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Modernity and Twentieth Century Holocausts: Empire-Building and Mass Murder
James Petras, Axis of Logic
uruknet.info, Italy
July 21 2006
July 21, 2006
Holocausts involve large-scale, systematic state-sponsored
extermination of large number of civilian non-combatants over an
extended time period based on their ethnic, racial, class or religious
identity. All the holocausts of the Twentieth and Twenty-first
centuries were preceded by state or civil society violence against
the victimized peoples. In general, prior to the execution of the
holocausts, important sectors of the state and civil society opposed
violence directed against the victimized population. However once the
perpetrators of the holocausts gained state power they were able to
neutralize, silence, repress or co-opt previous oppositionists.
A number of theorists have attempted to explain holocaust(s) by
focusing exclusively on a single case - Nazi Germany's extermination of
large sectors of the Jewish communities in Western, Central and Eastern
Europe. Methodologically this focus on a single case involving only
European Jews fails the empirical test: it cannot explain previous,
contemporary and subsequent holocausts affecting other European,
Asian and Latin America victims.
The claims by mainly, but not exclusively, Jewish scholars of the
"uniqueness" of the Jewish-Nazi victims flies in the face of vast
historical data and in fact serves as a justification for continued
large-scale monetary compensation (1) and for the exercise of colonial
expansion in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East, using the same
techniques as were practiced by their Nazi oppressors (practices of
collective guilt, racially based legislation, legalized mass torture,
and ethnic cleansing).
Critique of the 'Uniqueness' of Nazi-Jewish Holocaust
Modern holocausts did not begin in the 20th century, nineteenth century
English, US and Belgian genocidal practices in India, the US West and
the Congo attest to its pre-modern roots (2). While there are important
differences between nineteenth century and twentieth and twenty-first
century holocausts, they have one common underlying driving force -
they are all linked to empire building or a response to challenges
to empire.
The claims of the "uniqueness" of the "Jewish-Nazi holocaust (JNH) rest
on several dubious arguments, which can be quickly and easily disposed.
Proponents of the JNH argue in terms of quantity of killings:
6 million Jews (3). Yet during the exact same period the Nazis and
their allies systematically slaughtered 20 million Soviet civilians -
the majority Russians (4). Likewise upward of 10 million Chinese were
killed by the Japanese between 1937-1942 (5). In both Indo-China (6)
and Korea (7), civilian deaths numbered close to 3-4 million each
during US massive bombing and occupation. The argument for superior
victimhood and thus the "uniqueness" of the "Jewish Holocaust" based
on the number of victims has no validity.
The second claim for the thesis of the uniqueness of the JNH is
the role of the state in systematically exterminating its Jewish
victims. This argument also lacks historical validity. The Young
Turks in the declining years of the Ottoman empire, developed
a systematic extermination policy leading to the genocide of the
Armenian people 1915-1917, and over 1.5 million deaths (8). Likewise
under US "counter-insurgency" policy of carpet bombings (Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia) over 4 million civilians were killed. US-directed
scorched earth policies in Central America during the 1980's led to the
systematic killing of over 200,000 Mayan Indians and the destruction
of over 250 village communities (9). Likewise the US scientifically
planned embargo against Iraq (1991-2003) and the ongoing invasion and
occupation (March 2003 to present) led to over 500,000 infant deaths
(1991-2002) and over 200,000 civilian killings since the US invasion
(10).
Other claimants for JNH uniqueness cite the racialist-exterminationist
ideology - forgetting the deeply embedded racial basis of Japanese
genocidal policies versus the Chinese, the Central American puppet
regimes virulent racist anti-Mayan extermination campaigns to cite
only two graphic examples.
Some Jewish historians, such as Goldhagen, borrowing Nazi
historiographic methods claim the 'uniqueness' thesis on the basis
of the culpability of the entire German people and their history
(11). This propaganda rant by a tenured Harvard professor overlooks
the fact that the Nazi's only secured 37.3% of the German vote in
July 1932 and fell to about one-third of the electorate in November
1932 before assuming power (12). Goldhagen overlooks the fact that
more than one-third of Germans (especially workers) voted for the
Socialist-Communist candidates who were fiercely anti-Nazi and
supportive of Jewish rights (13). Historically the argument is
even weaker - the overt anti-Semitic movements, opinion leaders
and politicians were marginal to German political life before the
late 1920's. And, of course, it ignores the German 'high culture'
based on the enlightenment, which included many Jews and contributed
to a grand cultural heritage in music, sciences, literature and
philosophy. Finally the notion of collective guilt of entire civil
society refuses to recognize that the Nazis' first major political
round-up involved tens of thousands of Germans - mostly Communists,
trade unionists and militant anti-fascists who were exterminated in the
first concentration camps including Buchenwald and Baden-Baden. The
post-facto argument that there was little overt German resistance
once the totalitarian terrorist regime had consolidated power, had
little to do with German 'acquiescence' with anti-Semitism and more
to do with the effectiveness of state repression.
In any case, assuming that perhaps nearly 50% of German civil
society acquiesced or even supported (the more dubious assumption)
state genocide, this was not unique to the JNH; the same proportion
supported the extermination of three times as many Slavs (described
by Nazi racial hygiene 'scientists' as beastlike sub-'Untermenschen'
destined to be worked to death). Substantial sectors of Turkish and
Kurdish civil society participated in the killing and plundering
of Armenians. US civil society in its majority re-elected Reagan
following his public support for the Guatemalan dictator Rios Mont -
who exterminated Mayan people. The overwhelming majority of Israeli
'civil' society finances and serves in the military colonization and
dispossession of 4 million Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian
Holocaust (14). Japanese civil society by and large endorsed the
Nanking massacre and its aftermath.
The argument about the unique bonds between the Nazi state and civil
society and the extermination of Jews is untenable once we look
beyond the blinkered eyes of biased historiography. The evidence is
so overwhelming and obvious that one needs to explore the "sociology
of knowledge" of the advocates of Jewish holocaust uniqueness: What
political and economic ends does it serve in terms of contemporary
Israeli power enhancement? The use and abuse of history, particularly
in the case of the uniqueness of the NJH, has highly prejudicial
consequences especially in the perpetration of the Palestinian
Holocaust. Manipulation of holocaust victimhood has contributed to
disproportional influence by pro-Israeli lobbies in securing US and EU
funding of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The use of ethno-racial
explanations of holocausts, including notions of "collective guilt"
can spill over into forms of "collective punishment" of families,
communities and peoples who have nothing to do with alleged offenses
to unique victims turned regional powers. This is particularly evident
in the thinking of many of contemporary Israeli and Jewish terror
experts professing to be knowledgeable about "the Arab Mind".
Critique of Psycho-Cultural Explanations
Explanations of holocausts which focus on "irrational mass behavior"
or more generally on "mass psychology" overlook the central importance
of elite manipulation, anchored in the state, the economy and civil
society. In none of the holocausts in the 20th and 21st centuries
were the "masses" in a position to initiate, organize and direct
holocausts, though, certainly, sectors of the lower class carried out
the policies, and in some cases benefited directly from the spoils of
the killing fields. Holocausts in the first instance are state-centered
activities, which exploit one of a myriad of contradictory attitudes
among the general population (prejudice against the targeted group),
and instrumentalize it to create cohesion around elite expansionist
or more precisely imperialist policies.
The ruling classes which support state-sponsored holocausts do so,
not so much because of irrational ethnic or class hatred, but because
the holocaust provides the state a legitimating ideology for their
uncontested dominance and a basis for undisputed economic exploitation
in domestic and overseas markets. The cultural and psychological
determinants of 'holocausts' are, in fact, based on the larger
geo-political and economic imperial interests of the state. There
is no 'single' cultural or psychological attribute embedded in any
holocaust-inducing society. There are many competing and parallel
cultures and diverse psychologies. Under the imperatives of the
imperial state expansion, aided and abetted by state-influenced
religious institutions, political parties and the mass media, the
largely (but not exclusively) manipulated masses of the population
take an active role in mass murder.
To point to cultural and psychological explanations of holocausts is to
distract from the central role of imperial politics and the state. To
focus exclusively on ideology is to overlook the social structural
framework in which 'genocidal' ideology functions, is nurtured,
financed and sustained. Take away the key political and economic
foundations, the imperatives of imperial conquest and the need for
internal cohesion, and projected holocausts fail to materialize. On
the other hand, continuous imperial structures lead to the recurrence
of holocausts, as is witnessed by four major 20th and 21st century
holocausts involving US imperialism: the killing of 4 million Koreans
(1950-53); 4 million Indo-Chinese (1960-1975), 300,000 Mayans of
Guatemala (1980-83), and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (1991-2002)
and (2003-present).
Holocaust elites, in pursuit of imperial conquest create stakeholders
among specific social classes who directly benefit. Turkish and
Kurdish landholders and peasants seized Armenian property. German
doctors took over their murdered Jewish colleagues' practices and
university posts. Japanese business elites took over Manchurian mining
companies. The US military pillaged priceless antiquities and the
wealth from conquered Asia. Pillage and large-scale dispossession
of victims creates vertical links between the imperial elite and its
lowest echelons creating the transient reality of an imperial people
engaged in collective genocide.
Holocausts are organized through the perpetrators' recruitment of
collaborators from among the targeted victims. The Germans formed
"Jewish police (kapos)" and "councils" to prepare for the Jewish
holocaust and Ukrainians and White Russian soldiers for the Russian
holocaust. Japan formed "puppet regimes" while it killed tens of
millions of Chinese. The US puppet rulers, Sygman Rhee in Korea and
Diem in Vietnam served as political facades while B52 bombers destroyed
their countries with millions of tons of explosives, napalm and poisons
like Agent Orange - killing and maiming millions. Holocausts are in
some cases joint ventures between imperial elites and sectors of the
upper classes that feel threatened by the victimized people. Hence in
Guatemala, the US and Israeli specialists in mass murder joined with
the White European-descended Guatemalan elites to massacre entire
Indian populations, seizing and redistributing their lands as part
of the holocaust process.
In summary, holocausts have deep structural roots; they are
multi-layered and rooted in a multiplicity of collaborators, and
low-level beneficiaries. They are top-down processes rather than
society-wide events, in which the state plays a dominant role in
order to secure internal cohesion for external expansion.
Alternative Explanations of Holocaust
Explanations of holocausts based on notions of "cultural collective
guilt" and "psycho-social" phenomena are empirically unsubstantiated
or at best largely derivative and partial explanations. Their greatest
weakness is the lack of an understanding of the structural dynamics
of imperialism.
What is common to all 20th and 21st century holocausts is their
deep and intimate relation to imperialism, whether in the form
of outward conquest or in terms of creating "internal cohesion"
to embark on empire-building. While not all holocausts are a result
of imperialism (some result from 'internal' capital accumulations -
Stalin's forced collectivization - 1929-34), all imperialisms have
resulted in holocausts, from the 19th century to the present.
Holocaust, Cohesion and Imperialism
The JNH is an example of the ruling elite victimizing a minority
population to create cross class cohesion, diverting the masses from
internal labor-capital conflicts and the real or potential costs of the
imperialist policies. Instead of focusing on capitalist exploitation,
the ruling elite directed worker and middle class discontent to Jewish
bankers and capitalists.
This propaganda was especially effective in professions like medicine
and retail trade in which competition for positions and market shares
between Jews and non-Jews was especially intense. The passing from
intensified exclusion and ethnic discrimination to the practice of
genocide coincided with the massive military, economic and political
expansion and conquest of the late 1930's and early 1940's. As the
costs of empire-building increased, so did the need to distract the
population by perpetuating mass murder. Parallel to the JNH, the
imperial conquest of great swaths of Eastern Europe and especially
Russia led to an even greater holocaust, the killing of 30 million
Slavs and the enslavement of many millions more to the imperial
-capital war machine.
Holocaust accompanied Japanese imperialist conquests and colonial rule
in China from the late 1930's to 1945. The large-scale systematic
murder of millions of Chinese peasants, shopkeepers, workers,
teachers, in fact all but the highest elite collaborator classes,
was an extreme form of colonial dispossession of property and life
to fuel empire-building and to subsidize and retain loyalty among
the Japanese masses at home (15).
Holocausts occurred as a result of mass revolutionary challenges
to unpopular puppet rulers, undermining pretensions of invincible
imperial dominance. The US military intervention and occupation of
Korea and Indo-China to prop up failed regimes led to the killing of
eight million civilian victims, the total destruction of wide areas
of the economy through genocidal carpet-bombing and chemical warfare
leaving the industrial sectors in rubble, decimating farmland and
causing long-term genetic damage to subsequent generations. The scale
and scope of the imperial killing fields however failed to defeat
the popular national liberation armies. Internal cohesion especially
during the US-Korean holocaust was accompanied by a deep political
purge of US dissidents in civil society and public employment. However
the high human costs in terms of US imperial soldiers lost and the
spiraling financial expenditures (if not the holocaust itself) forced
the imperial rulers to sign an armistice (16)
The greater the size, effectiveness and popularity of national
liberation movements, the bigger the threat to an imperial puppet
rulers, the more likely that imperial powers will resort to mass
systematic killings and total warfare. As imperial policy-makers
develop integrated strategic views, in which the entire empire is seen
as dependent on the security of each puppet ruler in each nation,
the more likely they pursue the strategy of 'total war' in which
the lines between civilians and combatants, private and public,
life-sustaining economies and war industries are obliterated (17).
Empires are built around networks, of supply chains, raw material
and labor exploitation, military outposts, puppet rulers. They are
sustained by the imperial armies and their domestic supporters on
the basis of the superiority complex of the 'dominant people' over
their colonial subjects. Imperial holocausts are a result of threats
to these 'global networks' and not always directly related to any
immediate economic gain in a particular site of execution. That is why
holocausts cannot be explained by a simple cost-benefit analysis of
economic gains and losses. For example, all imperial powers engage
in what they describe as exemplary mass killings of civilians to
induce surrender, submission, dispossession and obedience to imperial
rule. The US massive military assault on Iraqi cities was appropriately
called "shock and awe". The Nazis pursued "scorched earth" policies
in Russia. The US-backed client ruler Rios Mont obliterated hundreds
of Mayan Indian villages in Guatemala Israeli exemplary killings
of Palestinians succeeded in driving millions from the lands to be
occupied and exploited (18).
When imperial powers engage in the horrors of holocausts, they
justify their crimes in the name of a 'sacred cause' based on the
'highest and most noble historical mission'. Otherwise the repugnancy
of their acts might cast some doubts within the imperial armies. The
JNH was seen as 'liberating' the German people from the tentacles
of a 'Jewish conspiracy'; the conquest of Russia and its holocaust
was seen as 'creating living space for the German free spirit'. The
US holocaust in Asia was presented as 'freeing the people from the
yoke of totalitarianism'. The Israeli holocaust of Palestinians was
and is described as 'delivering the Jewish people to their Promised
Land'. All imperial holocausts are described and justified in the
name of a phony 'national liberation' in which the imperial rulers
assume their mantle of 'chosen people', by God, History or Genetics.
Holocausts result from the disintegration of empires. They are
instruments of "national reconstruction" intent on providing "new
blood" to sweep away decadent rulers and "privileged" minorities. The
Turkish genocide (1915-1917) of the Armenians, authored by the 'Young
Turks' is a prime example of "national revitalization" of a decaying
empire via holocaust of suspected "separatists". Likewise the JNH
was in part a result of the defeat and dismemberment of the German
Empire and the Nazi attempt to blame internal ('Jewish') betrayals.
In summary imperialism is based on domestic consensus and social
cohesion in order to mobilize the entire nation for external wars and
conquest, especially where there are sharp class cleavages. A war or
'holocaust' against internal ethnic minorities serves to displace
discontent from class struggles to ethnic and imperial wars. Holocausts
are always infused with an ideology of 'moral regeneration' and the
mass slaughter of subject peoples serves to heighten the sense of
'moral people' punishing 'degenerate' or inferior people. Mythologies
of exclusive claims based on 'folk' religions or 'historic imperative'
are instrumentalized in the service of modern empire building.
Why Imperialism Leads to Holocausts
By its nature imperialism involves dispossession and acquisition
of economic resources, labor, political and economic dominance
and/or territory (19). Empire-building is a process which entails
mass killings as well as 'diplomacy' to secure international and
elite acquiescence. Internal holocausts can be seen as a kind of
'primitive accumulation of capital' seizing the economic resources of
a victimized minority and their transfer to the elites which direct
imperial conquests. In the case of overseas imperial holocausts,
the seizure of assets, territories and the pillage of agricultural,
mineral and industrial goods leads to general impoverishment, refugees,
a massive 'surplus labor force' and potential enemies. The holocaust
decisions are aimed at reducing the surplus population created by
economic requisitions and pillage by physically annihilating real
and potential guerrilla recruits among the uprooted.
In this context imperialism faces a major contradiction. On the one
hand it engages in a holocaust in order to dispossess millions,
on the other it needs to exploit labor to provide the sepoys who
service and labor to sustain the imperial occupation armies. This
contradiction is resolved by exploiting conquered peoples as slaves,
or cheap labor and killing the non-working 'excess' population. In
most cases the 'holocaust' is a parallel process of mass extermination
and forced labor. In cases where holocaust activity has depleted
local labor or where mass resistance has emerged, it is common for
the imperial-colonial power to import labor, forcibly or otherwise,
from other conquered low-wage regions.
Holocausts as Case Studies in Modernization and Empire-Building
>>From the very first holocaust of the 20th century (The Turkish
Armenian Genocide) the process of mass killing was seen as part of
the modernization and unification of a nation based on state-centered
violence. The subsequent 'ethnic cleansing' of all minorities of
the former Ottoman empire followed a secular republican logic in
which the military assumed the role of defender of the 'modernist'
ethos against 'imagined' enemies clothed in minority guises (20).
The foundation myth and justification for the State of Israel was the
claim that Palestine was a "land without people" and the Jews were a
"people without land" - a myth which became a self-fulfilling prophesy
(and self-serving justification) as Israeli Jews proceeded to forcibly
eject millions of Palestinian Arabs from the occupied lands (21).
The Israeli-Palestinian holocaust continues to be justified by the
existence of a modern democratic, albeit exclusivist, Jewish state,
with exceptional links to a worldwide network of exceptionally wealthy,
financially successful modern elites (22). The interaction of Holocaust
behavior and modernity embedded in dense global networks has powerful
resonance among imperial elites bent on reconstructing Mid-Eastern
empires, especially among civilian militarists in the US.
The JNH was another manifestation of dynamic industrial modernity
harnessed to imperial conquest: the superior German technology
and advanced scientific achievements were based on the internal
cohesion fostered by anti-Semitism internally and anti-Slavism
externally. The result was a 'double holocaust': Jewish and
Russian-Slav extermination campaigns. A basic precondition for the
entire Nazi expansionist-holocaust dynamic was the historic and
irreversible destruction of the Left and all its mass organizations.
Late imperialists¸ like Germany, Japan and the US, all exhibit the
same historic tendencies toward genocidal wars and holocaust-scale
extermination campaigns of conquest. With the exception of Japan -
an ethnically homogenous society - late imperialist states engaged
in large-scale genocidal extermination campaigns against diverse
internal minorities (Indians, Afro-Americans in the US, Jews in
Germany) creating the domestic cohesion and racialist superiority
complex necessary for imperialist conquests and holocausts (Germany
versus the Slavs, the US versus Asians and Central American Indians).
The Japanese-Chinese holocaust (JCH) reached its pinnacle in the
infamous 'Rape of Nanking' when over 300,000 Chinese were raped
and slaughtered in a matter of days in 1938, immediately preceded
and followed by state-planned, systematic extermination of over 7
million Chinese civilians of all ages and classes. Lacking a powerful
holocaust lobby in the West, and given the Cold War realignment of the
West and Japan against the People's Republic of China, no monuments,
foundations, billion dollar compensation have commemorated the JCH,
despite the fact that far more Chinese civilians were murdered than
Jews. No doubt the self-serving claims of Jewish publicists of the
'uniqueness' of the JNH has contributed to collective amnesia.
The ascendancy of the US to the position of dominant imperialist
power was directly related to tri-continental Holocausts, or multiple
holocausts, in Asia, the US-Korean (1950-53) and the US-Indochinese
(1961-1975); in Africa the proxy holocausts in Southern Africa (Angola,
Mozambique, Congo (Zaire) (1961-1990's); Central America (1979-1990)
and the Middle East (Iraq 1991-2006) (23). For methodological
reasons we have excluded the state-directed extermination via the
atomic bombing of Japanese cities (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) and the US
directed proxy extermination campaign in Indonesia in 1966 resulting
in the killing of over 1 million unarmed suspected trade unionists
and communist party members or affiliates and family members. The
death count resulting from the extermination campaign of 'late US
imperialism' are comparable to the Japanese and German predecessors:
four million each in Indo-China and Korea, uncounted millions in the
holocaust of Southern Africa, over 300,000 in the proxy holocausts of
Central America (200,000 Mayans in Guatemala, 75,000 in El Salvador,
50,000 in Nicaragua and 10,000 each in Honduras and Panama, (the
latter inflicted by a direct military invasion) and Iraq - over
700,000 and growing.
The total war strategies employed by US imperialism leads directly
to holocaust-scale killing fields because the distinction between
civilian and military targets are obliterated. Particularly because
the resistance to US Empire is built on deeply held and widely based
beliefs, imperialist conquest deliberately seeks to decimate the huge
reservoir of resistance supporters, recruits and suppliers of food
and intelligence.
One explanation for the multiplication of holocausts under
'late imperialism' is that it takes place in a historic context
more resistant to a revival of colonial-imperial domination. More
specifically, nations resulting from mass anti-colonial movements
which earlier swept aside European and Japanese imperialism are better
prepared socially, politically and militarily to resist the new
US imperialist encroachments. The high levels of anti-imperialist
and nationalist ideology and culture embedded in post-colonial
nations from the mid 20th century onward are in sharp contrast to
the feudal-mercantile societies conquered by European imperialist
powers in the late 19th and early 20th century. To dispossess and
disarticulate highly mobilized nationalist and/or socialist societies
requires greater and wider use of holocaust methods.
Murdering or exiling a few thousand leaders is no longer
sufficient. Whole populations must be made 'examples', or as the
Israeli genocide mongers argue in the case of the Palestinians after
they democratically elected the Hamas government, 'they must assume
the costs', namely daily military assaults and killing of civilians
and a systematic blockade of food and medicine, resulting in widespread
malnutrition (24).
Technological advances in the machinery of mass extermination do
not determine the frequency or occurrences of holocausts, but they
certainly expedite the proceedings. Labor-intensive holocausts - like
the JCH in Nanking - can be just as deadly as the capital-intensive
high-tech gas chambers of Nazi Germany or the US carpet bombing of
cities in Korea, Indochina and Iraq. Nevertheless it is certain that
high technology accelerates the process of extermination and lessens
the possibility that human frailty (like pity or bad conscience)
will weaken the drive toward execution. Holocausts provide incentives
for testing, experimenting and applying, in real time situations,
new extermination processes. For example, the US has experimented
with battle-field nuclear weapons in the form of depleted uranium
during the two Gulf Wars and in the Balkans.
The Israeli-Palestinian Holocaust (IPH) has all the substantive
features of previously mentioned holocausts: long-term, large-scale use
of state terror; dispossession of over 4 million Palestinians; forcing
over 3 millions Palestinians in ghettos; racial ethnic segregation
and separation in all spheres of justice, property ownership,
transportation and geographical movement; citizen rights based on
'blood ties' (maternal lineage); legalized and quasi-legalized torture
and systematic use of collective punishment; a highly militarized
society given to perpetual military assaults on neighboring Palestinian
communities and other Arab states; unilateral extra-territorial,
extra-judicial assassinations; chronic and systematic rejection of
international law; an ideology of permanent warfare and international
paranoia ('anti-Semitism' is everywhere') and an ideology of ethnic
superiority (the 'Chosen People') (25).
Both in the practice of mass state terror and in its legal-ideological
justifications of assassinations of oppositionists, mass dispossession,
and claims of Israel Laws' superiority over international norms,
the Israeli state possesses all the qualifications that exemplify a
holocaust perpetrator. The Palestinian ghetto, the concentration camps
for thousands of suspected 'militants', the destruction of the economic
base of everyday life, the forced massive evictions, systematic ethnic
cleansing - all conform to the pattern of past and present holocausts.
The US/Iraqi Holocaust (UIH), an ongoing process spanning the last 16
years (1990-2006) provides us with a striking example of state-planned
systematic extermination, torture and physical destruction designed
to de-modernize a secular developing society and revert it into a
series of warring clan-tribal-clerical-ethnic based entities devoid
of any national authority or viable economy.
The scale and scope of the US extermination policies in Iraq certainly
warrant its classification as a Holocaust: 500,000 children died
as a result of a murderous economic blockade during the Clinton
Administration (1992-2000) and over 250,000 have died between 2003 to
the present 2006 (26). The US holocaust policy was openly endorsed
by the senior architect of the policy, Secretary of State Madeline
Albright, who, when confronted by the scale and scope of the infant
deaths during the devastating economic blockade (1991-2992), declared,
"It was worth it". The indiscriminant bombing of civilian targets
in both the first and especially second Gulf War -led to the total
destruction of all civilian infrastructure. The widespread systematic
use of depleted uranium coated shells has deadly consequences for
millions in the future. The systematic use of torture and mass murder
of hundreds of thousands of civilians has been fully documented and
is justified by senior officials in the Bush regime and the majority
of both parties in the Congress (27).
In its essentials nothing separates the US extermination campaign
from earlier Holocausts, except that the whole world views it
while it is happening. The UIH is a living Holocaust: taking place
before the eyes and ears of billions of spectators. While worldwide
repugnance to each revelation of particulars is common, so is the
'passive acceptance'. Holocaust activity is made routine: death squad
mass murder fomented by imperial overseers...is reduced to a daily
death toll - immunizing the world community from the horror of a
living Holocaust.
Holocausts: Their Aftermaths and Dubious Legacies
With the exception of the JNH (Jewish-Nazi Holocaust) and possibly the
JCH (Japanese-Chinese Holocaust), none of the rest of the perpetrators
has faced international criminal proceedings. The different treatment
and general impunity is a direct result of military outcomes and
political power. The Nazi and Japanese holocaust regimes were defeated;
the US, Turkey and Israel were not militarily defeated, or at least
not to the point where an international court system could bring them
to trial. Even in the case of the Nazis, apart from a few top leaders
of the Nazi regime, almost all middle rank and below were eventually
exonerated; many later pursued successful careers in business and
politics. Not a few Nazi scientists and other professionals were
actually recruited by the US and West German governments in a variety
of strategic positions. In the case of Japan, a similar process of
prosecution and then restoration of holocaust executives to positions
of power took place, especially after the US and its allies launched
the global counter-revolutionary policies, embodied in the 'Cold
War', a total misnomer given the US military attacks on Korea and
Indochina. In fact Japanese holocaust perpetrators played a major
role in support of two post-World War II US holocausts in Korea and
Indochina by offering military bases, supplies and logistical support.
Several highly publicized unofficial tribunals have taken place,
specifically the Bertrand Russell Tribunal over the US-Indochinese
Holocaust. However their significance was symbolic as they lacked any
mechanism for enforcing their guilty verdicts. None of these Tribunals
received favorable treatment in the mass media or even the slightest
admission of remorse or guilt from any of the perpetrating regimes,
even after a change in the party in power. In other words, there is
a continuing systematic consensus among the perpetrators that their
actions are justified, making a shambles of any notion of the 'rule
of law'.
In fact the United Nations is complicit: it was actively engaged
in the US-Korean Holocaust, is incapable of intervening in the
Israeli-Palestinian Holocaust and provides an institutional cover
to the US-Iraq Holocaust. If the international judicial system has
failed to bring to justice all but top Nazi holocausters, the record
at the level of national relations is also appalling. The Japanese
Koizumi Regime continues to pay homage to past war criminals (yearly
trips by top officials to the Yoshikuni Shrine) and Japanese textbooks
white wash war crimes. This holocaust nostalgia continues to poison
bilateral relations with China, if only at the symbolic-diplomatic
level since Chinese-Japanese economic relations continue to flourish.
Likewise, with the exception of France, no other Western country has
officially condemned the Turkish-Armenian massacre or the Turkish
denial of any responsibility for genocide. Israel, many of whose
people were victims of the Nazi Holocaust, denies the Turkish-Armenian
genocide and excludes any Armenian scholarly representations of
their genocide at the lavishly funded Holocaust forums, conferences,
publications or museums. This is especially galling since Jerusalem was
once the home for many thousands of Armenian genocide survivors. In
fact, Israel has a special strategic military pact with the Turkish
genocide deniers. The same is true with regard to the United States
support of Turkish deniers, where despite strong pressure from the
Armenian-American community and even substantial Congressional backing,
the Executive has blocked any official condemnation of the genocide.
With regard to US holocausts in Asia, Washington followed up
by imposing a murderous economic blockade particularly on North
Korea and Indochina, leading to 'forced self-reliance' and in the
case of Cambodia, spurring the Khmer Rouge regime to engage in an
irrational and deadly forced exodus from the urban centers, a case of
a 'joint-holocaust' - Washington/Khmer Rouge. With the conversion of
the Indochinese elites to capitalism and in the face of international
impunity for US war crimes, US-Vietnamese reconciliation without
justice became the norm. Ironically free-market policies have led to
new imperial exploitation of cheap labor via the market instead of
through military invasions.
With regard to the US-Central American holocaust, there has
been no effort at international criminal proceedings. At most,
former President Clinton expressed a 'pro-forma' apology for US
'support' of its local murderous puppet regime in Guatemala. The
incumbent regimes, themselves US clients, are direct descendents and
beneficiaries of the US-Central American holocausts. Having destroyed
the fabric of society and undermined the local economy via war and
free trade, having demobilized the guerrilla armies, Central America
is a region of deracinated peasants, refugees turned international
migrants and criminal gangs, ruled by kleptocratic politicians and
business oligarchs. Central American survivors and relatives of the
US holocaust victims finding no future in their devastated homeland,
dispossessed of land and employment, flee to North America. In 2006
they face highly repressive anti-immigrant legislation, massive
criminalization, dispossession, imprisonment and
--Boundary_(ID_ZAbRZD6WWmPVkeUM88ZvwQ)--
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
James Petras, Axis of Logic
uruknet.info, Italy
July 21 2006
July 21, 2006
Holocausts involve large-scale, systematic state-sponsored
extermination of large number of civilian non-combatants over an
extended time period based on their ethnic, racial, class or religious
identity. All the holocausts of the Twentieth and Twenty-first
centuries were preceded by state or civil society violence against
the victimized peoples. In general, prior to the execution of the
holocausts, important sectors of the state and civil society opposed
violence directed against the victimized population. However once the
perpetrators of the holocausts gained state power they were able to
neutralize, silence, repress or co-opt previous oppositionists.
A number of theorists have attempted to explain holocaust(s) by
focusing exclusively on a single case - Nazi Germany's extermination of
large sectors of the Jewish communities in Western, Central and Eastern
Europe. Methodologically this focus on a single case involving only
European Jews fails the empirical test: it cannot explain previous,
contemporary and subsequent holocausts affecting other European,
Asian and Latin America victims.
The claims by mainly, but not exclusively, Jewish scholars of the
"uniqueness" of the Jewish-Nazi victims flies in the face of vast
historical data and in fact serves as a justification for continued
large-scale monetary compensation (1) and for the exercise of colonial
expansion in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East, using the same
techniques as were practiced by their Nazi oppressors (practices of
collective guilt, racially based legislation, legalized mass torture,
and ethnic cleansing).
Critique of the 'Uniqueness' of Nazi-Jewish Holocaust
Modern holocausts did not begin in the 20th century, nineteenth century
English, US and Belgian genocidal practices in India, the US West and
the Congo attest to its pre-modern roots (2). While there are important
differences between nineteenth century and twentieth and twenty-first
century holocausts, they have one common underlying driving force -
they are all linked to empire building or a response to challenges
to empire.
The claims of the "uniqueness" of the "Jewish-Nazi holocaust (JNH) rest
on several dubious arguments, which can be quickly and easily disposed.
Proponents of the JNH argue in terms of quantity of killings:
6 million Jews (3). Yet during the exact same period the Nazis and
their allies systematically slaughtered 20 million Soviet civilians -
the majority Russians (4). Likewise upward of 10 million Chinese were
killed by the Japanese between 1937-1942 (5). In both Indo-China (6)
and Korea (7), civilian deaths numbered close to 3-4 million each
during US massive bombing and occupation. The argument for superior
victimhood and thus the "uniqueness" of the "Jewish Holocaust" based
on the number of victims has no validity.
The second claim for the thesis of the uniqueness of the JNH is
the role of the state in systematically exterminating its Jewish
victims. This argument also lacks historical validity. The Young
Turks in the declining years of the Ottoman empire, developed
a systematic extermination policy leading to the genocide of the
Armenian people 1915-1917, and over 1.5 million deaths (8). Likewise
under US "counter-insurgency" policy of carpet bombings (Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia) over 4 million civilians were killed. US-directed
scorched earth policies in Central America during the 1980's led to the
systematic killing of over 200,000 Mayan Indians and the destruction
of over 250 village communities (9). Likewise the US scientifically
planned embargo against Iraq (1991-2003) and the ongoing invasion and
occupation (March 2003 to present) led to over 500,000 infant deaths
(1991-2002) and over 200,000 civilian killings since the US invasion
(10).
Other claimants for JNH uniqueness cite the racialist-exterminationist
ideology - forgetting the deeply embedded racial basis of Japanese
genocidal policies versus the Chinese, the Central American puppet
regimes virulent racist anti-Mayan extermination campaigns to cite
only two graphic examples.
Some Jewish historians, such as Goldhagen, borrowing Nazi
historiographic methods claim the 'uniqueness' thesis on the basis
of the culpability of the entire German people and their history
(11). This propaganda rant by a tenured Harvard professor overlooks
the fact that the Nazi's only secured 37.3% of the German vote in
July 1932 and fell to about one-third of the electorate in November
1932 before assuming power (12). Goldhagen overlooks the fact that
more than one-third of Germans (especially workers) voted for the
Socialist-Communist candidates who were fiercely anti-Nazi and
supportive of Jewish rights (13). Historically the argument is
even weaker - the overt anti-Semitic movements, opinion leaders
and politicians were marginal to German political life before the
late 1920's. And, of course, it ignores the German 'high culture'
based on the enlightenment, which included many Jews and contributed
to a grand cultural heritage in music, sciences, literature and
philosophy. Finally the notion of collective guilt of entire civil
society refuses to recognize that the Nazis' first major political
round-up involved tens of thousands of Germans - mostly Communists,
trade unionists and militant anti-fascists who were exterminated in the
first concentration camps including Buchenwald and Baden-Baden. The
post-facto argument that there was little overt German resistance
once the totalitarian terrorist regime had consolidated power, had
little to do with German 'acquiescence' with anti-Semitism and more
to do with the effectiveness of state repression.
In any case, assuming that perhaps nearly 50% of German civil
society acquiesced or even supported (the more dubious assumption)
state genocide, this was not unique to the JNH; the same proportion
supported the extermination of three times as many Slavs (described
by Nazi racial hygiene 'scientists' as beastlike sub-'Untermenschen'
destined to be worked to death). Substantial sectors of Turkish and
Kurdish civil society participated in the killing and plundering
of Armenians. US civil society in its majority re-elected Reagan
following his public support for the Guatemalan dictator Rios Mont -
who exterminated Mayan people. The overwhelming majority of Israeli
'civil' society finances and serves in the military colonization and
dispossession of 4 million Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian
Holocaust (14). Japanese civil society by and large endorsed the
Nanking massacre and its aftermath.
The argument about the unique bonds between the Nazi state and civil
society and the extermination of Jews is untenable once we look
beyond the blinkered eyes of biased historiography. The evidence is
so overwhelming and obvious that one needs to explore the "sociology
of knowledge" of the advocates of Jewish holocaust uniqueness: What
political and economic ends does it serve in terms of contemporary
Israeli power enhancement? The use and abuse of history, particularly
in the case of the uniqueness of the NJH, has highly prejudicial
consequences especially in the perpetration of the Palestinian
Holocaust. Manipulation of holocaust victimhood has contributed to
disproportional influence by pro-Israeli lobbies in securing US and EU
funding of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The use of ethno-racial
explanations of holocausts, including notions of "collective guilt"
can spill over into forms of "collective punishment" of families,
communities and peoples who have nothing to do with alleged offenses
to unique victims turned regional powers. This is particularly evident
in the thinking of many of contemporary Israeli and Jewish terror
experts professing to be knowledgeable about "the Arab Mind".
Critique of Psycho-Cultural Explanations
Explanations of holocausts which focus on "irrational mass behavior"
or more generally on "mass psychology" overlook the central importance
of elite manipulation, anchored in the state, the economy and civil
society. In none of the holocausts in the 20th and 21st centuries
were the "masses" in a position to initiate, organize and direct
holocausts, though, certainly, sectors of the lower class carried out
the policies, and in some cases benefited directly from the spoils of
the killing fields. Holocausts in the first instance are state-centered
activities, which exploit one of a myriad of contradictory attitudes
among the general population (prejudice against the targeted group),
and instrumentalize it to create cohesion around elite expansionist
or more precisely imperialist policies.
The ruling classes which support state-sponsored holocausts do so,
not so much because of irrational ethnic or class hatred, but because
the holocaust provides the state a legitimating ideology for their
uncontested dominance and a basis for undisputed economic exploitation
in domestic and overseas markets. The cultural and psychological
determinants of 'holocausts' are, in fact, based on the larger
geo-political and economic imperial interests of the state. There
is no 'single' cultural or psychological attribute embedded in any
holocaust-inducing society. There are many competing and parallel
cultures and diverse psychologies. Under the imperatives of the
imperial state expansion, aided and abetted by state-influenced
religious institutions, political parties and the mass media, the
largely (but not exclusively) manipulated masses of the population
take an active role in mass murder.
To point to cultural and psychological explanations of holocausts is to
distract from the central role of imperial politics and the state. To
focus exclusively on ideology is to overlook the social structural
framework in which 'genocidal' ideology functions, is nurtured,
financed and sustained. Take away the key political and economic
foundations, the imperatives of imperial conquest and the need for
internal cohesion, and projected holocausts fail to materialize. On
the other hand, continuous imperial structures lead to the recurrence
of holocausts, as is witnessed by four major 20th and 21st century
holocausts involving US imperialism: the killing of 4 million Koreans
(1950-53); 4 million Indo-Chinese (1960-1975), 300,000 Mayans of
Guatemala (1980-83), and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (1991-2002)
and (2003-present).
Holocaust elites, in pursuit of imperial conquest create stakeholders
among specific social classes who directly benefit. Turkish and
Kurdish landholders and peasants seized Armenian property. German
doctors took over their murdered Jewish colleagues' practices and
university posts. Japanese business elites took over Manchurian mining
companies. The US military pillaged priceless antiquities and the
wealth from conquered Asia. Pillage and large-scale dispossession
of victims creates vertical links between the imperial elite and its
lowest echelons creating the transient reality of an imperial people
engaged in collective genocide.
Holocausts are organized through the perpetrators' recruitment of
collaborators from among the targeted victims. The Germans formed
"Jewish police (kapos)" and "councils" to prepare for the Jewish
holocaust and Ukrainians and White Russian soldiers for the Russian
holocaust. Japan formed "puppet regimes" while it killed tens of
millions of Chinese. The US puppet rulers, Sygman Rhee in Korea and
Diem in Vietnam served as political facades while B52 bombers destroyed
their countries with millions of tons of explosives, napalm and poisons
like Agent Orange - killing and maiming millions. Holocausts are in
some cases joint ventures between imperial elites and sectors of the
upper classes that feel threatened by the victimized people. Hence in
Guatemala, the US and Israeli specialists in mass murder joined with
the White European-descended Guatemalan elites to massacre entire
Indian populations, seizing and redistributing their lands as part
of the holocaust process.
In summary, holocausts have deep structural roots; they are
multi-layered and rooted in a multiplicity of collaborators, and
low-level beneficiaries. They are top-down processes rather than
society-wide events, in which the state plays a dominant role in
order to secure internal cohesion for external expansion.
Alternative Explanations of Holocaust
Explanations of holocausts based on notions of "cultural collective
guilt" and "psycho-social" phenomena are empirically unsubstantiated
or at best largely derivative and partial explanations. Their greatest
weakness is the lack of an understanding of the structural dynamics
of imperialism.
What is common to all 20th and 21st century holocausts is their
deep and intimate relation to imperialism, whether in the form
of outward conquest or in terms of creating "internal cohesion"
to embark on empire-building. While not all holocausts are a result
of imperialism (some result from 'internal' capital accumulations -
Stalin's forced collectivization - 1929-34), all imperialisms have
resulted in holocausts, from the 19th century to the present.
Holocaust, Cohesion and Imperialism
The JNH is an example of the ruling elite victimizing a minority
population to create cross class cohesion, diverting the masses from
internal labor-capital conflicts and the real or potential costs of the
imperialist policies. Instead of focusing on capitalist exploitation,
the ruling elite directed worker and middle class discontent to Jewish
bankers and capitalists.
This propaganda was especially effective in professions like medicine
and retail trade in which competition for positions and market shares
between Jews and non-Jews was especially intense. The passing from
intensified exclusion and ethnic discrimination to the practice of
genocide coincided with the massive military, economic and political
expansion and conquest of the late 1930's and early 1940's. As the
costs of empire-building increased, so did the need to distract the
population by perpetuating mass murder. Parallel to the JNH, the
imperial conquest of great swaths of Eastern Europe and especially
Russia led to an even greater holocaust, the killing of 30 million
Slavs and the enslavement of many millions more to the imperial
-capital war machine.
Holocaust accompanied Japanese imperialist conquests and colonial rule
in China from the late 1930's to 1945. The large-scale systematic
murder of millions of Chinese peasants, shopkeepers, workers,
teachers, in fact all but the highest elite collaborator classes,
was an extreme form of colonial dispossession of property and life
to fuel empire-building and to subsidize and retain loyalty among
the Japanese masses at home (15).
Holocausts occurred as a result of mass revolutionary challenges
to unpopular puppet rulers, undermining pretensions of invincible
imperial dominance. The US military intervention and occupation of
Korea and Indo-China to prop up failed regimes led to the killing of
eight million civilian victims, the total destruction of wide areas
of the economy through genocidal carpet-bombing and chemical warfare
leaving the industrial sectors in rubble, decimating farmland and
causing long-term genetic damage to subsequent generations. The scale
and scope of the imperial killing fields however failed to defeat
the popular national liberation armies. Internal cohesion especially
during the US-Korean holocaust was accompanied by a deep political
purge of US dissidents in civil society and public employment. However
the high human costs in terms of US imperial soldiers lost and the
spiraling financial expenditures (if not the holocaust itself) forced
the imperial rulers to sign an armistice (16)
The greater the size, effectiveness and popularity of national
liberation movements, the bigger the threat to an imperial puppet
rulers, the more likely that imperial powers will resort to mass
systematic killings and total warfare. As imperial policy-makers
develop integrated strategic views, in which the entire empire is seen
as dependent on the security of each puppet ruler in each nation,
the more likely they pursue the strategy of 'total war' in which
the lines between civilians and combatants, private and public,
life-sustaining economies and war industries are obliterated (17).
Empires are built around networks, of supply chains, raw material
and labor exploitation, military outposts, puppet rulers. They are
sustained by the imperial armies and their domestic supporters on
the basis of the superiority complex of the 'dominant people' over
their colonial subjects. Imperial holocausts are a result of threats
to these 'global networks' and not always directly related to any
immediate economic gain in a particular site of execution. That is why
holocausts cannot be explained by a simple cost-benefit analysis of
economic gains and losses. For example, all imperial powers engage
in what they describe as exemplary mass killings of civilians to
induce surrender, submission, dispossession and obedience to imperial
rule. The US massive military assault on Iraqi cities was appropriately
called "shock and awe". The Nazis pursued "scorched earth" policies
in Russia. The US-backed client ruler Rios Mont obliterated hundreds
of Mayan Indian villages in Guatemala Israeli exemplary killings
of Palestinians succeeded in driving millions from the lands to be
occupied and exploited (18).
When imperial powers engage in the horrors of holocausts, they
justify their crimes in the name of a 'sacred cause' based on the
'highest and most noble historical mission'. Otherwise the repugnancy
of their acts might cast some doubts within the imperial armies. The
JNH was seen as 'liberating' the German people from the tentacles
of a 'Jewish conspiracy'; the conquest of Russia and its holocaust
was seen as 'creating living space for the German free spirit'. The
US holocaust in Asia was presented as 'freeing the people from the
yoke of totalitarianism'. The Israeli holocaust of Palestinians was
and is described as 'delivering the Jewish people to their Promised
Land'. All imperial holocausts are described and justified in the
name of a phony 'national liberation' in which the imperial rulers
assume their mantle of 'chosen people', by God, History or Genetics.
Holocausts result from the disintegration of empires. They are
instruments of "national reconstruction" intent on providing "new
blood" to sweep away decadent rulers and "privileged" minorities. The
Turkish genocide (1915-1917) of the Armenians, authored by the 'Young
Turks' is a prime example of "national revitalization" of a decaying
empire via holocaust of suspected "separatists". Likewise the JNH
was in part a result of the defeat and dismemberment of the German
Empire and the Nazi attempt to blame internal ('Jewish') betrayals.
In summary imperialism is based on domestic consensus and social
cohesion in order to mobilize the entire nation for external wars and
conquest, especially where there are sharp class cleavages. A war or
'holocaust' against internal ethnic minorities serves to displace
discontent from class struggles to ethnic and imperial wars. Holocausts
are always infused with an ideology of 'moral regeneration' and the
mass slaughter of subject peoples serves to heighten the sense of
'moral people' punishing 'degenerate' or inferior people. Mythologies
of exclusive claims based on 'folk' religions or 'historic imperative'
are instrumentalized in the service of modern empire building.
Why Imperialism Leads to Holocausts
By its nature imperialism involves dispossession and acquisition
of economic resources, labor, political and economic dominance
and/or territory (19). Empire-building is a process which entails
mass killings as well as 'diplomacy' to secure international and
elite acquiescence. Internal holocausts can be seen as a kind of
'primitive accumulation of capital' seizing the economic resources of
a victimized minority and their transfer to the elites which direct
imperial conquests. In the case of overseas imperial holocausts,
the seizure of assets, territories and the pillage of agricultural,
mineral and industrial goods leads to general impoverishment, refugees,
a massive 'surplus labor force' and potential enemies. The holocaust
decisions are aimed at reducing the surplus population created by
economic requisitions and pillage by physically annihilating real
and potential guerrilla recruits among the uprooted.
In this context imperialism faces a major contradiction. On the one
hand it engages in a holocaust in order to dispossess millions,
on the other it needs to exploit labor to provide the sepoys who
service and labor to sustain the imperial occupation armies. This
contradiction is resolved by exploiting conquered peoples as slaves,
or cheap labor and killing the non-working 'excess' population. In
most cases the 'holocaust' is a parallel process of mass extermination
and forced labor. In cases where holocaust activity has depleted
local labor or where mass resistance has emerged, it is common for
the imperial-colonial power to import labor, forcibly or otherwise,
from other conquered low-wage regions.
Holocausts as Case Studies in Modernization and Empire-Building
>>From the very first holocaust of the 20th century (The Turkish
Armenian Genocide) the process of mass killing was seen as part of
the modernization and unification of a nation based on state-centered
violence. The subsequent 'ethnic cleansing' of all minorities of
the former Ottoman empire followed a secular republican logic in
which the military assumed the role of defender of the 'modernist'
ethos against 'imagined' enemies clothed in minority guises (20).
The foundation myth and justification for the State of Israel was the
claim that Palestine was a "land without people" and the Jews were a
"people without land" - a myth which became a self-fulfilling prophesy
(and self-serving justification) as Israeli Jews proceeded to forcibly
eject millions of Palestinian Arabs from the occupied lands (21).
The Israeli-Palestinian holocaust continues to be justified by the
existence of a modern democratic, albeit exclusivist, Jewish state,
with exceptional links to a worldwide network of exceptionally wealthy,
financially successful modern elites (22). The interaction of Holocaust
behavior and modernity embedded in dense global networks has powerful
resonance among imperial elites bent on reconstructing Mid-Eastern
empires, especially among civilian militarists in the US.
The JNH was another manifestation of dynamic industrial modernity
harnessed to imperial conquest: the superior German technology
and advanced scientific achievements were based on the internal
cohesion fostered by anti-Semitism internally and anti-Slavism
externally. The result was a 'double holocaust': Jewish and
Russian-Slav extermination campaigns. A basic precondition for the
entire Nazi expansionist-holocaust dynamic was the historic and
irreversible destruction of the Left and all its mass organizations.
Late imperialists¸ like Germany, Japan and the US, all exhibit the
same historic tendencies toward genocidal wars and holocaust-scale
extermination campaigns of conquest. With the exception of Japan -
an ethnically homogenous society - late imperialist states engaged
in large-scale genocidal extermination campaigns against diverse
internal minorities (Indians, Afro-Americans in the US, Jews in
Germany) creating the domestic cohesion and racialist superiority
complex necessary for imperialist conquests and holocausts (Germany
versus the Slavs, the US versus Asians and Central American Indians).
The Japanese-Chinese holocaust (JCH) reached its pinnacle in the
infamous 'Rape of Nanking' when over 300,000 Chinese were raped
and slaughtered in a matter of days in 1938, immediately preceded
and followed by state-planned, systematic extermination of over 7
million Chinese civilians of all ages and classes. Lacking a powerful
holocaust lobby in the West, and given the Cold War realignment of the
West and Japan against the People's Republic of China, no monuments,
foundations, billion dollar compensation have commemorated the JCH,
despite the fact that far more Chinese civilians were murdered than
Jews. No doubt the self-serving claims of Jewish publicists of the
'uniqueness' of the JNH has contributed to collective amnesia.
The ascendancy of the US to the position of dominant imperialist
power was directly related to tri-continental Holocausts, or multiple
holocausts, in Asia, the US-Korean (1950-53) and the US-Indochinese
(1961-1975); in Africa the proxy holocausts in Southern Africa (Angola,
Mozambique, Congo (Zaire) (1961-1990's); Central America (1979-1990)
and the Middle East (Iraq 1991-2006) (23). For methodological
reasons we have excluded the state-directed extermination via the
atomic bombing of Japanese cities (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) and the US
directed proxy extermination campaign in Indonesia in 1966 resulting
in the killing of over 1 million unarmed suspected trade unionists
and communist party members or affiliates and family members. The
death count resulting from the extermination campaign of 'late US
imperialism' are comparable to the Japanese and German predecessors:
four million each in Indo-China and Korea, uncounted millions in the
holocaust of Southern Africa, over 300,000 in the proxy holocausts of
Central America (200,000 Mayans in Guatemala, 75,000 in El Salvador,
50,000 in Nicaragua and 10,000 each in Honduras and Panama, (the
latter inflicted by a direct military invasion) and Iraq - over
700,000 and growing.
The total war strategies employed by US imperialism leads directly
to holocaust-scale killing fields because the distinction between
civilian and military targets are obliterated. Particularly because
the resistance to US Empire is built on deeply held and widely based
beliefs, imperialist conquest deliberately seeks to decimate the huge
reservoir of resistance supporters, recruits and suppliers of food
and intelligence.
One explanation for the multiplication of holocausts under
'late imperialism' is that it takes place in a historic context
more resistant to a revival of colonial-imperial domination. More
specifically, nations resulting from mass anti-colonial movements
which earlier swept aside European and Japanese imperialism are better
prepared socially, politically and militarily to resist the new
US imperialist encroachments. The high levels of anti-imperialist
and nationalist ideology and culture embedded in post-colonial
nations from the mid 20th century onward are in sharp contrast to
the feudal-mercantile societies conquered by European imperialist
powers in the late 19th and early 20th century. To dispossess and
disarticulate highly mobilized nationalist and/or socialist societies
requires greater and wider use of holocaust methods.
Murdering or exiling a few thousand leaders is no longer
sufficient. Whole populations must be made 'examples', or as the
Israeli genocide mongers argue in the case of the Palestinians after
they democratically elected the Hamas government, 'they must assume
the costs', namely daily military assaults and killing of civilians
and a systematic blockade of food and medicine, resulting in widespread
malnutrition (24).
Technological advances in the machinery of mass extermination do
not determine the frequency or occurrences of holocausts, but they
certainly expedite the proceedings. Labor-intensive holocausts - like
the JCH in Nanking - can be just as deadly as the capital-intensive
high-tech gas chambers of Nazi Germany or the US carpet bombing of
cities in Korea, Indochina and Iraq. Nevertheless it is certain that
high technology accelerates the process of extermination and lessens
the possibility that human frailty (like pity or bad conscience)
will weaken the drive toward execution. Holocausts provide incentives
for testing, experimenting and applying, in real time situations,
new extermination processes. For example, the US has experimented
with battle-field nuclear weapons in the form of depleted uranium
during the two Gulf Wars and in the Balkans.
The Israeli-Palestinian Holocaust (IPH) has all the substantive
features of previously mentioned holocausts: long-term, large-scale use
of state terror; dispossession of over 4 million Palestinians; forcing
over 3 millions Palestinians in ghettos; racial ethnic segregation
and separation in all spheres of justice, property ownership,
transportation and geographical movement; citizen rights based on
'blood ties' (maternal lineage); legalized and quasi-legalized torture
and systematic use of collective punishment; a highly militarized
society given to perpetual military assaults on neighboring Palestinian
communities and other Arab states; unilateral extra-territorial,
extra-judicial assassinations; chronic and systematic rejection of
international law; an ideology of permanent warfare and international
paranoia ('anti-Semitism' is everywhere') and an ideology of ethnic
superiority (the 'Chosen People') (25).
Both in the practice of mass state terror and in its legal-ideological
justifications of assassinations of oppositionists, mass dispossession,
and claims of Israel Laws' superiority over international norms,
the Israeli state possesses all the qualifications that exemplify a
holocaust perpetrator. The Palestinian ghetto, the concentration camps
for thousands of suspected 'militants', the destruction of the economic
base of everyday life, the forced massive evictions, systematic ethnic
cleansing - all conform to the pattern of past and present holocausts.
The US/Iraqi Holocaust (UIH), an ongoing process spanning the last 16
years (1990-2006) provides us with a striking example of state-planned
systematic extermination, torture and physical destruction designed
to de-modernize a secular developing society and revert it into a
series of warring clan-tribal-clerical-ethnic based entities devoid
of any national authority or viable economy.
The scale and scope of the US extermination policies in Iraq certainly
warrant its classification as a Holocaust: 500,000 children died
as a result of a murderous economic blockade during the Clinton
Administration (1992-2000) and over 250,000 have died between 2003 to
the present 2006 (26). The US holocaust policy was openly endorsed
by the senior architect of the policy, Secretary of State Madeline
Albright, who, when confronted by the scale and scope of the infant
deaths during the devastating economic blockade (1991-2992), declared,
"It was worth it". The indiscriminant bombing of civilian targets
in both the first and especially second Gulf War -led to the total
destruction of all civilian infrastructure. The widespread systematic
use of depleted uranium coated shells has deadly consequences for
millions in the future. The systematic use of torture and mass murder
of hundreds of thousands of civilians has been fully documented and
is justified by senior officials in the Bush regime and the majority
of both parties in the Congress (27).
In its essentials nothing separates the US extermination campaign
from earlier Holocausts, except that the whole world views it
while it is happening. The UIH is a living Holocaust: taking place
before the eyes and ears of billions of spectators. While worldwide
repugnance to each revelation of particulars is common, so is the
'passive acceptance'. Holocaust activity is made routine: death squad
mass murder fomented by imperial overseers...is reduced to a daily
death toll - immunizing the world community from the horror of a
living Holocaust.
Holocausts: Their Aftermaths and Dubious Legacies
With the exception of the JNH (Jewish-Nazi Holocaust) and possibly the
JCH (Japanese-Chinese Holocaust), none of the rest of the perpetrators
has faced international criminal proceedings. The different treatment
and general impunity is a direct result of military outcomes and
political power. The Nazi and Japanese holocaust regimes were defeated;
the US, Turkey and Israel were not militarily defeated, or at least
not to the point where an international court system could bring them
to trial. Even in the case of the Nazis, apart from a few top leaders
of the Nazi regime, almost all middle rank and below were eventually
exonerated; many later pursued successful careers in business and
politics. Not a few Nazi scientists and other professionals were
actually recruited by the US and West German governments in a variety
of strategic positions. In the case of Japan, a similar process of
prosecution and then restoration of holocaust executives to positions
of power took place, especially after the US and its allies launched
the global counter-revolutionary policies, embodied in the 'Cold
War', a total misnomer given the US military attacks on Korea and
Indochina. In fact Japanese holocaust perpetrators played a major
role in support of two post-World War II US holocausts in Korea and
Indochina by offering military bases, supplies and logistical support.
Several highly publicized unofficial tribunals have taken place,
specifically the Bertrand Russell Tribunal over the US-Indochinese
Holocaust. However their significance was symbolic as they lacked any
mechanism for enforcing their guilty verdicts. None of these Tribunals
received favorable treatment in the mass media or even the slightest
admission of remorse or guilt from any of the perpetrating regimes,
even after a change in the party in power. In other words, there is
a continuing systematic consensus among the perpetrators that their
actions are justified, making a shambles of any notion of the 'rule
of law'.
In fact the United Nations is complicit: it was actively engaged
in the US-Korean Holocaust, is incapable of intervening in the
Israeli-Palestinian Holocaust and provides an institutional cover
to the US-Iraq Holocaust. If the international judicial system has
failed to bring to justice all but top Nazi holocausters, the record
at the level of national relations is also appalling. The Japanese
Koizumi Regime continues to pay homage to past war criminals (yearly
trips by top officials to the Yoshikuni Shrine) and Japanese textbooks
white wash war crimes. This holocaust nostalgia continues to poison
bilateral relations with China, if only at the symbolic-diplomatic
level since Chinese-Japanese economic relations continue to flourish.
Likewise, with the exception of France, no other Western country has
officially condemned the Turkish-Armenian massacre or the Turkish
denial of any responsibility for genocide. Israel, many of whose
people were victims of the Nazi Holocaust, denies the Turkish-Armenian
genocide and excludes any Armenian scholarly representations of
their genocide at the lavishly funded Holocaust forums, conferences,
publications or museums. This is especially galling since Jerusalem was
once the home for many thousands of Armenian genocide survivors. In
fact, Israel has a special strategic military pact with the Turkish
genocide deniers. The same is true with regard to the United States
support of Turkish deniers, where despite strong pressure from the
Armenian-American community and even substantial Congressional backing,
the Executive has blocked any official condemnation of the genocide.
With regard to US holocausts in Asia, Washington followed up
by imposing a murderous economic blockade particularly on North
Korea and Indochina, leading to 'forced self-reliance' and in the
case of Cambodia, spurring the Khmer Rouge regime to engage in an
irrational and deadly forced exodus from the urban centers, a case of
a 'joint-holocaust' - Washington/Khmer Rouge. With the conversion of
the Indochinese elites to capitalism and in the face of international
impunity for US war crimes, US-Vietnamese reconciliation without
justice became the norm. Ironically free-market policies have led to
new imperial exploitation of cheap labor via the market instead of
through military invasions.
With regard to the US-Central American holocaust, there has
been no effort at international criminal proceedings. At most,
former President Clinton expressed a 'pro-forma' apology for US
'support' of its local murderous puppet regime in Guatemala. The
incumbent regimes, themselves US clients, are direct descendents and
beneficiaries of the US-Central American holocausts. Having destroyed
the fabric of society and undermined the local economy via war and
free trade, having demobilized the guerrilla armies, Central America
is a region of deracinated peasants, refugees turned international
migrants and criminal gangs, ruled by kleptocratic politicians and
business oligarchs. Central American survivors and relatives of the
US holocaust victims finding no future in their devastated homeland,
dispossessed of land and employment, flee to North America. In 2006
they face highly repressive anti-immigrant legislation, massive
criminalization, dispossession, imprisonment and
--Boundary_(ID_ZAbRZD6WWmPVkeUM88ZvwQ)--
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress