2012 : It would be sheer cowardice. Noam Chomsky envoie balader George Mondiot qui exige de lui qu’il dénonce les positions d’un bouquin de Herman et Peterson.
▻http://www.monbiot.com/2012/05/21/2181
I am sorry that you did not understand my letter. I’ll try once more, and apologize in advance if this turns out to be blunt, since simply stating the facts evidently did not work.
In the background are two striking facts, which reveal quite a lot about the intellectual/moral culture of the circles in which we mostly live. One is an obsessive concern that certain articles of faith about crimes of official enemies (or designated “others”) must never be questioned, and that any critical analysis about them must elicit horror and outrage (not mere refutation). A second is that critical analysis of charges about our own crimes is a most honorable vocation (for example, questioning of the Lancet studies of Iraqi deaths and claims that the true figure is 1/10th as high), and minimization or outright denial of these crimes, however grotesque they are, is a matter of utter insignificance (e.g., that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the course of US aggression in Vietnam – McNamara’s figures – or that Bush and Blair should be hanged by the standards of Nuremberg). Examples are too numerous and familiar to mention.
These two facts, virtually definitive of the reigning moral/intellectual culture in which we largely live, are illustrated lucidly in this so far failed correspondence, and by what you have published about the topic – but, as I wrote to you, by every reference I have seen to my article on politics of genocide, the introduction to Herman-Peterson; and again, as you know, this article kept scrupulously to their general point, which is accurate and extremely important, and avoided any reference to their particular discussions.
The first fact, the obsessive concern, is illustrated by the desperate and convoluted attempts to show that by not mentioning or even hinting about the issues taken to be sacred, I am legitimizing “genocide denial” – of crimes of enemies. The second, the easy tolerance of genocide denial on a colossal scale right in our own circles, in fact inability even to notice it, is illustrated by the reaction to the actual content of the article.
To repeat, in that article there is not a word, not a hint, about the two issues of obsessive concern to western intellectuals – 8000 outright murders without provocation in Srebrenica, and assignment of responsibility for perhaps 1 million deaths in Rwanda. But even the most casual glance at the article reveals that it gives a dramatic example of the second fact: the publication, in a leading journal of left-liberal intellectual opinion, of an article by a highly-regarded political analyst praising a respected historian for denying the slaughter of some 10 million people in the territorial US, and tens of millions more elsewhere. That’s genocide denial with a vengeance, and it has, so far, passed completely without comment apart from what I’ve written (to my knowledge – please correct me if I’m wrong).
To illustrate the second fact still more dramatically, in references to my article, this is considered unworthy of mention — in your case, even after it is specifically brought to your attention. Recall again that all of this is right now, right in our circles, known to every literate reader, but considered entirely insignificant, even ignored in condemning (on ridiculous grounds) the first article to bring it to attention.
I should add that there are many other examples in the article, but in writing to you I kept to this one so as not to obscure the crystal clarity of conclusions.
Your response simply provides a further illustration of my points. You say that you wrote about the extermination of native Americans, citing Stannard. Very glad to know that, but it is completely irrelevant. The issue under discussion is genocide DENIAL – that’s the issue you raised in the first place, and the one discussed in my article. You completely avoid it in your two letters to me and what you published, though it is a prime topic in my article.
A second point raised in my letter to you (and in the article) is the vulgarization of the phrase “genocide,” so extreme as to amount to virtual Holocaust denial, and the reason why I rarely use the term. Take a concrete case: the murder of thousands of men and boys after women and children are allowed to flee if they can get away.
I’m referring to Fallujah, different from Srebrenica in many ways, among them that in the latter case the women and children were trucked out, and in the former case the destruction and slaughter was so extreme that current studies in medical journals estimate the scale of radiation-related deaths and diseases at beyond the level of Hiroshima. I would not however call it “genocide,” nor would you, and if the word were used, the more extreme apologists for western crimes, like Kamm, would go utterly berserk. Another of many illustrations of the two basic facts.
Finally, you also completely misunderstood my reference to the Guardian. I don’t care one way or another that they published an interview that they regarded as so dishonest that they removed it from their website (over my objections, incidentally). I’ve had interviews and articles in the journal since, and expect to continue to do so. I was referring to something totally different: namely, the exultation when a huge corporation, ITN, was able to put a tiny journal out of business by relying on Britain’s libel laws, which as you know are an international scandal. It was that remarkable fact, not limited to the Guardian, that occasioned the bitter condemnation of the British press by Philip Knightley, to which I referred you, in which he repeats elementary principles of freedom of speech/press that should be second nature, but that are evidently not understood in left-liberal intellectual circles in the UK.
I hope this is now clear. Some further comments interpolated below.
Noam
Et explicitement, sur l’exigence faite par Monbiot de « prendre ses distances » publiquement (la partie en italique est la reprise de la question dans le mail de Monbiot) :
I rate you very highly. That has not changed, despite my concerns in this case. But for the sake of all those of us who follow you, and – much more importantly – for the sake of the victims of the genocidal acts at Srebrenica and in Rwanda, could you not now make a statement distancing yourself from the demonstrably false claims in Herman and Peterson’s book?
No, I won’t. It would be sheer cowardice. I haven’t written about these cases, and see no reason to take a stand just because they are Holy Causes among British left intellectuals, who have ample opportunities to refute what they think is wrong. And have ample opportunities to discuss vastly worse cases, which they ignore, such as those I mentioned (a tiny sample): genocide denial in their own circles on a colossal scale, for one.