[fla-left] Bloody execution photos draw gamut of responses (fwd)

[Max Sawicky]

> The death penalty, like a good deal of the propaganda supporting
> and appealing to spontaneous ideology, uses the princple that
> where there is smoke there is fire. If  "society" (i.e., in this case,
> the bourgeois state) shows itself as so excited by certaina activity
> that it will spend millions and involve all the most august
> institutions of society in the effor to kill one individual with
> pomp and circumstance and lots of silly rhetoric (lie Max's),
> THEN, the implict message is (leaping a bit) all evil comes
> from individual actions and if we can only stop the evil actions
> of these few people (not just the murderers but the real
> and imaginary purse snatchers etc out there), then all will
> be well and people can trust their government and their
> employer. . . .

Leaping for an Olympic record is more like it.  There's
probably more than one implicit message, and you misstate
the ones you raise.  I don't think a message is that *all* evil
comes from the actions of a *few*, but that high individual
responsibility inheres in *some* actions.  Otherwise we might
let Pinochet live out his days in peace, under the premise that 
he was just a product of his circumstances.  As for the
illusion that an execution means that "all will be well", or
that "people can trust their government," few people are
that stupid in my view.  The more common view of an
execution is of a stray victory or consolation in an endless
war.  At least they got one of those bastards (that commit
heinous crimes).

One more likely message is that an extremely heinous
act merits a modestly proportionate response (the state
execution being much more considerate than the acts
which prompt it).  Is that silly?


> . . .
> To understand the role of the death penalty under modern
> capitalism one must study the social history of the death
> penalty in 18th c. England.
> Carrol

Perhaps so.  I'd be interested.

mbs