[lbo-talk] Clinton administration attack on Sudan

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Apr 1 06:25:42 PST 2004



> > http://www.zmag.org/casey.htm
> > That should get some folks going...
>From that piece:


>>> In Chomskyian moral and political calculus, African victims count
only when their corpses can be laid at the foot of the American state. The rest disappear, erased from memory. No wonder, with this unbearable whiteness of erasure, he must project "racist contempt" for African victims upon others. <<<

I do not understand why singling out Chomsky? The fact of the matter is that dark skin victims barely feature as victims of organized genocides - as opposed to, say, white educated Europeans. If they did - it would be the Unites States and the (formerly) Great Britain, not Germans, earning the notoriety of the "Holocaust is US" (no pun intended).

The fact of the matter is that Hitler's menace was limited mainly to Europe - a fraction of the world's population - whereas the British and the US menace is truly worldwide and targets mainly dark skin people who do not count as fully "human victims" in the Anglo-Saxon/US moral and political discourse. If they were, the credits for the most notorious inventions of the 20th century would go to the US and the (formerly) Great Britain, for the following contributions to humanity: - re-making body parts of killed "subhumans" into ornaments and displays (Native Americans, Tasmanians); - concentration camps for women and children (chiefly British invention during the Boer Wars to undercut civilian support of the Boer guerillas, but the US treatment of Native Americans may qualify as well);

- indiscriminate attacks on targets of no military value designed to maximize civilian casualties - the US Luftwaffe errr... Airforce for its fire bombing of Tokyo, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of Dresden, and its valiant performance in napalm bombing of Vietnamese hamlets (to save them of course);

- creating the theoretical foundations for systematic ethnic cleansing of "undesirable" populations (that Oscar goes jointly to the formerly Great Britain and the US for the creation of eugenics and social Darwinism);

- the introduction of slavery to modernity (however, the Oscar for lynching must be shared with the Europeans for their treatment of "undesirable" religious minorities cf. St. Bartholomew's night or Jewish pogroms).

Wojtek



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