> > I have said that I think genocide has to involve actual systematic killing
>> in addition to things like child-stealing, etc. Otherwise it is not an
>> attempt to annihilate the people concerned.
>
>It is comments like these that make me very, very nervous about your
>position. If you said: this is another way of attempting to exterminate a
>people, but it is not genocide, I would accept your point. We'd be talking
>about words. But that isn't what you are saying. You seem to imply that if
>you systematically removed children and indoctrinated them to the effect
>that they were not Aboriginal, then that's not an attempt to exterminate
>Aboriginal people. It's as if, in your view, a person could remain
>Aboriginal without having any awareness of the fact; or equally disturbing,
>as if the loss of linkage to Aboriginal tradition and society were small
>potatoes. Maybe I haven't understood what you are saying, so sorry if any
>of this sounds a little loopy.
It appears to me that he is saying, firstly, that he rejects the recognised definition of genocide. It, he says, "... has to involve actual systematic killing." As we have already seen, he justifies this adoption of a very narrow definition on the basis of a perverse mis-reading of the official definition, which he then dismisses as "... so broad as to render genocide meaningless." Which justifies him making up his own definition.
But why is he doing this? I can see why it makes you suspicious. In the end it may be simply that he wishes to blame capitalism, rather than racism. As though it made any difference.
If we examine his theory that "proletarianisation" of indigenous Australians, rather than elimination of them, was the objective, we can see that it adds up to the same thing. It was, obviously, necessary to eliminate their culture and society to proletarianise them, so effectively all he is saying is that the deliberate destruction (genocide) of indigenous society was itself motivated by the needs of capitalism.
We can probably agree with that. His notion that it wasn't genocide (based entirely on his own invented definition of "genocide") is quite irrelevant.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas