those fake refugees

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Apr 2 12:17:19 PST 1999


Angela:
>I have been arguing against the bombings. but it is not a case of one
>demand contradicting the other is it? our ability to give effect to
>the demand that the bombing should stop is not simply a result of the
>failure of left unity on the issue.

I know you are against the bombings. But you know that there are those who have argued for them and those who seem conflicted. The unity of perspectives is not a problem (for instance, I've been working with people who differ from me in analyses of the Yugo situation and beyond) _so long as_ people are willing to take actions against the bombings, the enlargement of the US/NATO military actions, economic sanctions when the citizens of the target country are against them. The failure of quite a few here to agree even that bombings are to be protested does constitute a huge problem.


>I have consistently spoken about the characterisation of the Serbians.
>but arguing that this is 'more racist' than characterizations of the
>refugees as 'inscrutable' is not an argument.

Why not? The media has been consistently one-sided, and it is true that few here have pointed out, for instance, the invidiousness of the equation of Milosevic with Hitler, of analogies to WW2 and anti-fascism (which portray Serbs as fascists), etc. On this list, discourse has been one-sided as well.


>and, you did not point
>out any contradictions in the article. there is nothing here that
>was worthy of repeating which you could not have put into an argument
>which did not deploy racist caricatures for its effectivity.

Is there _anyone_ on this list here that subscribes to the kind of racism (e.g. 'Balkan inscrutability,' etc.) that the article displayed? If so, I've _overestimated_ listers' ability to decode the racist language. Maybe I should have posted a warning: "Look, the article contains the arrogant chauvinist Euro/American yappings about the Balkan mysteriousness, but please read it, for the other parts of it contest one of the important imperial propaganda tactics that have claimed that refugees are fleeing from genocidal Serbs."

Angela, you should at least consider a possibility that, with all sorts of anti-war actions I got to do, I may have less time than usual to post a carefully worded post in my own language.

Yoshie



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list