On 2010-02-02, at 1:06 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> I'm kind of curious what national prejudices I am regurgitating and saying are natural. I said, "Russians and Jews are conceptualized as distinct ethnic categories in Russia (and elsewhere in the former USSR). This is the reason it is so...," not "the Jews killed Christ and try to fleece the goyim and Russians are all a bunch of drunks."
>
> The former is a nonarguable statement of fact, like "the sun is in a state of continuous nuclear fusion." It is a fact whether it is good or bad, or neither, or both.
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Tue, February 2, 2010 8:42:09 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already!
>
> Doug 'What's disturbing is the way Chris regurgitates prejudices as if they were somehow natural and not in the least problematic.'
>
> I don't know if I am the right person to stick up for Chris, but it is always worth knowing what IS the case, as well as what OUGHT to be the case (to use Hume's distinction).
>
> It is worth knowing that for most of the time ideas of national identity were, in a largely unreflective way, seen as synonymous with racial identity, and that in many parts of the world, and for many people, that is still true.
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Undoubtedly, but these ethnic and racial distinctions - which you both treat with such scholarly detachment - have served as the most powerful brake on the development of solidarity between peoples, tied them to their own exploiting elites, and resulted in rivers of blood being shed in pograms, genocides, and innumerable intercommunal wars. I suspect the indifference betrayed by your statements that these divisions are simply "a fact, whether good or bad" and just another manifestation of "the idea of racial identity which for many people just happens to rings true", is what has provoked the ire of many on the list. Lecturing us that we "ought to know what is as well as what ought to be" is a further irritant and irrelevant for those of us who have learned that lesson full well in other contexts.