I, on the other hand, find using one term to describe all that as idealist, ahistorical, unbelievably obfuscatory and politically contradictory.
There's no wool and it wouldn't make any difference since you've already closed your eyes to the vast differences between patterns of oppression and legitimation - as well as the wildly alternative contradictions and possibilities for resistance - in 1650, 1862, 1934 and 2008.
I have no idea why you suggest what you do about my perception of "observers", "victims" and "crimes" given that I am the one insisting that social relations were qualitatively different across the eras your collapsing, not you. If you want to make that differentiation then you have to make it and, to my mind, in order to make it you'd have to acknowledge that a huge proportion of the difference in the relationship between the "observers" - what a weird, vague word - the "victims" and the "crimes" might have something to do with intertwined political, economic, cultural and normative changes associated with the rise of modernity, capitalism, utilitarianism, democratic constitutions, science and technology, scientific racism and sexism, new family relations, wage labor, and secularism. But none of these things matter in a world where the vast majority of oppressions are all and equally fascist.
Last, I didn't ask you to write a sociological article, I asked you to apply your sociological knowledge of sociological theory and methods to the disagreement and your stance in it.
On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> [WS:] I think you are trying to pull wool over my eyes here. You know darn
> well what time frame I am talking about. So let's be clear on basic facts
> -
> the Brits and the Americans were wiping out, enslaving, locking up in
> concentration camps and working to death entire populations way before the
> Germans did it in the 1930s. I do not see how these two are different in
> any other than superficial ways, such as the lethal methods, skin color of
> their victims, or slogans used to justify their deeds (lebensraum vs.
> freedom cum democracy - big fucking deal.) I am not even sure if the
> Germans killed more people than the Brits and the Americans, but then they
> had fewer years to do it. You may prefer to call one "fascism" and the
> other one by some other word, but this is a matter of semantics.
>
> Furthermore, as a sociologist you must know that the perceived seriousness
> of a crime is affected by how much observers identify with the victim.
> There is tons of research showing that. So why do you object to the idea
> that perceptions of Nazi and British, American, or Japanese atrocities may
> be affected by how much the observers identify with their victims?
>
> As to Ragin - I am not writing an academic journal article or even a
> newspaper article but a comment to an internet chat list for chrissake.
>
> Sheeeesh.....
>
>