[Peace-discuss] The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency

[Robert Naiman]

Somehow I figured we were talking about the Holocaust. Perhaps we should
leave the poor Armenians out of our tribal disputes. :)

Like you, I am 100% against people prostituting the Holocaust to justify, or
perhaps one should say rationalize, Israeli policies. I am also against
people exploiting the Holocaust for personal gain, although on the scale of
things to worry about, anything that doesn't involve killing or maiming
people or putting them in prison has got some rough competition.

It does seem apparent to me, though - and one shouldn't have to say this,
but one has to say a lot of things that one shouldn't have to say - that a
lot of American Jews memorialize the Holocaust out of the purest of motives,
and as a number of these folks are at least potential allies on other
fronts, I see no need to piss on them unnecessarily. I would vote for
keeping a narrower focus on the Israeli policies, which as you know are not
supported by a majority of American Jews.

On 3/7/07, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I have no problem, of course, with those Armenians who have for decades
> been trying to bring recognition to the plight of their ancestors. But I
> think the motives of those who come belatedly on board do matter. Are they
> proposing anything that would actually benefit Armenians? Are they serious
> about the Kurds? Similarly, I think it matters whether recognition of the
> Holocaust has been related to alleviating the suffering of the remaining
> victims, or supporting Israeli policies and American policies while
> aggrandizing those who are in the reparations business.
>
> DG
>
> *Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> I find this discussion a bit disturbingly glib.
>
> There is some contradiction, I think, between being outraged by the
> slowness of the University in getting rid of the Chief mascot and
> dismissing the campaign of Armenians for recognition of the Armenian
> genocide as "driven by cynical motives." The adversary plays the game
> of worthy and unworthy victims. We should not.
>
> I think that one can take the point to be wary of thought-stopping
> uses of the term "genocide" to soften up people for illegal and
> destructive military interventions without being dismissive of
> attempts of victimized groups to establish recognition for their
> victimization.
>
> If French politicians, say, raise concerns about human rights abuses
> in Turkey, and if part of their motivation for doing so is that they
> don't want Turkey to join the EU for other reasons, that is no
> evidence for the claim that concerns about human rights in Turkey are
> illegitimate. On the contrary: if I'm sitting in a Turkish prison, I'm
> delighted that French politicians are talking about me, regardless of
> their motivations for doing so.
>
> On 3/7/07, David Green wrote:
> > Regarding the Armenian Genocide, it's important to note that it has not
> been
> > officially recognized as such due to the alliance between Turkey, the
> U.S.,
> > and Israel, at least at the federal level--many states have passed
> > resolution. Israel has specifically lobbied against recognition, perhaps
> > also because it would place the Armenian genocide in "competition" with
> the
> > Holocaust, but mostly for immediate political reasons. It sounds like
> now
> > there's more pressure to recognize it, but apparently for the wrong
> > reasons--political ones. So both the denial of the Armenian genocide and
> its
> > recognition are apparently driven by cynical motives.
> >
> > DG
> >
> > "C. G. Estabrook" wrote:
> >
> > David Green wrote
> >
> > >
> > > Mahmood Mamdani, author of the excellent Good
> > > Muslim, Bad Muslim
> > > http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mamd01_.html
> > > [...]
> > > It seems that genocide has become a label to be
> > > stuck on your worst enemy, a perverse version of the
> > > Nobel Prize, part of a rhetorical arsenal that helps
> > > you vilify your adversaries while ensuring impunity
> > > for your allies ... Darfur can be neatly
> > > integrated into the War on Terror, for Darfur gives
> > > the Warriors on Terror a valuable asset with which
> > > to demonise an enemy: a genocide perpetrated by
> > > Arabs. This was the ... most valuable
> > > advantage that Save Darfur gained from
> > > depoliticising the conflict. The more thoroughly
> > > Darfur was integrated into the War on Terror, the
> > > more the depoliticised violence in Darfur acquired a
> > > racial description, as a genocide of 'Arabs'
> > > killing 'Africans'. Racial difference
> > > purportedly constituted the motive force behind the
> > > mass killings...
> >
> > [From the British blog "Spiked," a discussion of the uses of genocide:
> > "...the French decision at the end of last year to make it a crime in
> France
> > to deny the Armenian genocide [is followed by a proposal to *make it a
> > crime* in the EU] to question whether Rwanda, Srebrenica and Darfur are
> > genocides, too." --CGE]
> >
> > Thursday 1 March 2007
> > Pimp My Genocide
> > The prostitution of the G-word for cynical political ends
> > has given rise to a grisly new international gameshow.
> > Brendan O'Neill
> >
> > Genocide, it seems, is everywhere. You cannot open a newspaper or switch
> on
> > the box these days without coming across the G-word.
> >
> > Accusations of genocide fly back and forth in international relations.
> This
> > week the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague cleared
> Serbia of
> > direct responsibility for genocide in the Bosnian civil war in the
> > mid-Nineties, though it chastised Belgrade for failing to prevent the
> > massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. The International
> > Criminal Court, also in The Hague, indicted two Sudanese officials for
> > 'crimes against humanity' in relation to the conflict in Darfur.
> >
> > Last week, a United Nations official said the spread of the Darfurian
> > conflict into eastern Chad means that 'Chad faces genocide', too. 'We
> are
> > seeing elements that closely resemble what we saw in Rwanda in the
> genocide
> > in 1994', said the head of the UN refugee agency (1). Meanwhile, to the
> > concern and fury of Turkish officials, the US Congress is set to debate
> a
> > resolution that will recognise Turkey's killings of a million Armenians
> from
> > 1915 to 1918 as an 'organised genocide' (2). This follows the French
> > decision at the end of last year to make it a crime in France to deny
> the
> > Armenian genocide.
> >
> > On the domestic front, too, genocide-talk is widespread. Germany,
> current
> > holder of the European Union's rotating presidency, is proposing a
> > Europe-wide ban on Holocaust denial and all other forms of genocide
> denial.
> > This would make a crime of 'publicly condoning, denying or grossly
> > trivialising…crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes
> [as
> > defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court].' (3) In
> some
> > European countries it is already against the law to deny that the Nazis
> > sought to exterminate the Jews. Under the proposed new legislation it
> would
> > also be against the law to question whether Rwanda, Srebrenica and
> Darfur
> > are genocides, too.
> >
> > Why is genocide all the rage, whether it's uncovering new ones in Africa
> and
> > Eastern Europe, or rapping the knuckles of those who would dare to deny
> such
> > genocides here at home?
> >
> > Contrary to the shrill proclamations of international courts and Western
> > officials and journalists, new genocides are not occurring across the
> world.
> > Rather, today's genocide-mongering in international affairs – and its
> > flipside: the hunt for genocide-deniers at home – shows that accusations
> of
> > genocide have become a cynical political tool. Genocide-mongering is a
> new
> > mode of politics, and it's being used by some to draw a dividing line
> > between the West and the Third World and to enforce a new and censorious
> > moral consensus on the homefront. Anyone who cares about democracy and
> free
> > speech should deny the claims of the genocide-mongers.
> >
> > In international relations genocide has become a political weapon, an
> > all-purpose rallying cry used by various actors to gain moral authority
> and
> > boost their own standing. Anyone with a cursory understanding of history
> > should know that the bloody wars of the past 10 to 15 years – in Bosnia,
> > Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur – are not unprecedented or exceptional. Certainly
> > none of them can be compared to the Nazi genocide against the Jews,
> which
> > involved the industrialised slaughter, often in factories built for the
> > purpose, of six million men, women and children. Rather, the labelling
> of
> > today's brutal civil wars as 'genocides' by Western observers, courts
> and
> > commentators is a desperate search for a new moral crusade, and it has
> given
> > rise to a new moral divide between the West and the rest, between the
> > civilised and enlightened governments of America and Europe and those
> dark
> > parts of the world where genocides occur.
> >
> > In some circles, 'genocide' has become code for Third World savagery.
> What
> > do the headline genocides (or 'celebrity genocides', perhaps) of the
> past
> > two weeks have in common? All of them – the Serbs' genocide in Bosnia,
> the
> > Sudanese genocide in Darfur, the Turks' genocide of Armenians – were
> > committed by apparently strange and exotic nations 'over there'. Strip
> away
> > the legal-speak about which conflicts can be defined as genocides and
> which
> > cannot, and it seems clear that genocide has become a PC codeword for
> wog
> > violence – whether the genocidal wogs are the blacks of Sudan, the
> > brown-skinned, not-quite-European people of Turkey, or the Serbs, white
> > niggers of the post-Cold War world.
> >
> > Consider how easily the genocide tag is attached to conflicts in Africa.
> > Virtually every recent major African war has been labelled a genocide by
> > outside observers. The Rwandan war of 1994 is now widely recognised as a
> > genocide; many refer to the ongoing violence in Uganda as a genocide. In
> > 2004 then US secretary of state Colin Powell declared, on the basis of a
> > report by an American/British fact-finding expedition to Darfur: 'We
> > conclude that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the
> government
> > of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility.' (4) (The UN, however,
> has
> > not described Darfur as genocide.) Even smaller-scale African wars are
> > discussed as potential genocides. So the spread of instability from
> Darfur
> > into eastern Chad has led to UN handwringing about 'genocide in Chad'.
> > During the conflict in Liberia in 2003, commentators warned that
> 'Liberia
> > could be plunged into a Rwanda-style genocide' (5).
> >
> > The discussion of every war in Africa as a genocide or potential
> genocide
> > shows that today's genocide-mongering bears little relation to what is
> > happening in conflict zones on the ground. There are great differences,
> not
> > least in scale, between the wars in Rwanda, Darfur and Liberia; each of
> > these conflicts has been driven by complex local grievances, very often
> > exacerbated by Western intervention. That Western declarations of
> > 'genocide!' are most often made in relation to Africa suggests that
> behind
> > today's genocide-mongering there lurks some nasty chauvinistic
> sentiments.
> > At a time when it is unfashionable to talk about 'the dark continent' or
> > 'savage Africans', the more acceptable 'genocide' tag gives the
> impression
> > that Africa is peculiarly and sickly violent, and that it needs to be
> saved
> > from itself by more enlightened forces from elsewhere. Importantly, if
> the
> > UN judges that a genocide is occurring, then that can be used to justify
> > military intervention into said genocide zone.
> >
> > Hardly anyone talks openly about a global divide between the savage
> Third
> > World and the enlightened West anymore. Yet today's genocide-mongering
> has
> > nurtured a new, apparently acceptable divide between the
> genocide-executers
> > over there, and the genocide-saviours at home. This new global faultline
> > over genocide is formalised in the international court system. In the
> > Nineties, setting up tribunals to try war criminals or genocidaires
> became
> > an important part of the West's attempts to rehabilitate its moral
> authority
> > around the globe. In 1993, the UN Security Council set up an
> international
> > tribunal to try those accused of war crimes in the Former Yugoslavia. In
> > 1997 the international war crimes tribunal for Rwanda got under way;
> there
> > is also one for Sierra Leone. As Kirsten Sellars argues in The Rise and
> Rise
> > of Human Rights, for all the claims of 'international justice', these
> > tribunals are in reality 'political weapons' wielded by the West –
> attempts
> > to imbue the post-Cold War West with a sense of moral purpose by
> contrasting
> > it favourably with the barbarians in Eastern Europe and Africa (6).
> >
> > The opportunistic transformation of 'genocide' into a weapon on the
> > international stage can be seen most clearly in recent debates about
> Turkey.
> > The Turkish state's genocide against the Armenians in the First World
> War is
> > surely debated more today than at any other time in history. That is
> because
> > the Armenian genocide has been latched on to by certain governments that
> > want to lecture and harangue the current Turkish regime.
> >
> > Last year France passed its bizarre law outlawing denial of the Armenian
> > genocide. This was a deeply cynical move motivated by EU protectionism
> on
> > the part of the French. France is keen to keep Turkey at arm's length
> from
> > joining the EU, viewing the American ally in the East as a threat to its
> > authoritative position within Europe. And what better way to cast doubts
> on
> > Turkey's fitness to join the apparently modern EU than to turn its
> refusal
> > to accept that the massacre of Armenians 90 years ago was a genocide
> into a
> > big political issue? At the same time, Democrat members of US Congress
> are
> > attempting to dent the Bush administration's prestige and standing in
> the
> > Middle East by lending their support to a resolution that will label the
> > Turkish killings of Armenians a genocide. This has forced Bush to defend
> the
> > 'deniers' of Turkey, and given rise to the bizarre spectacle of a
> six-person
> > Turkish parliamentary delegation arriving in Washington to try to
> convince
> > members of Congress that the Armenian massacres were not a genocide (7).
> > Again, movers and shakers play politics with genocide, using the G-word
> to
> > try to hit their opponents where it hurts.
> >
> > At a time when the West making claims to global moral authority on the
> basis
> > of enlightenment or democracy has become distinctly unfashionable, the
> new
> > fashion for genocide-mongering seems to have turned 'genocide' into the
> one
> > remaining moral absolute, which has allowed today's pretty visionless
> West
> > to assert at least some authority over the Third World.
> >
> > This reorientation of global affairs around the G-word has had a real
> and
> > disastrous impact on peace and politics. When 'genocide' becomes the
> > language of international relations, effectively a bargaining chip
> between
> > states, then it can lead to a grisly competition over who is the biggest
> > victim of genocide and who thus most deserves the pity and patronage of
> the
> > international community. The state of Bosnia brought the charges of
> genocide
> > against the state of Serbia at the ICJ, and is bitterly disappointed
> that
> > Serbia was cleared. Here it appears that Bosnia, every Western liberals'
> > favourite victim state, feels the need to continue playing the genocide
> > card, to prostrate itself before international courts, in order to store
> up
> > its legitimacy and win the continued backing of America and the EU. One
> > American commentator has written about 'strategic victimhood in Sudan',
> > where Darfurian rebel groups exploit the 'victims of genocide' status
> > awarded to them by Western observers in order to get a better deal: 'The
> > rebels, much weaker than the government, would logically have sued for
> peace
> > long ago. Because of the [Western] Save Darfur movement, however, the
> rebels
> > believe that the longer they provoke genocidal reaction, the more the
> West
> > will pressure Sudan to hand them control of the region.' (8)
> >
> > The logic of today's politics of genocide is that it suits certain
> states
> > and groups to play up to being victims of genocide. That is one sure way
> to
> > guarantee the sympathy and possibly even the backing of the West. This
> has
> > nurtured a grotesque new international gameshow – what we might call
> 'Pimp
> > My Genocide' – where groups strategically play the genocide card in
> order to
> > attract the attentions of the genocide-obsessed international community.
> The
> > new genocide-mongering means that certain states are demonised as 'evil'
> > (Sudan, Serbia) while others must constantly play the pathetic victim
> > (Bosnia, Darfurian groups). This is unlikely to nurture anything like
> peace,
> > or a progressive, grown-up international politics.
> >
> > Rather than challenge the new politics of genocide, the critics of
> Western
> > military intervention play precisely the same game – sometimes in even
> more
> > shrill tones than their opponents. Anti-war activists claim that 'the
> real
> > genocide' – a 'Nazi-style genocide' – is being committed by American and
> > British forces in Iraq. Others counter the official presentation of the
> > Bosnian civil war as a Serb genocide against Muslims by arguing that the
> > Bosnian Serbs, especially those forcibly expelled from Krajina, were the
> > real 'victims of genocide' (9). Critics of Israel accuse it of carrying
> out
> > a genocide against Palestinians (while supporters of Israel describe
> Hamas's
> > and Hezbollah's occasional dustbin-lid bombs as 'genocidal violence')
> (10).
> > This does nothing to challenge the hysteria of today's
> genocide-mongering,
> > but rather indulges and further inflames it. Genocide-talk seems to have
> > become the only game in town.
> >
> > The flipside of genocide-mongering is the hunting of genocide-deniers.
> New
> > European proposals to clamp down on the denial of any genocide represent
> a
> > serious assault on free speech and historical debate. Will those who
> > challenge Western military interventions overseas to prevent a
> 'genocide' be
> > arrested as deniers? What about historians who question the idea that
> the
> > Turks' killings of Armenians were a genocide? Will their books be
> banned? On
> > the homefront, too, genocide is being turned into a moral absolute,
> through
> > which a new moral consensus, covering good and evil, right and wrong,
> what
> > you can and cannot say and think, might be enforced across society (11).
> >
> > If you don't accept the new global genocide divide, or the right of the
> EU
> > authorities to outline what is an acceptable and unacceptable opinion
> about
> > war and history, then step forth – and let us deny.
> >
> > Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his personal website here.
> >
> > (1) Chad violence could erupt into genocide, UN warns, ABC News, 16
> February
> > 2007
> >
> > (2) Turkey Intensifies Counter-Attack Against Genocide Claims, Turkish
> > Weekly, 1 March 2007
> >
> > (3) See 'Genocide denial laws will shut down debate', by Brendan O'Neill
> >
> > (4) Powell declares genocide in Sudan, BBC News, 9 September 2004
> >
> > (5) Liberia: Fears of genocide, Mail and Guardian, July 2003
> >
> > (6) The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, Kirsten Sellars, Sutton
> Publishing,
> > 2002
> >
> > (7) Turkey Intensifies Counter-Attack Against Genocide Claims, Turkish
> > Weekly, 1 March 2007
> >
> > (8) See Darfur: damned by pity, by Brendan O'Neill
> >
> > (9) Exploiting genocide, Brendan O'Neill, Spectator, 21 January 2006
> >
> > (10) Mr Bolton gets a UN flea in his ear, Melanie Phillips, 24 January
> 2006
> >
> > (11) See 'Genocide denial laws will shut down debate', by Brendan
> O'Neill
> >
> > reprinted from:
> > http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2907/
> >
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