{"id":43903,"date":"2024-10-29T13:55:40","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T13:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/?p=43903"},"modified":"2024-10-29T13:55:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T13:55:41","slug":"genocide-is-the-dark-side-of-us-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/global-politics\/colonialism-imperialism\/genocide-is-the-dark-side-of-us-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Genocide is the dark side of US democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">On November 5, 2024, US voters face a choice between two candidates for President. One is more genocidal than the other, but both have betrayed deep <a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/first-debate-underscored-both-candidates-fealty-to-israel-amid-genocide\/\">fealty<\/a> to Israel and total disregard for Palestinian lives.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People scratching their heads over how the \u2018world\u2019s greatest democracy\u2019 is backing a genocide in Gaza should take a cue from history: Over the past century, genocides have reaped <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/reviews\/capsule-review\/2004-09-01\/final-solutions-mass-killing-and-genocide-20th-century\">over one hundred million<\/a> victims and counting \u2013&nbsp;and Western democracies, self-styled as anti-genocidal, have committed their fair share of mass killing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conflating demos and ethnos<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Liberal historians tend to view genocides as aberrations inimical to democracy \u2013 which they in turn portray as essentially pacific, benevolent, and absolutely antithetical to genocide. They depict genocides as primitive, uncivil, barbaric, essentially anti-modern atrocities carried out by backward and evil political forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Michael Mann, author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/books\/dark-side-of-democracy\/7E75A132A188A2804E91F4F209B6FE1F\"><em>The Dark Side of Democracy<\/em><\/a>, sardonically frames their position: &#8216;Blame the politicians, the sadists, the terrible Serbs (or Croats) or the primitive Hutus (or Tutsis)\u2014for their actions have little to do with us.&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, genocides have occurred hand in glove with the rise of ethnonationalist empires and states \u2013 including the United States of America. In some manifestations, genocide has been <em>inherent<\/em> to the modern nation-state, whose ethnonationalist character, pushed to its limits, necessitates the extermination of ethnic groups that are viewed as impediments to ethnic hegemony within a society determined to preserve its seemingly seamless racial fabric.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not only are genocides distinctly modern \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facinghistory.org\/resource-library\/raphael-lemkin-genocide-convention#:~:text=Lemkin%20defined%20genocide%20as%20%E2%80%9Cthe,wrote%2C%20%E2%80%9CGenocide%20is%20directed%20against\">Raphael Lemkin<\/a>, who coined the term, used it to define \u2018an old practice in its modern development\u2019 \u2013 but they are often carried out by states that define themselves as democratic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center rp-full-width rp-quote has-grey-color has-pale-1-background-color has-text-color has-background has-antonio-font-family\" style=\"padding-top:2%;padding-right:2%;padding-bottom:2%;padding-left:2%;font-size:clamp(1.743rem, 1.743rem + ((1vw - 0.2rem) * 1.571), 3rem);\">Genocides have occurred hand in glove with the rise of ethnonationalist empires and states \u2013 including the USA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Mann, ethnic cleansing committed by democracies \u2018result where the demos (democracy) is confused with the ethnos (the ethnic group)&#8230; It results from complex interactions among leaders, militants, and core constituencies of ethnonationalism\u2019. One could, for example, readily apply this conflation to the <a href=\"https:\/\/mondoweiss.net\/2014\/02\/founder-assails-democratic\/\">Israeli ethos<\/a> of \u2018Jewish and Democratic\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This dangerous conflation has resulted in genocidal atrocities from the Native American genocide, to the Holocaust, to the Bosnian Genocide. Between those events, US leaders sought to justify their genocidal acts by appealing to national interests and liberal and democratic ideals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Footsteps of \u2018civilisation\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For US founders and presidents, genocide was in the name of civilisation. Thomas Jefferson \u2013 the third US President, who owned over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history\/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004\/\">600 slaves<\/a> in his lifetime \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/03-07-02-0046\">declared<\/a> that the \u2018barbarities\u2019 of Native peoples \u2018justified extermination\u2019. A century later, President Theodore Roosevelt <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-2004-sep-05-oe-mann5-story.html\">said<\/a> that \u2018extermination was as ultimately beneficial [to Native Americans] as it was inevitable\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following in US footsteps, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, the principal overseer of Nazi Germany\u2019s genocidal pogroms \u2013 recognised and named as such by the United States \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/books\/abs\/dark-side-of-democracy\/preface\/412D4200CA80B59AE1D00FC2FF2F2522\">declared<\/a>: \u2018It is the curse of greatness that it must step over dead bodies to create new life\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Similar justifications have facilitated other genocidal acts carried out or enabled by US military forces, mainly beyond their national boundaries and often in partnership with other Western democracies. Consider the bombing of Dresden, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, napalming the Vietnamese countryside, bombing Cambodia, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/2017\/sep\/12\/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide\">US \u2018secret\u2019 role<\/a> in the Rwandan genocide, and now its complicity in Israel\u2019s decimation of Gaza.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center rp-full-width rp-quote has-grey-color has-pale-1-background-color has-text-color has-background has-antonio-font-family\" style=\"padding-top:2%;padding-right:2%;padding-bottom:2%;padding-left:2%;font-size:clamp(1.743rem, 1.743rem + ((1vw - 0.2rem) * 1.571), 3rem);\">These genocidal acts have always been in the name of \u2018civilisation\u2019 \u2013\u00a0from the French <em>Mission Civilisatrice<\/em>\u00a0to Netanyahu&#8217;s declared \u2018clash between barbarism and civilisation\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These acts have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mqup.ca\/barbaric-civilization-products-9780773538566.php\">always<\/a> been in the name of \u2018civilisation\u2019. Enlightened France massacred over<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/opinions\/2021\/10\/17\/17-october-1961-60-years-on-france-must-face-its-colonial-past\"> one million Algerians<\/a> in the name of civilisation \u2013 its <em>Mission Civilisatrice<\/em>\u00a0gave it a coherent justification of colonial violence and ethnic cleansing for over a century.\u00a0As Benjamin Netanyahu, a genocidal war criminal wanted by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c303y5m1p19o\">International Criminal Court<\/a>, declared before a bipartisan meeting of US lawmakers: \u2018It\u2019s a clash between barbarism and civilisation\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tragic irony is that this worn-out &#8216;civilising mission&#8217; rationale is now not entirely without truth: these endless appeals to \u2018civilisation\u2019 by genocidal regimes affiliated with the \u2018civilised\u2019 West have made genocide intrinsic to what we understand as \u2018modern civilisation\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Mann concludes: &#8216;murderous ethnic cleansing has been a central problem of our civilisation, our modernity, our conceptions of progress, and our attempts to introduce democracy&#8230; murderous ethnic cleansing comes from our civilisation and from people, most of whom have been not unlike ourselves.&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Erasing cultural pluralism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Various historians have traced genocide back to modernisation in Great Britian, or settler colonialism, or the modern state, or nationalism, or the rise of Capitalism. In all these myriad manifestations, genocide has been a deliberate instrument of the nation-state and its desire to create national sovereignty and ethnic homogeneity. It\u2019s been inexorably linked to the notion of <em>ethnos<\/em>, or people, and often committed in the name of the people, or Volk.<em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The genocides of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been predicated on perfectly modern myths and mythologies, invented traditions, and dangerous ideologies of race and nationhood. In other words, the modern nation-state\u2019s claims to monopoly over sovereignty, coupled with its terrestrial ambitions, have created the desire to erase the cultural pluralisms of the old empires.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/merip.org\/1984\/09\/armenian-genocide\/\">Armenian genocide<\/a> was not committed by the dying Ottoman Empire, but the modernist and reformist Young Turks government, which was ethnonationalist in character. Think of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.972mag.com\/before-zionism-the-shared-life-of-jews-and-palestinians\/\">Palestine before Zionism<\/a> \u2013 a broad mosaic of Arabs, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Armenians, Circassians, and even Jewish Palestinians. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/05\/ethnic-cleansing-palestine-israel-nakba\">Zionist leaders<\/a> thought necessary, was an integral part and intended outcome of political Zionism\u2019s desire to create a purely Jewish state in Palestine.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Economic power and the will to destroy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>History frankly informs us that modern genocide is carried out with modern weapons, and often facilitated by an alliance of democratic administrations, bureaucracies, media, and a complex network of defense industries, Big Tech, corporate and lobbying interests, and money in politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It happens when the ethnonationalist state accumulates enough economic and military power to deploy a sudden and overwhelming force against the unwanted ethnic group. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed this economic reality when she<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2023\/10\/16\/us-can-certainly-afford-military-support-to-both-israel-and-ukraine-janet-yellen-says.html\"> declared<\/a>: &#8216;We can certainly afford to stand with Israel, and to support Israel\u2019s military needs.&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center rp-full-width rp-quote has-grey-color has-pale-1-background-color has-text-color has-background has-antonio-font-family\" style=\"padding-top:2%;padding-right:2%;padding-bottom:2%;padding-left:2%;font-size:clamp(1.743rem, 1.743rem + ((1vw - 0.2rem) * 1.571), 3rem);\">Modern genocide is facilitated by an alliance of democratic administrations, bureaucracies, media, defence industries, Big Tech, corporate and lobbying interests<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These factors partly explains why the Biden Administration has been neither willing nor able to stop Israel\u2019s ongoing, year-long genocide in Gaza, which has <a href=\"https:\/\/reliefweb.int\/report\/occupied-palestinian-territory\/about-10-percent-gaza-strips-population-killed-injured-or-missing-due-israeli-genocide-enar#:~:text=Occupied%20Palestinian%20Territory%20%2D%20About%2010,50%2C000%20Palestinians%20have%20been%20killed.\">killed<\/a> over fifty thousand people, the majority women and children. The United States is complicit in the Gaza genocide not despite its democratic character, but mainly <em>because<\/em> of it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Samantha Power once <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/article\/a-problem-from-hell-america-and-the-age-of-genocide\/\">observed<\/a>, \u2018The United States has never in its history intervened to stop genocide, and has, in fact, rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred\u2019. The US has a dark history of turning a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2003\/jun\/29\/highereducation.news\">blind eye<\/a> to genocides, as well as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/2017\/sep\/12\/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide\">abetting<\/a> or committing them \u2013 from the <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/the-united-states-and-the-holocaust\">Holocaust<\/a>, to Bosnia, to Rwanda.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But its genocidal complicity in Gaza has been the darkest yet \u2013 carried out with a strong \u2018democratic\u2019, bipartisan mandate, and sustained by brutally suppressing grassroots antiwar movements at home.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As&nbsp;Former British diplomat <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/sahouraxo\/status\/1835784646170431610\">Craig&nbsp;Murray<\/a>&nbsp;recently put it: &#8216;Not only is the West complicit in the Genocide in Palestine, the ruling class of the West is so scared of its own citizens that it is now prepared to persecute its own citizens in support of a genocide.&#8217;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without fundamental reforms of its democratic system and institutions, it\u2019s hard to see how the United States could change course on genocides<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US presidential election offers an illusion of choice when it comes to supporting genocide, argues Seraj Assi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":43908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1852,2525,848,186],"tags":[2957],"class_list":["post-43903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colonialism-imperialism","category-north-america","category-palestine-middle-east","category-war","tag-seraj-assi"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - 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