnicity exactly, or a religious group (maybe not being religious could count as a religious group?), but it can be an aspect of one's (tribal/cultural?) identity.
Or what if someone decided to murder everyone who's gay? Perhaps you could define being gay as an "ethnicity" or a "race"...
Or taking the example of Cambodians being murdered for being "intellectuals," their children were often murdered too, because the elitism or whatever was "in their blood," which to me to has the flavor of genocide. It's not just "We will murder you for doing this 'bad' thing" but "You, by virtue of characteristic X, have revealed that your existence is intrinsically bad, so much so that even your offspring are polluted." It's like actual genetics don't matter so much as people's tendency to attribute things to genetics or "blood."
And tribal/cultural barriers are so changeable/permeable -- "ethnicity" in the strict sense doesn't seem to really cover it. Sometimes what tribe you belong to has more to do with how people in power define you, rather than with how you define yourself. (The more that people want to murder everyone who has green eyes, the more that being green-eyed will feel like an "ethnicity," even if there's no encyclopedia entry on the green-eyed ethnicity.)
Maybe that's what my issue is? If there were a definition that was something like "If you define a group in such-and-such a way, and then try to murder the members of that group, that's genocide," perhaps it would cover more ground while also not diluting what I think of as the ethical underpinnings of genocide definitions.
August 21, 2007 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, some leading intellectuals on the left minimalized and/or denied what was happening. Could that happen again with Iraq?
Not as a challenge, but out of ignorance on my part...what or whom is this reference about?
August 20, 2007 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing wrong with challenges :)
Well, the main person I'm thinking of is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has battalions of apologists out there for this and pretty much anything he has ever said, but in my opinion, it is indisputable that he minimized and ignored the evidence of what was happening in Cambodia, long past the point where any responsible public intellectual should have been able to justify doing so.
And Chomsky's partner in crime, Edward S. Herman. And Gareth Porter, who, together with George Hildebrand, wrote a rah-rah book based pretty much entirely on what the Khmer Rouge said the Khmer Rouge was doing. He came around a couple years later, which is good, but what kind of scholar comes out with such nonsense in the first place? (Oh well... lots of 'em, I guess...)
August 21, 2007 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Should have guessed. I'm not all that familiar with Chomsky, I've read some of Manufacturing Consent, and that's it.
I don't have a lot of other context about him, though, other than he seems to be a four letter word. And maybe not all that relevant today? I don't know...
Anyway, thanks for the links. I will do some reading.
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
August 21, 2007 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't have a lot of other context about him, though, other than he seems to be a four letter word. And maybe not all that relevant today?
Well... I'm not a fan.
August 22, 2007 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is it about blogs... and e-mail... that makes me want to put ellipses *everywhere*? Somebody stop me!
August 22, 2007 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do the same thing -- though the dash is my particular weakness. I think it's that we're trying to be conversation, to put the pause or inflection in our words. Because it's less formal than a newspaper, we mimic everyday patterns of speech (rather than work for highfalutin' prose). At least, that's my theory. Generated on the spot, just for you.
August 22, 2007 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're very much correct on this. It's a conversational, social form of writing.
August 22, 2007 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I, too, am a big ellipser...
August 22, 2007 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellipsophobia, and presumably fear of its constituents, reminds me of one of my mother's tales from the Newark (NJ) School System. Apparently, an elementary school teacher had concluded that a particular student was routinely up to no good*, and her suspicions blazed when he went to the blackboard for show-and-tell.
Upon the blackboard, Billy wrote
.... ...., with a smirk evident on his face. His teacher inquired what he thought he was showing with "a few dots".
"But teacher, those aren't dots."
"Those are periods, and (gestures at the space in the sequence), when my sister missed a few, there was much yelling at my house."
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
*For the record, I was not Billy. I was expelled from kindergarten for other reasons. Later, I thought it rather unfair that I was suspended, in the third grade, for rigging a hydrogen sulfide generator in a locker with a jammed lock.
I had been careful to use a delay initiator, and establish my alibi as being in class when it went off, and caused a wing of the school to be evacuated due to the stench. While I had been careful about fingerprints, the vice principal said "I don't know quite HOW you did it, but I am morally certain you were the only kid in the school who COULD and WOULD have done it. One week suspension."
August 29, 2007 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chomsky has become a ... cliche, almost. He's a vocal commentator on foreign affairs, although he doesn't really know anything about them. His linguistic stuff is, I believe, seen as less nifty than it was. And he's been characterized, rightly or wrongly, as an America-hater.
I still quite like his 1967 essay, The Responsibility of Intellectuals. But Dwight Macdonald's essay of the same title (written in the 1940s, from which Chomsky homaged the title) is much, much better. It successfully combines incisive criticism with a plea for change, because Macdonald sees the potential of what might be. Chomsky just seems angry.
August 22, 2007 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chomsky is the kind of guy who just sucks the air out of the room. It's alright to criticise everything the US government has ever done anywhere, but where are the solutions? Don't look to Chomsky for those. The man has no answers.
On the "academic" side, my Linguistic Psychology prof way too many years ago called him "Chimpsky" and although I can't remember exactly why, (something to do with Harvard v. MIT) it made sense at the time.
August 22, 2007 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The man has no answers.
But Chimpsky does!
But then again, perhaps chimps can learn human grammar through token systems.
August 23, 2007 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apropos MIT and Harvard, an obvious student-type rolled a piled-to-the-brim shopping cart to the express checkout in a Cambridge supermarket. The cashier said not a word during the checkout process, but, after being paid, inquired "Is it that you are from Harvard and can't count, or MIT and can't read?"
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
For the record, my advisor, for one of my books, is a researcher at Harvard. He can both read and count.
August 29, 2007 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I was vaguely affiliated with the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers, a long time ago, Chomsky came to give a talk on the linguistic work for which he is rightly feted (even if the bloom is falling off it). He agreed to come, but only if he could give a political speech as well.
It's easy to become a political commentator when you have things to say that people really want to hear, and you won't say them if you don't also get to play at pundit.
August 24, 2007 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't say this out too loud often, 'cause I figure I probably shouldn't presume to question the Great Chomsky... What do I know, after all? I can barely put together two sentences without using an ellipse! But I actually think that a good 70% of Chomsky's linguistic writing, much like his political writing, is utter bullshit.
But the 30%, it seems to me, is very good. I tend to think of him as an Emperor With No Clothes... but maybe he has, like, a nice hat :-)
August 26, 2007 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm, perhaps you have been avoiding the lefty universe the last few years? For example,
6,650 google hits from www.counterpunch.org for Chomsky
or
4,510 hits from www.democraticunderground.com for Chomsky
TPMCafe has not been totally immune:
294 hits.
August 22, 2007 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's just the thing -- I think I'm a lefty, but I can't be all that much of a lefty if I'm not reading Chomsky, can I? What's "lefty" these days? Does it require Chomsky on the reading list?
In terms of political movements and political influence, though, is he relevant?
I don't find much Chomsky-ism within the netroots, for example. I'd imagine there's a whole generation of political people today that has no idea who he is.
That said, his propaganda model and his work on political economy and the media does seem at least somewhat relevant. But I'm not sure that's what people think of when they think of him.
August 22, 2007 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I don't like to label individuals I only know from just a slice of their persona from something like their postings on a website. But if I were forced to label you from your postings on this site that I have read over the last few years, the label that shouts out clear to me is "bleeding heart liberal." :-) You are in no way a "leftist."
You seem to have very amorphous vague definitions of lefty, leftist, liberal and Democrat, as if they are all one big happy family that doesn't disagree much at all, that they mean the same thing. To me, that is actually part and parcel of why I see the "bleeding heart" label, you assign goodness and well-meaning to all of them and think they will agree with you on nearly everything important.
Perhaps it is a generational thing as to semantics, but I think of a leftist as something very very different than a liberal. Leftists are radicals! Leftists are rigid ideologues. Liberals are not ideologues, often just the opposite, liberals are very liberal about interpreting things. And all Democrats are not liberals and it never was the case that they were. (Liberals used to be a minority in the party until they lost a lot of Dems Vietnam through Reagan, then by default the liberal portion grew.)
As for "progressive." well I think that is a useless term right now in its current incarnation, as everyone using it knows that the meaning is in the process of being defined. Lots of people using it to define themselves aren't actually very alike in opinion at all.
As to "netroots," I think that has become increasingly defined only over the last year or so. It seems that is rapidly acquiring the meaning of editorial intent and direction of a circle of just a few large blogs.
I disagree on Chomsky not being revived over say, the last like 5 years. In my experience, I have seen a lot of new people get introduced to him and enthralled by his ideas, and many seem to be young. They usually also become fans of people like Robert Fisk, Howard Zinn, Pilsky, Al Jazeera, the whole circle counterpunch.org writers, and get their "news" from places like informationclearinghouse.info. You don't see a lot of it here because this place was really founded with a DLC slant. And you don't see much of it at DKos because that site is clearly for anyone looking at it, for U.S. Democratic political issues with a pronounced mainstream-oriented liberal clubbiness. A "leftist" would look at Dkos and shake their head at all the clueless people that don't get that the Dem party is part of the whole evil system.
August 23, 2007 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
My impression is that Chomsky has indeed been revived recently and the awareness of his writing has risen to the upper ranks of US-haters worldwide. The most notorious incident is Hugo Chavez waving a Chomsky book at the UN.
August 23, 2007 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
ooh, thanks for bringing that up! I forgot all about Latin America, which does in fact to my shame put me in the ugly arrogant American group. :-)
August 23, 2007 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, art. Indeed, I'm no leftist.
While "radical" has a clear meaning, I don't think I'm the only one blurring the lines between the various left of center labels. They all seem to be used interchangeably.
I think it's a 60s thing, when we actually had leftists and radicals. Maybe they're still around, but I question what impact they at all have on the political process. Again, I think in the 60s it was a lot more, and that's where I think those terms have more meaning to some than others.
"Lefty" doesn't mean all that much to me, but, then again, I wouldn't know a Weatherman from Sam Champion. :-)
August 23, 2007 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was just thinking this morning about "leftists" and "liberals" and "progressives," and then found that you and artappraiser were discussing a similar subject.
And yeah, I was thinking that once upon a time, if I understand correctly, a "liberal" was a very different creature from a "leftist," who might be derided by a "leftists" for being insufficiently revolutionary or some such, and how distant that distinction seems from how many people seem to use those terms now.
Nowadays, the meanings of lots of descriptors on the left side of the spectrum, "leftist," "liberal," "progressive," seem to be in a state of flux. For a while it looked like "progressive" was the new "liberal," but now people seem to be reclaiming "liberal" (and returning to older understandings of "progressive").
I know I've definitely used some of those terms interchangeably, and thought of 'em that way, and I'm wondering if maybe it's an 80s/90s thing (which is mebbe just looking at it as a '60s thing from a different angle). Like we were raised on people like Limbaugh collapsing all those categories together into the much despised "liberal," with the occasional use of the word "leftist" thrown in there indiscriminately.
The resulting caricature of "liberals" seems to conflate all the "bourgeois" stereotypes that (I think?) were once considered the provenance of those "timid liberals," with all the "reflexive America bashing" stereotypes that once applied to "shrieking leftists" (?)
Want to preserve the estate tax? You're a despicable liberal! Want to overthrow the state by force in order to usher in the glorious socialist revolution? You too, are a despicable liberal!
August 24, 2007 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
and then found that you and artappraiser were discussing a similar subject.
Which has nothing to do with your post. Sorry about that...my fault.
maybe it's an 80s/90s thing
I think you're saying what I was, but more precisely. Today we're a few generations removed from what the "real" meaning of all these words are.
One reason I think it gets confusing is the medium we're using -- we only have our words here to represent our selves. If this was a town hall, I could see that someone is older, maybe an ex-hippie, etc, etc, (assuming we can make these judgments on appearance...obviously that's a problem, but just using it to make a point...) and would have more context around their use of words like "left wing."
August 24, 2007 7:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Which has nothing to do with your post. Sorry about that...my fault.
Oh, I'm glad you were discussing it. Just thought it was a funny little bit of synchronicity.
August 24, 2007 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt Yglesias, a twenty-something, objects to being called a leftist, he says he's a "pretty banal liberal." Also see here.
Sounds to me like the old definitions are still operational with him.
October 8, 2007 7:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your suggestion of some relationship between the whole bourgeois thing and the changing definition(s) of liberal is really interesting.
I was a bit young to really get the whole zeitgeist directly, but the with the whole 1968 Democratic convention thing, it was certainly there in some form (just thinking--Todd Gitlin, on the other hand would have a good handle on that!) The Chicago 7 and other yippies/radicals did indeed choose to protest at the convention that included a tribute to recently assasinated wealthy liberal Bobby Kennedy and not at the GOP convention.
I do strongly remember "they are all just part of the capitalist establishment" sentiments. "Bourgeois pigs" was a term we all knew even in high school, and us hip kids used it, also it was something most people would have heard, I think, not just hip kids. The problem was that the Marxist talk of leftist students of solidarity with the poor and the working class was mostly just that, talk. A large number of the white working class were the ones that hated what the hippies were doing to their culture, after all. That was my reality in the Midwest, too real and dominant for me to have gotten it wrong.
However, only two years later, you have Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers," making hay of Leonard Bernstein holding soirees for Black Panthers in his fancy Manhattan apartment.
Somehow in the 80's this finally started getting picked up by the Limbaugh types and quickly evolved into the Volvo/latte liberal image we all know today. But why did it take that long for them to make use of it? Maybe they did, I need to think on it more, but it's an interesting point. (This seems to be the "rambling" thread, eh? I appreciate that sometimes.)
August 24, 2007 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I may pick up on this thread, many of the middle class lefty boomers matured into still liberal but well healed liberal middle agers. Talented, focused "radicals" became thriving professionals with all of the baggage of success in a capitalist society can bring. It was an evolutionary process so the Latte Liberal (maybe Limbaugh was hampered by the non-existence of latte's then) probably didn't exist in a recognizable form until the 80's when the term yuppies was coined.
You mention the Chicago 7. In the 80's I had the late Jerry Rubin as a law client. I was trying to help him sort out his legal woes in the aftermath of the failed IPO of his social networking firm. The launch was supposed to be in the late fall of 1987. Poor guy! It kinda made me think that the Marxism of his earlier days may have run wide but not terribly deep.
As for the protest in 1968 being at the Democratic convention, I think nobody on the left ever expected a thing from the Republicans and thus felt angered and betrayed by the party of FDR and JFK being poised to deliver Hubert Humphey. However, my recollection of Humphrey has been indelibly skewed by Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." Maybe this ramble thing is contagious.
September 19, 2007 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like we were raised on people like Limbaugh collapsing all those categories together into the much despised "liberal," with the occasional use of the word "leftist" thrown in there indiscriminately.
I recall one of the right-wing yellmentators a few years back calling someone (maybe someone I worked for) a "really, really liberal leftist." And I thought: well, golly.
On a related note, to continue this thread that pulls away from your original post, it seems to me that in modern usage, 'lefty' should be distinguished from 'leftist.' The latter does, as I see it, mean just about exactly what Art suggests it means, and I think that the former arose in part to describe a softer, happier version of the far end of the spectrum to which more people felt an affinity. None of that is to disagree with the idea that the terminology is all in flux - just to say that 'lefty' is the fluffy center of all that gooiness.
August 24, 2007 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Yellmentator," hee hee.
'lefty' is the fluffy center of all that gooiness
Yeah, lefty does sound softer... and now that you mention it, strangely delicious...
August 26, 2007 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Samantha Power, Clueless Amerikan Terrorism Enabler. Heh.
August 22, 2007 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know enough about Power to say whether or not he's misrepresenting her views, but, I guess aside from calling Negroponte a "terrorist," (not sure what the proper term for what Negroponte is...), I don't think Chomsky's saying anything there so outlandish or America-hating. He's basically talking about blowback, and being honest about things we don't do all that well in the world.
People don't want to hear that America does bad things. Maybe Chomsky's just not the right messenger for that message.
Not sure who is, or if anyone could be.
August 22, 2007 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Power has advised Obama on foreign policy. Her "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide," won the Pulitzer in 2003. Power is one of the people at the center of the all the todo about the foreign policy elite circle being clueless and hopeless about fighting all Bush did (example: the big todo here on TPMCafe on the "concert of democracies" contributors.) She is not like those who did not speak up about the faults of the international relations people giving Bush policies a pass. But she disagreed in an academic way (within the system, so to speak) and is not a leftist radical or isolationist or pacifist and did not produce shrill protest. Chomsky is basically saying that, while she might be a nice person, she's still part of the evil American machine.
P.S. I have nothing against Chomsky's work in linguistics. Actually, I think he uses his theories in that quite well to manipulate and propagandize leftist anti-American political views.
August 23, 2007 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Samantha Power, Clueless Amerikan Terrorism Enabler.
And here is Samantha Power's oh so clueless American terrorism-enabling review.
August 26, 2007 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Classic Chomsky:
Isn't that high-minded of him? He just doesn't think it would be fair to criticize her... for her extraordinary services to state violence and terror.
Of course he's just spent several paragraphs criticizing her. The only reason for that sentence is to assert that Power has rendered "extraordinary services to state violence and terror," while simultaneously maintaining a kind of deniability for a nasty claim that is way out of proportion with Power's actual record. (He wasn't really saying that. He was saying that it wasn't fair to say that!) The man is the intellectual equivalent of an extremely clever troll.
And I gotta say, the notion that Noam Chomsky is gonna lecture Samantha Power (who is very critical of US policies in her book, but nothing short of utter self-absorption in the sins of the US ever satisfies Chomsky) about "extraordinary services to state violence and terror"... ugh.
This is a guy who, in considering Cambodian refugee accounts of what was happening under the Khmer Rouge, cautioned against "the extreme unreliability of refugee reports," and added:
See, he's not saying to ignore them, exactly. Just wants to make sure we "take it into account" that refugees have a "vested interest" in making up atrocities. He's so very reasonable and above the fray and intellectual, isn't he?
Chomsky wrote that article in 1977. At that point Cambodian refugees had been tricking into Thailand and telling variations on the exact same story for years, and there was absolutely zero evidence contradicting the substance of their stories, because, well, they were telling the truth. (Why were people turning up on the border on the brink of death desperately seeking out refugee camps in the first place? The revolution was just too glorious for them? And how were they all managing to tell the same story, with nary a naysayer among them?)
For an ordinary not-so-interested in world politics person to have been unsure at that point in time about what was going on would have been reasonable. For a scholar writing columns in The Nation on the subject, it is inexcusable. At the very least, the refugees deserved the overwhelming benefit of the doubt. (Let's see... we've got the consistent accounts of Cambodian refugees risking their lives for the comfort and privilege of living in a Thai refugee camp on one hand, and the contradictory accounts of the KR regime on the other hand. And no one can get into or out of the country without risking their lives. Hmm... who to believe? It's a dilemma all right.)
Yes, there was the occasional inconsistency between this individual's story and that individual's story, as always happens when people tell their stories, and in the reporting on Cambodia (the vast majority of it, I would argue, downplaying what was happening, but that didn't suit Chomsky's world view of the moment). Focusing on those inconsistencies to the exclusion of the larger picture -- thousands of human beings telling you with their own mouths that they are the only members of their families to have escaped alive -- is very much like Holocaust deniers focusing on this or that minor inconsistency while ignoring the obvious. It's the same "Oh, but I'm not denying it, I'm just questioning received wisdom" bullshit.
Except there's an extra level of bullshit in Mr. Anti-Imperialism himself cautioning us to take what pretty much all of those oppressed, formerly colonized, disenfranchised refugees were actually saying with a grain of salt. It's not that we shouldn't believe them necessarily... it's just that he thinks a book written by two Westerners with an obvious ideological interest in the matter, who didn't take any refugee accounts into consideration at all, together with Chomsky's selective marshalling of shreds of info mostly based on the KR's own propaganda, should be considered at least equally valid counterweights to the flood of testimony from actual Cambodians. Oh, Prof. Chomsky, you're so anti-authoritarian, such an advocate for the little people!
I'd like to see Chomsky look one of those refugees in the eye and tell them how very important it was to cast doubt on their stories.
He could have used his position to draw attention to what was going on. Instead, he chose to equivocate about mass murder. And he's gonna call Samantha Power, of all people, on "extraordinary services to state violence and terror"? Please.
August 26, 2007 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your first paragraph had me really truly LOL. (Excellent delivery! There should be a blog version of stand-up comedy somewhere & I think you should try it. Quit apologizing for your ellipses, they work!) Thanks, I needed it.
The whole comment, it's a 10.
This is spot on:
He's the kind that's so tricky it's impossible to downrate them. And not feeding him doesn't work either, he'll just keep yammering....You're stuff on his Cambodia stuff is great, I'd actually love to see you debate him, he'd be totally thrown by your common sense (the latter still being a great mystery to linguists in general.)
August 26, 2007 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Compliments!
You made my day. Thank you.
August 27, 2007 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
August 29, 2007 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh my goodness, he has gained yet another fan.
From Osama's speech to the American people, (page 4 of that PDF I link to there)
September 8, 2007 3:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your comment reminds me that somewhere hereabouts there was a comment along the lines of "Osama's argument could have come out of the mouth of Al Franken or Keith Olbermann."
There's just something funny to me about that, although I'm not sure what. Al Franken seems to me to be the anti-Chomsky in a lot of ways... (Although what do I know, maybe Al Franken is a big fan of Chomsky's. In practical terms though, I would bet that if Franken wrote a book that was making the rounds in academic circles on his policy ideas, Chomsky would label him much as he labeled Power.) I find it weird that an essay citing Chomsky would bring Franken to mind as a fellow traveler, I guess.
Not sure what that has to do with anything... Oh well, it's the "disjointed rambling" thread, right?
September 9, 2007 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree, it's all Al Frankenish. And the more I think on it, the more I am thinking that Osama may have been studying old Saturday Night Live tapes.
I must admit I keep feeling guilty about that because of the title of the thread. Some genocide survivor finds it via google and finds us very disrespectful of the topic. On the other hand, isn't that very Al Frankenish, or perhaps Mel Brooks Springtime-for-Hitler-ish?
September 9, 2007 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some genocide survivor finds it via google and finds us very disrespectful of the topic.
Oh wow, I really, really wouldn't want anyone reading to come away with that impression.September 10, 2007 1:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Presumably all good things, but not guaranteed, as they appeared in a preamble.
Nowhere in the fundamental documents of the United States, however, do I find a requirement not to be respectful, or a prohibition against being offended.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
September 10, 2007 2:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nowhere in the fundamental documents of the United States, however, do I find a requirement not to be respectful, or a prohibition against being offended.
Definitely.
But I still wouldn't want people reading to get the impression that we were disrespectful of the topic... or actually more importantly, that we were disrespectful of genocide survivors.... since it's not what I'm trying to communicate (or anyone else here, I think it's safe to say)...
But I suppose it's not the most sober/single-minded of threads, like say, this one was. Which seems okay to me.
September 10, 2007 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
nascardaughter:
there is an excellent conversation on genocide issues on Matthew Yglesias' post yesterday on the Armenian thing.
Some of the people on it are less disjointed and rambling than us :-), and bring up some very interesting points, historical examples, and legal and semantic issues.
August 23, 2007 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
This recent article by Chomsky is correct and important to consider.
We discuss this and complain about actions in piece meal fashion whereas
Chomsky puts the separate pieces into a whole and puts concept to it.
It also explains by implication why the media does not cover worldviews & news.
The Berlin Wall came down, Communism fell, but our media wall still stands
keeping us contained and controlled.
Noam Chomsky: How Propaganda Works in the West
http://edstrong.blog-city.com/noam_chomsky_how_propaganda_works_in_the_west.htm
*When you paste this in browser you need to take space out
at blog-city.com/*noam_ (before "noam_")
The American approach to social control
is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it deserves a new name
It not propaganda any more, it's “prop-agenda”
It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about
Remember, children. Propaganda works because
we don't know we're being propagandized
How could anyone suggest that in this
beacon of 'freedom and democracy',
the magnificent United States of Amnesia,
that we are programmed to follow an ideology?
....the article continues...
-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking
August 25, 2007 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I see. All of us, except the Enlightened Noam, are all brainwashed, unable to obtain information except from the MSM. How is it, then, that the Enlightened Noam, presumably living here, is uniquely able to withstand being programmed?
Other than to get the local weather, or for the initial alert to a breaking situation, I avoid television "news". On any given topic of interest to me, I will, perhaps, read (a skill apparently lost by most except the Enlightened Noam) a sampling of media that use more words than a talking head could possibly fit between commercials. More often than not, I'll investigate domestic and foreign analysts, including think tank and academic.
In matters concerning public health, warfare, and other subjects that are at least somewhat governed by scientific principles, I'll apply reasonability tests. When I hear someone going on about the eeeevil American conspiracy to pollute precious bodily fluids and spread mysterious diseases, I am desolated that I fall back on laboratory and formal theoretical knowledge of the issue. If the issue contradicts generally accepted scientific principles, it is the issue, alas, that may suffer in my mind.
But, I suppose, I am damned and doomed, for I am not the Enlightened Noam, or one of his True Believers.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
September 10, 2007 2:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Today, Matt Y has another post on genocide, and has a completely different take on Powers than Chomsky:
Not surprising, as nascar d.'s done a good job of convincing me Chomsky's a hack.
August 27, 2007 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
thanks for the link as there are sure to be some interesting comments there and his stuff scrolls off quickly.
Your hack comment inspires me to firm up what bothers me most about Chomsky. To my mind the hackery comes in hewing to an ideology and twisting stories so you can always fit them into it when one is a accomplished student of linguistics. This is much more egregious for a linguist than for your usual pundit, no? He knows he's demagoguing!(His frame: just like some argue that the existence of Israel is the source of Mideast problems, he always brings it to the U.S.A. in its current form and even founding form as being the source of all trouble in the world. News that ruins the "frame" is conveniently changed, such as nascar points out with the Cambodian refugees.) What's even odder is that I don't get the sense it is largely ego-driven, rather it's like his religion, he really believes it. Again, very odd for someone who has studied what he has to be so devotely "religious," so certain that pushing that frame will end up with good results.
August 27, 2007 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
At various times, I've posted about the logistical realities of unilateral military action in Darfur, and dared to ask what the mission definition and rules of engagement might be. Sadly, I'm afraid even people such as Wesley Clark fail to examine a transportation map before making pronouncements about how the US needs to play world policeman. The posts have rarely gained any traction as far as discussion, certainly never approaching the back-and-forth (with varying degrees of coherence) of the I-P exchanges.
Using other than military means to pressure some of the less than lovely people in Khartoum, people who are not overly impressed by sanctions, seem to be lost when a simplistic "send in the troops" is so much easier. From where these prepared and rested legions will come, further deponent sayeth not.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
September 10, 2007 3:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorta kinda by way of cscs' post, an essay by Youkk Chang: Why the Khmer Rouge Tribunal Matters to the Cambodian Community: Justice for the Future, Not the Victims (PDF)
September 19, 2007 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cambodian genocide court reaches out
January 17, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink