[lbo-talk] Benny Strikes Again: "This Holocaust will be different"

ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
Sat Jan 20 21:28:07 PST 2007


At around 20/1/07 11:44 pm, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
> Jordan's questioning the consensus (which I share in)
> that Morris' article is not the simple what-if
> scenario thought experiment it's presented as being,
> but yet another in a continuing series of horror
> stories about the destruction sure to come if Iran
> develops nuclear weapons -- stories intended, we
> believe, to justify 'preemptive' military action.
>

Its 12:01am somewhere and that somewhere happens to be here in the east coast of the USA, thus resetting the dreaded quota and freeing me up to respond before my thoughts have fled.

Let us take Morris at face value: it seems he is worried about a possible Iranian attack on Israel (worse, of the destruction of Israel by mere demoralisation, it's virility made impotent by the Iranian nuclear phallus, but let us ignore that for the nonce). How is it that such an attack comes about -- that interestingly is the very question that Morris turns to. In response he offers such gems as "cult of death", "this multi-cultural world", "decades of preparation of hearts and minds", "selfish appetites", all twisted and cajoled to hold up a vision of a righteous and isolated Israel doomed to inevitable suffering (in an amazingly daring experiment in logic, that should impress our logic seeking list admin ;-), he holds out Israel's terrorist attack on Lebanon as an example).

It seems to me then that if we are to take Benny seriously and take alarm at the impending annihilation of Israel, we need pay very serious attention to his argument. And when we do so, perhaps we find that "this Holocaust is not the same" after all. That it is not a mad-straw-man Ahmadinejad or a multi-cultural world that is caught up in its selfish appetite (the one worthy selfless act being no doubt to rally to the defence of Israel), but Israel's own actions, no doubt among other things (albeit not mentioned in Morris' fiction), that could (and have) lead to danger.


> In short, he's considering Morris' statements *in
> isolation* from the propaganda context most of us
> (appear to) agree they must be viewed in.

I am not sure that Morris has the explicit (in his mind) purpose of preparing a justification for a pre-emptive strike. A real propagandist with such near term goals would have better logic (there is that pesky word again) to offer than Morris' melodrama.

--ravi



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