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"DENIAL" BOOK IGNORES UK & US GENOCIDE CRIMES
MWC News
Nov 6 2008
Canada
"Denial. History betrayed" by Tony Taylor (Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 2008) is a very well written, well annotated and well
referenced book that deals with the phenomenon of "holocaust denial"
and, in general, the denial of horrendous abuses of humanity. This
is an important book that should certainly be read by everyone and
should be in every library.
However inevitably "Denial" can be criticized and the most fundamental
criticism is that this otherwise excellent Mainstream Anglo book,
published by a prestigious Mainstream Anglo publisher, itself ignores
major 20th century and ongoing 21st century holocausts and genocides
due to Anglo-American imperialism.
Holocaust denial is wrong and utterly repugnant for 3 major reasons:
(1) it is falsehood; (2) it is profoundly offensive to the memory of
the victims, survivors of such atrocities, their loved ones and indeed
to all of decent humanity; and (3) it increases the probability of
repetition of such awful crimes - history ignored and history denied
yields history repeated. Indeed one supposes that it is for these
sorts of reasons that Germany recently proposed a measure for the
EU that would criminalize not only those who deny or diminish the
Jewish Holocaust but those belittling any relatively recent genocide,
mass murder, war crimes and other crimes against humanity.
Already denial or minimization of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust
is a criminal offence attracting up to 10 years of imprisonment in
Austria and custodial punishment in many other European countries,
Indeed denial of the Armenian Genocide (up to 1.5 million Armenians
murdered in Turkey in the period 1915-1923) is an offence in both
France and Belgium. However such criminalization of "opinion" disturbs
many intellectuals because of the implicit threat to "free speech"
and scholarly investigation. Thus, as related in "Denial" (p168),
outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT)
defended the right of free speech of a Holocaust-minimizing French
academic, and Jewish American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt
(Emory University) (famous participant in the David Irving versus
Penguin defamation trial in London) thought that Holocaust denial
should not be criminalised because of the seriousness of repression
of free speech in a democratic society.
Free speech is absolutely vital for scholarly research and for Rational
Risk Management to minimize risk to Humanity. Indeed Rational Risk
Management (which, for example, has made passenger aviation extremely
safe and can be generally applied to situations from child safety in
schools to operating nuclear power stations) successively involves (a)
accurate information; (b) scientific analysis (involving the critical
testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses); and (c) systemic
change to minimize risk, However Rational Risk Management is typically
perverted by (a) denial, ignoring, lies, slies (spin-based untruths),
deceit, intimidation and censorship; (b) anti-science spin involving
selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position;
and (c) cover-up or blame and shame, with the latter in its most
appalling realization involving war and genocide. It is unfortunate
that "Denial" (written by an Australian Humanities academic) does not
really deal with this core Scientific Risk Management issue (crucial
in my perception as an Australian Science academic - shades of C.P
Snow's "Two Cultures") that is most simply summarized by the adage,
deriving in many versions from George Santayana, that "History ignored
yields History repeated".
In the interests of free speech, scholarship and Rational Risk
Management there should be "no-penalty" criminalization of holocaust
and genocide denial. The most important aspect of a "No-penalty
Genocide Denial Criminalization" (NGDC) system would be the public,
judicial examination of the evidence for gross human rights abuses. It
is public exposure of Genocide and Human Rights Abuses that will help
to protect Humanity in a Rational Risk Management sense. Accordingly,
Holocaust Deniers and Genocide Deniers should be prosecuted and their
views tested by an expertly-informed, public judicial process - but the
punishment would simply be the ignominy of public conviction for Lying,
Denial, Holocaust Denial and Genocide Denial. However, compromising
Free Speech by punishment of Genocide Deniers by anything more than
the public disgrace of conviction will increase the risk to Humanity
(see my article on MWC News entitled "Genocide denial - No-penalty
criminalization required now").
"Denial" commences with a snappy Introduction subtitled "The Pathology
of Historical Denial". It is concerned with the psycho-social basis
of the phenomenon, including "Holocaust denial" but, as indicated
above, does not deal with the core risk management issue. The
book then deals with 6 specific areas of holocaust and holocaust
denial. The term "holocaust" with the lower case "h" is used in the
present review to denote horrendous events involving huge loss of
life in contradistinction to the upper case "H" term "Holocaust",
which is generally used (as in "Denial") as synonymous with the
WW2 Jewish Holocaust or "Shoah" (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from
deprivation). This narrow use of the term "Holocaust" involves
effective Denial of the WW2 Western Theatre Holocaust in general
(30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and the WW2 Eastern Theatre
Holocaust (35 million Chinese dead in the Japanese war on China,
1937-1945 and 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by
the British in the man-made Bengal Famine atrocity, 1943-1945 -
indeed this latter atrocity in British India was the first WW2
atrocity to be described as a "holocaust" (see Jog, N.G. (1944),
Churchill's Blind-Spot: India (New Book Company, Bombay; see also
the 2008 edition of my 1998 book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of
British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis
in biological sustainability"" (see: here ).
The subsequent chapters successively deal with 6 examples of 20th
century holocaust or genocide commission and denial, noting that the
international legal definition of "genocide" (alluded to in "Denial")
is given in Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as "acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group" (sustained, remorseless killing, as for
example in the 1990-2008 Bush Wars, being clearly "intentional")
(see: here ). It is the detailed, documented descriptions of holocaust
commission and holocaust denial, genocide commission and genocide
denial in "Denial" that make this a very important book that everyone
should read and which should be in every institutional library.
That said, from a dispassionate scientific perspective and as amplified
further below, "Denial" (a) errs on the side of conservative death
toll estimates and (b) ignores the non-violent avoidable mortality
(excess mortality, excess deaths, avoidable deaths, deaths that should
not have happened) which is a fundamental parameter for assessing the
consequences of human action and inaction (see "Body Count. Global
avoidable mortality since 1950", G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007:
http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ). Indeed the term "excess deaths"
is used once - and then inaccurately - in "Denial" (p194) : "Russian
excess deaths under Stalin (deaths caused by internal state actions,
and not by war)."
With the foregoing criticisms and comments in mind, the following is a
very brief summary with salient comments of the 6 core phenomenological
chapters of the book.
Chapter 1, "Under Western Eyes: Armenian Massacres and Turkish Denial",
describes Turkish genocide commission and continuing Turkish Armenian
Genocide denial. The upper estimate is of 1.5 million Armenians
killed. Not mentioned is the recent refusal of the US Congress to
acknowledge the Armenian Genocide for fear of offending Turkey, which
is crucial for US conduct of the Iraqi Genocide (Apartheid Israel has
a similar "diplomatic" policy of ignoring the Armenian Genocide and
the notorious US Israel Lobby recently lobbied against Congressional
recognition of the Armenian Genocide).
Chapter 2, "Frauds and Fanatics: The Pathology of Western Holocaust
Denial", deals with the more notorious deniers or minimizers
of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust. Some major themes and works are
unfortunately absent from this analysis, notably the ideological
link between Western European racist, genocidal colonialism and
Nazi German lebensraum-driven industrial genocide (see: Lindqvist,
S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002);
the insidious "normality" aspect of the rise of Nazism (e.g. see
Ella Blum's remarkable perspective as an ordinary German girl "I was
a Billionaire's Daughter", Fast Books, Sydney, 2007); Gitta Sereny's
"The German Trauma. Experiences and Reflections, 1938-2001" (Penguin,
London, 2001); and the estimate from outstanding Jewish history and
20th century history expert Professor Martin Gilbert that 1 in 6 of
the 6 million dead died from deprivation, this being very important
for contemporary comparative purposes (see Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish
History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London).
Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).
Chapter 3, "A Culture of Denial: explaining the Politics of Remembrance
in Modern Japan", deals with Japanese war atrocities in China 1931-1945
and subsequent, continuing "denial". The horrendous overall loss of
Chinese lives is not stated. According to the "official" Chinese
position as enunciated in the China Daily article "Remember role
in ending fascist war"): "the China's resistance against Japanese
aggression lasted for 14 years - longer than any other major power
in the world. The first six years following the Mukden Incident of
1931 was a period of local resistance, while the eight years after
the Lugouqiao Incident of 1937 was a time of full-scale national
struggle for independence and dignity ... In the eight years of tough
resistance, the Chinese made great sacrifices. More than 35 million
Chinese military personnel and civilians were killed or wounded. In the
Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre alone, some 300,000 Chinese were slain by
the Japanese invaders." Upper estimates are of 15-20 million violently
killed but we must also acknowledge non-violent deaths from deprivation
due to social disruption (thus the ratio of violent/non-violent excess
deaths in Occupied Iraq is about 1) - accordingly, total excess deaths
due to the Japanese invasion and occupation are about 35 million.
Chapter 4, British Communism and Two Decades of Denial: From
Moscow 1936 to Budapest 1956, deals with the immense crimes of
Soviet Communism and the "denial" of British Communists. This is
arguably the best chapter of the book. I was pleased to see that
about a page was devoted to my grandmother's cousin Dr Edith Bone,
a correspondent for the London Daily Worker abusively imprisoned in
solitary confinement for 7 years as told in her remarkable book about
her mental and physical survival (Bone, E. (1957), Seven Years'
Solitary (Hamish Hamilton, London)). Not mentioned were that,
not surprisingly, she gave up on Communism after this experience
and the lack of action of British Governments to rescue a (Jewish,
Communist) British citizen. The magnitude of the death toll under
Stalin (including the Ukrainian Famine or Holodomor) is understated
- some place this as similar to the total of 20 million who died
during WW2 (for cogent discussion on this and other holocausts see a
further book unaccountably missing from "Denial", namely Chalk, F. &
Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses
and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven)). The atrocious
"ends justify the means" "denial" of the British Communists must be
compared to near-comprehensive contemporary Western media, politician
and academic Establishment "denial" of Anglo-American atrocities in
the Bush Wars (1990-2008 excess deaths 9-11 million).
Chapter 5, "Tales of Heartless Denial from the Balkans: Serbian
Victimhood and Marxist Conspiracy Theories" deals with the atrocities
of the Balkans War. The Serbian atrocities are deservedly singled
out for greatest attention. However lacking is a balanced view of
the shocking blame attaching to US and EU complicity in this utterly
avoidable tragedy that was compounded by US bombing of Serbia. The
happy secession of Slovenia is described but the mechanisms involved
in avoidance of carnage (adoption of a huge amount of Yugoslavian
debt and Austrian guarantees) are not mentioned. A further remarkable
omission from the book was DrakuliÄ~G, S. (2004), They Would Never
Hurt a Fly. War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (Abacus, London).
Chapter 6, "Failing the Scholarly Test: Australian Denial and the Art
of Pseudohistory", deals with the so-called "History wars" between
the revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle (supported by historian
Professor Geoffrey Blainey, right-wing Australian PM John Howward and
right-wing media such as Quadrant magazine and the right-wing Murdoch
national newspaper The Australian) versus mainstream historians of the
Aboriginal Genocide (notably Robert Manne, Henry Reynolds and Stuart
Macintyre). An extraordinary omission is reference to the work on
the Aboriginal Genocide by outstanding World and Australian expert
on Holocaust and Genocide, Professor Colin Tatz (e.g. see Tatz,
C. (2003), With Intent to Destroy. Reflecting on Genocide (Verso,
London)). Further major omissions from "Denial" are the avoidance of
the R word (Racism) and the G word (Genocide) by new Australian PM
Kevin Rudd in his otherwise excellent "Sorry" Speech to the Aboriginal
Stolen Generations and avoidance of discussion of the ongoing
Aboriginal Genocide (e.g. 9,000 Indigenous avoidable deaths annually;
90,000 Indigenous avoidable deaths under the Coalition Government;
bipartisan race-based exclusion of Northern Territory Aboriginals
from the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act) (see MWC News article
"Stolen Generations. Australian Aboriginal Genocide"). My primary
objection as a scientist to BOTH sides in the History Wars is that
they both concentrate on "violent deaths" whereas the (upper estimate)
realities were 6,000 Indigenous Tasmanians in 1803 (First Settlement
of Van Dieman's Land) but ZERO "full-blood" Tasmanian aborigines
with the death of Truganini in 1876 and about 1 million Australian
Aborigines in 1788 (First Settlement at Sydney) but only about 0.1
million by about 1890 - these Genocides being due to a combination of
violence, introduced disease, dispossession and deprivation (see Polya,
G. (2007), Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950 (Polya,
Melbourne) and Polya, G.M. (1998 and 2008 editions), Jane Austen and
the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial
and the crisis in biological sustainability (Polya, Melbourne)).
The book ends with a Coda that summarizes the contents of "Denial" and
also considers contemporary denial in relation to Zimbabwe, HIV/AIDS in
Southern Africa and the ongoing atrocity in Burma (Myanmar). However,
remarkably missing from this summary is any consideration of the
extraordinary contemporary denial in the Western Murdochracies,
including White Australia. By way of example, I recently sent a
Letter to about 3,000 Australian journalists, politicians, Humanities
academics and other influential people telling them of HUGE realities
that are ignored in Australian public life e.g. the Climate Emergency
that acutely threatens 6 billion people with untimely death before the
end of the century; 1 in 3 Australian women have been sexually abused
as children; and Australian complicity in the ongoing Iraqi Genocide
(post-invasion excess deaths 2 million, post-invasion under-5 infant
deaths 0.6 million, 6 million refugees), the ongoing Afghan Genocide
(post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 4-6 million,
post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.1 million, 4 million refugees)
and the ongoing Aboriginal genocide.
Just one part of this Letter is worth repeating here: "Holocaust
ignoring & "history ignored yields history repeated". Few Australians
would be aware of the following atrocities involving Great Britain
that have been largely deleted from British history: the Great Bengal
Famine (1769-1770, 10 million victims), the man-made World War 2 Bengal
Famine (1943-1945, 6-7 million victims) and the real 9-11 atrocity, the
9-11 million avoidable deaths associated (so far) with the Bush Wars
(1990-2008). While 3 major histories published recently in Australia
utterly ignore the WW2 Bengal Famine, in 2008 this atrocity was exposed
in a BBC broadcast involving myself, 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate
Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars. Denial of the World War
2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation)
attracts 10 years in prison in Austria."
The Letter ended with a plea "Please inform everyone you can" (see:
"Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism & Ignoring Downunder. Letter to
Eminent Australians over Public Honesty"). How many of these variously
influential Australians responded by indicating that they would inform
others? A mere 0.2%. Denial indeed.
Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some
130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge
pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive
Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003),
and is currently writing a book on global mortality --- Other articles
by this author
--Boundary_(ID_3t06h/0DlvIwp6a8/dJ4XA)--
MWC News
Nov 6 2008
Canada
"Denial. History betrayed" by Tony Taylor (Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 2008) is a very well written, well annotated and well
referenced book that deals with the phenomenon of "holocaust denial"
and, in general, the denial of horrendous abuses of humanity. This
is an important book that should certainly be read by everyone and
should be in every library.
However inevitably "Denial" can be criticized and the most fundamental
criticism is that this otherwise excellent Mainstream Anglo book,
published by a prestigious Mainstream Anglo publisher, itself ignores
major 20th century and ongoing 21st century holocausts and genocides
due to Anglo-American imperialism.
Holocaust denial is wrong and utterly repugnant for 3 major reasons:
(1) it is falsehood; (2) it is profoundly offensive to the memory of
the victims, survivors of such atrocities, their loved ones and indeed
to all of decent humanity; and (3) it increases the probability of
repetition of such awful crimes - history ignored and history denied
yields history repeated. Indeed one supposes that it is for these
sorts of reasons that Germany recently proposed a measure for the
EU that would criminalize not only those who deny or diminish the
Jewish Holocaust but those belittling any relatively recent genocide,
mass murder, war crimes and other crimes against humanity.
Already denial or minimization of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust
is a criminal offence attracting up to 10 years of imprisonment in
Austria and custodial punishment in many other European countries,
Indeed denial of the Armenian Genocide (up to 1.5 million Armenians
murdered in Turkey in the period 1915-1923) is an offence in both
France and Belgium. However such criminalization of "opinion" disturbs
many intellectuals because of the implicit threat to "free speech"
and scholarly investigation. Thus, as related in "Denial" (p168),
outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT)
defended the right of free speech of a Holocaust-minimizing French
academic, and Jewish American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt
(Emory University) (famous participant in the David Irving versus
Penguin defamation trial in London) thought that Holocaust denial
should not be criminalised because of the seriousness of repression
of free speech in a democratic society.
Free speech is absolutely vital for scholarly research and for Rational
Risk Management to minimize risk to Humanity. Indeed Rational Risk
Management (which, for example, has made passenger aviation extremely
safe and can be generally applied to situations from child safety in
schools to operating nuclear power stations) successively involves (a)
accurate information; (b) scientific analysis (involving the critical
testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses); and (c) systemic
change to minimize risk, However Rational Risk Management is typically
perverted by (a) denial, ignoring, lies, slies (spin-based untruths),
deceit, intimidation and censorship; (b) anti-science spin involving
selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position;
and (c) cover-up or blame and shame, with the latter in its most
appalling realization involving war and genocide. It is unfortunate
that "Denial" (written by an Australian Humanities academic) does not
really deal with this core Scientific Risk Management issue (crucial
in my perception as an Australian Science academic - shades of C.P
Snow's "Two Cultures") that is most simply summarized by the adage,
deriving in many versions from George Santayana, that "History ignored
yields History repeated".
In the interests of free speech, scholarship and Rational Risk
Management there should be "no-penalty" criminalization of holocaust
and genocide denial. The most important aspect of a "No-penalty
Genocide Denial Criminalization" (NGDC) system would be the public,
judicial examination of the evidence for gross human rights abuses. It
is public exposure of Genocide and Human Rights Abuses that will help
to protect Humanity in a Rational Risk Management sense. Accordingly,
Holocaust Deniers and Genocide Deniers should be prosecuted and their
views tested by an expertly-informed, public judicial process - but the
punishment would simply be the ignominy of public conviction for Lying,
Denial, Holocaust Denial and Genocide Denial. However, compromising
Free Speech by punishment of Genocide Deniers by anything more than
the public disgrace of conviction will increase the risk to Humanity
(see my article on MWC News entitled "Genocide denial - No-penalty
criminalization required now").
"Denial" commences with a snappy Introduction subtitled "The Pathology
of Historical Denial". It is concerned with the psycho-social basis
of the phenomenon, including "Holocaust denial" but, as indicated
above, does not deal with the core risk management issue. The
book then deals with 6 specific areas of holocaust and holocaust
denial. The term "holocaust" with the lower case "h" is used in the
present review to denote horrendous events involving huge loss of
life in contradistinction to the upper case "H" term "Holocaust",
which is generally used (as in "Denial") as synonymous with the
WW2 Jewish Holocaust or "Shoah" (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from
deprivation). This narrow use of the term "Holocaust" involves
effective Denial of the WW2 Western Theatre Holocaust in general
(30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and the WW2 Eastern Theatre
Holocaust (35 million Chinese dead in the Japanese war on China,
1937-1945 and 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by
the British in the man-made Bengal Famine atrocity, 1943-1945 -
indeed this latter atrocity in British India was the first WW2
atrocity to be described as a "holocaust" (see Jog, N.G. (1944),
Churchill's Blind-Spot: India (New Book Company, Bombay; see also
the 2008 edition of my 1998 book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of
British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis
in biological sustainability"" (see: here ).
The subsequent chapters successively deal with 6 examples of 20th
century holocaust or genocide commission and denial, noting that the
international legal definition of "genocide" (alluded to in "Denial")
is given in Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as "acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group" (sustained, remorseless killing, as for
example in the 1990-2008 Bush Wars, being clearly "intentional")
(see: here ). It is the detailed, documented descriptions of holocaust
commission and holocaust denial, genocide commission and genocide
denial in "Denial" that make this a very important book that everyone
should read and which should be in every institutional library.
That said, from a dispassionate scientific perspective and as amplified
further below, "Denial" (a) errs on the side of conservative death
toll estimates and (b) ignores the non-violent avoidable mortality
(excess mortality, excess deaths, avoidable deaths, deaths that should
not have happened) which is a fundamental parameter for assessing the
consequences of human action and inaction (see "Body Count. Global
avoidable mortality since 1950", G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007:
http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ). Indeed the term "excess deaths"
is used once - and then inaccurately - in "Denial" (p194) : "Russian
excess deaths under Stalin (deaths caused by internal state actions,
and not by war)."
With the foregoing criticisms and comments in mind, the following is a
very brief summary with salient comments of the 6 core phenomenological
chapters of the book.
Chapter 1, "Under Western Eyes: Armenian Massacres and Turkish Denial",
describes Turkish genocide commission and continuing Turkish Armenian
Genocide denial. The upper estimate is of 1.5 million Armenians
killed. Not mentioned is the recent refusal of the US Congress to
acknowledge the Armenian Genocide for fear of offending Turkey, which
is crucial for US conduct of the Iraqi Genocide (Apartheid Israel has
a similar "diplomatic" policy of ignoring the Armenian Genocide and
the notorious US Israel Lobby recently lobbied against Congressional
recognition of the Armenian Genocide).
Chapter 2, "Frauds and Fanatics: The Pathology of Western Holocaust
Denial", deals with the more notorious deniers or minimizers
of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust. Some major themes and works are
unfortunately absent from this analysis, notably the ideological
link between Western European racist, genocidal colonialism and
Nazi German lebensraum-driven industrial genocide (see: Lindqvist,
S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002);
the insidious "normality" aspect of the rise of Nazism (e.g. see
Ella Blum's remarkable perspective as an ordinary German girl "I was
a Billionaire's Daughter", Fast Books, Sydney, 2007); Gitta Sereny's
"The German Trauma. Experiences and Reflections, 1938-2001" (Penguin,
London, 2001); and the estimate from outstanding Jewish history and
20th century history expert Professor Martin Gilbert that 1 in 6 of
the 6 million dead died from deprivation, this being very important
for contemporary comparative purposes (see Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish
History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London).
Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).
Chapter 3, "A Culture of Denial: explaining the Politics of Remembrance
in Modern Japan", deals with Japanese war atrocities in China 1931-1945
and subsequent, continuing "denial". The horrendous overall loss of
Chinese lives is not stated. According to the "official" Chinese
position as enunciated in the China Daily article "Remember role
in ending fascist war"): "the China's resistance against Japanese
aggression lasted for 14 years - longer than any other major power
in the world. The first six years following the Mukden Incident of
1931 was a period of local resistance, while the eight years after
the Lugouqiao Incident of 1937 was a time of full-scale national
struggle for independence and dignity ... In the eight years of tough
resistance, the Chinese made great sacrifices. More than 35 million
Chinese military personnel and civilians were killed or wounded. In the
Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre alone, some 300,000 Chinese were slain by
the Japanese invaders." Upper estimates are of 15-20 million violently
killed but we must also acknowledge non-violent deaths from deprivation
due to social disruption (thus the ratio of violent/non-violent excess
deaths in Occupied Iraq is about 1) - accordingly, total excess deaths
due to the Japanese invasion and occupation are about 35 million.
Chapter 4, British Communism and Two Decades of Denial: From
Moscow 1936 to Budapest 1956, deals with the immense crimes of
Soviet Communism and the "denial" of British Communists. This is
arguably the best chapter of the book. I was pleased to see that
about a page was devoted to my grandmother's cousin Dr Edith Bone,
a correspondent for the London Daily Worker abusively imprisoned in
solitary confinement for 7 years as told in her remarkable book about
her mental and physical survival (Bone, E. (1957), Seven Years'
Solitary (Hamish Hamilton, London)). Not mentioned were that,
not surprisingly, she gave up on Communism after this experience
and the lack of action of British Governments to rescue a (Jewish,
Communist) British citizen. The magnitude of the death toll under
Stalin (including the Ukrainian Famine or Holodomor) is understated
- some place this as similar to the total of 20 million who died
during WW2 (for cogent discussion on this and other holocausts see a
further book unaccountably missing from "Denial", namely Chalk, F. &
Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses
and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven)). The atrocious
"ends justify the means" "denial" of the British Communists must be
compared to near-comprehensive contemporary Western media, politician
and academic Establishment "denial" of Anglo-American atrocities in
the Bush Wars (1990-2008 excess deaths 9-11 million).
Chapter 5, "Tales of Heartless Denial from the Balkans: Serbian
Victimhood and Marxist Conspiracy Theories" deals with the atrocities
of the Balkans War. The Serbian atrocities are deservedly singled
out for greatest attention. However lacking is a balanced view of
the shocking blame attaching to US and EU complicity in this utterly
avoidable tragedy that was compounded by US bombing of Serbia. The
happy secession of Slovenia is described but the mechanisms involved
in avoidance of carnage (adoption of a huge amount of Yugoslavian
debt and Austrian guarantees) are not mentioned. A further remarkable
omission from the book was DrakuliÄ~G, S. (2004), They Would Never
Hurt a Fly. War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (Abacus, London).
Chapter 6, "Failing the Scholarly Test: Australian Denial and the Art
of Pseudohistory", deals with the so-called "History wars" between
the revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle (supported by historian
Professor Geoffrey Blainey, right-wing Australian PM John Howward and
right-wing media such as Quadrant magazine and the right-wing Murdoch
national newspaper The Australian) versus mainstream historians of the
Aboriginal Genocide (notably Robert Manne, Henry Reynolds and Stuart
Macintyre). An extraordinary omission is reference to the work on
the Aboriginal Genocide by outstanding World and Australian expert
on Holocaust and Genocide, Professor Colin Tatz (e.g. see Tatz,
C. (2003), With Intent to Destroy. Reflecting on Genocide (Verso,
London)). Further major omissions from "Denial" are the avoidance of
the R word (Racism) and the G word (Genocide) by new Australian PM
Kevin Rudd in his otherwise excellent "Sorry" Speech to the Aboriginal
Stolen Generations and avoidance of discussion of the ongoing
Aboriginal Genocide (e.g. 9,000 Indigenous avoidable deaths annually;
90,000 Indigenous avoidable deaths under the Coalition Government;
bipartisan race-based exclusion of Northern Territory Aboriginals
from the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act) (see MWC News article
"Stolen Generations. Australian Aboriginal Genocide"). My primary
objection as a scientist to BOTH sides in the History Wars is that
they both concentrate on "violent deaths" whereas the (upper estimate)
realities were 6,000 Indigenous Tasmanians in 1803 (First Settlement
of Van Dieman's Land) but ZERO "full-blood" Tasmanian aborigines
with the death of Truganini in 1876 and about 1 million Australian
Aborigines in 1788 (First Settlement at Sydney) but only about 0.1
million by about 1890 - these Genocides being due to a combination of
violence, introduced disease, dispossession and deprivation (see Polya,
G. (2007), Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950 (Polya,
Melbourne) and Polya, G.M. (1998 and 2008 editions), Jane Austen and
the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial
and the crisis in biological sustainability (Polya, Melbourne)).
The book ends with a Coda that summarizes the contents of "Denial" and
also considers contemporary denial in relation to Zimbabwe, HIV/AIDS in
Southern Africa and the ongoing atrocity in Burma (Myanmar). However,
remarkably missing from this summary is any consideration of the
extraordinary contemporary denial in the Western Murdochracies,
including White Australia. By way of example, I recently sent a
Letter to about 3,000 Australian journalists, politicians, Humanities
academics and other influential people telling them of HUGE realities
that are ignored in Australian public life e.g. the Climate Emergency
that acutely threatens 6 billion people with untimely death before the
end of the century; 1 in 3 Australian women have been sexually abused
as children; and Australian complicity in the ongoing Iraqi Genocide
(post-invasion excess deaths 2 million, post-invasion under-5 infant
deaths 0.6 million, 6 million refugees), the ongoing Afghan Genocide
(post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 4-6 million,
post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.1 million, 4 million refugees)
and the ongoing Aboriginal genocide.
Just one part of this Letter is worth repeating here: "Holocaust
ignoring & "history ignored yields history repeated". Few Australians
would be aware of the following atrocities involving Great Britain
that have been largely deleted from British history: the Great Bengal
Famine (1769-1770, 10 million victims), the man-made World War 2 Bengal
Famine (1943-1945, 6-7 million victims) and the real 9-11 atrocity, the
9-11 million avoidable deaths associated (so far) with the Bush Wars
(1990-2008). While 3 major histories published recently in Australia
utterly ignore the WW2 Bengal Famine, in 2008 this atrocity was exposed
in a BBC broadcast involving myself, 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate
Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars. Denial of the World War
2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation)
attracts 10 years in prison in Austria."
The Letter ended with a plea "Please inform everyone you can" (see:
"Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism & Ignoring Downunder. Letter to
Eminent Australians over Public Honesty"). How many of these variously
influential Australians responded by indicating that they would inform
others? A mere 0.2%. Denial indeed.
Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some
130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge
pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive
Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003),
and is currently writing a book on global mortality --- Other articles
by this author
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