Good luck. I'm sure I'm beneath their radar. At least, I certainly hope so.
> You are an anarchist Gordon, so, this following comment is
> reaaaaaaaallllllllyyyyyy baiting. (I've been in the most snarlacious mood
> lately!) But, your reaction reminds me of the apocryphal story about the
> Stalinist in the thirties confronted by a Trotskyist or a left-liberral over
> the Purge Trials in Moscow. "I hear they lynch Blacks in the South!"
> The continual refrain since the 60's on the left about Amerikkka being on
> the wrong side of history and backing the wrong sidee in civil/revolutionary
> etc. etc. ...
But I wasn't in raging-left-deviationist mode. I could have been a most mandarin-, Natural-Aristocracy-worshipping liberal and noticed the rather large hole in the article I saw in the _NYRB_. If I put the terms "America" and "genocide" together, the first thing that pops into my mind certainly isn't the Tasmanians or the Armenians; it's the American Indians and the millions lost in the slavery system (including the rigors of the Middle Passage). What if I were a German and wrote an article titled "Germany and Genocide" as if nothing happened before, say, 1980? I think someone might have had some doubts about my approach.
The stuff about how I'm too utopian for practical political work is completely irrelevant. It is "utopian" pressure on the established order that makes any kind of leftist struggle or progress possible. But in any case, my criticism was not from a particularly utopian perspective.
> ...
> >political mind? I'm not moralizing here; I find the omission
> >peculiar and troubling for the most self-centered, practical
> >reason: it indicates to me that there are large, important
> >holes in the metaphorical heads of our leadership, either
> >because they actually think this way or they think they can
> >pretend they do. (Not that I haven't gotten this idea
> >before.)
Peter K.:
> I think she was just focusing on more recent history. I graduated
> high school in '88 and remember reading in textbooks about
> what happened to the American Indians. And perhaps while it
> wasn't as self-flagellating as you may wish it was, it did prepare
> the student to go on and read books like Zinn's History of the American
> People. So I don't see any hole.
I don't see a recognition of directly relevant facts as self-flagellation. It seems like an odd word to use in this context.
> >The review in the _Nation_ tried to get at this by another
> >route, I suppose, in noting that Powers's attention to
> >intervention was very selective. But that is what I expect:
> >the leadership are people who desire power, especially over
> >other people, or they wouldn't be the leadership; if they
> >desire power, they will notice and publicize what serves this
> >power and downplay or omit what opposes or undermines it.
Peter K.:
> This is true in general, but why then does Powers write about the US's recent crimes?
> (from the Nation review):
> "But as Power illustrates, it was not simply that the United States did nothing. Often Washington
> indirectly and directly aided the genocidaires. ... etc."
Because Powers is writing at a higher level than pure propaganda. One can see the informational agencies of the bourgeoisie, including academia, the media, public relations and advertising, and the relevant parts of the government, as structured into layers, where each layer lies or at least propagandizes the layer below it, but tries to be truthful with its peers and those above it. At a level of nearly complete ignorance, like the big-city tabloid press or network television, the material is almost purely propaganda. But Powers's layer, when writing in the _NYRB_, is not like the _New_York_Post_ layer; on this layer, the U.S. _can_ be said to do wrong. Most specifically, it can fail to intervene (imperialize) vigorously enough and may even back the wrong guys _at_times_. These errors can be corrected, not by retiring from imperialism, but by pursuing it even more vigorously and intelligently. This is why I found the omission of the extermination of the American Indians curious; it seems like something the author would want to take care of somehow, if only in passing, just as a German advocating intervention in Yugoslavia or wherever would want to take care of _his_ little historical problem.
(Perhaps Powers does so in the book; as I said, I'm going by just the article in the _NYRB_. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the established intellectual order had boxed up the American Indian and slavery questions so elegantly that they could dealt with by a few words or even a convenient glyph. Maybe a little black Unhappy Face -- but I digress.)
Peter K.:
> As far as leaders go, I liked Zizek's comments on anarchism in Doug's
> recent interview.
You mean the part about the "secret masters"? I thought it was pretty funny. Best read in uniform, boots well polished, with Laibach blasting out of the stereo.
-- Gordon