Today’s Genocides, the Banality of Evil, and Holocaust Denial

By Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB

When I was growing up in America there was said to be only one main example of genocide, namely, the Nazi killing of the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and ’40s. Later, I read Leo Kuper’s book, “The Prevention of Genocide” (1983). It extended my knowledge to a few more cases, such as the 1971 Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s massacres of each other in Rwanda and Burundi circa 1972, and the apparently wild violence that accompanied the partition of India, into Pakistan and India, in 1947.

Quite recently, I had my education filled in by learning that the destruction of some of the tribes of Native Americans had been out-and-out policy of the US government. In other words, it was genocide.

All the while, mind you, we, as school kids had read of the many conquests that occurred in history, be it by empires such as the Persian, the Roman, or the Dutch, or simply by one nation destroying a neighboring, rival nation. (Remember Julius Caesar ‘mopping up’ Belgium in the Gallic Wars?). These were never, never, described as genocidal. Come to think of it, they were almost always portrayed as positive. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors, and for the victors the outcome of such events was always cause for celebration.

Fair enough. That is how we’re built. We see our own tribe as having every right to exist, and we see others as being allowed to live provided it won’t disadvantage us. This is biologically provided for. We have some genetic instructions to be altruistic toward kin, but not toward people whom we don’t know from Adam. (In the Cambodian case, it was purportedly an ideology that split the nation, although I suspect it was an outside power that organized the genocide.)

The Sociobiology of Morality

Preservation of one’s life is a major goal and humans do ‘whatever it takes’ to secure it. I proposed in my PhD thesis, which is published as “Morality among Nations” (1990), that humans really do have a dual morality -- the one to be practiced in our own group, and the ‘international’ one. (I was not original, Reinhold Niebuhr had already clearly described it.)

Unfortunately there are many organizations, such as the United Nations, that use terminology proper to in-group morality, when referring to the relationship BETWEEN nations. Forget it. That kind of wishful thinking, propaganda, or whatever you call it, is harmful.

We should always be talking reality, not nonsense, about such important topics. Do I mean that no one should be permitted to articulate high ideals? As in “Love the Family of Man.”? No, go right ahead and love everybody if you want. High ideals are fine, and needed, but they should be identified as that. In fact, even on the domestic scene I think we should employ a more negative view of human nature than we currently do. It doesn’t pay to misstate reality, does it?

We might better achieve, say, honesty, if we admitted that every individual is inclined to dishonesty. Then it could be a matter for a ‘morality engineer’ to identify the way in which society could damp down the dishonesty and spark up the virtue of integrity. Religions routinely take up that task, but they do so with an elaborate reasoning about our obligations vis à vis a divine entity, rather than addressing it as a mathematical social problem.

What about the lack of respect for outsiders? Is it able to be changed? Yes, to an extent, but not by proclaiming an ideal. And not by identifying God’s preferences. I see a way in which respecting strangers can be encouraged, namely, by clear recognition of our instinct for violence-between-groups, and a concomitant recognition that this is highly undesirable. “For Pete’s sake, it’s not what we want at this point in modern life when we are so intermingled and when the planet is so fragile.”

Again, the task should be handed over to an ‘engineer.’ He would need to observe the disparity of resources and the differing caches of weapons. I think he would concentrate on trying to show the powerful that the arrangement of conquest is precarious and self-destructive. In other words, he’d appeal to what we used to call ‘enlightened self-interest.’

Still, there is the dilemma that was named after Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century British philosopher who said that man’s life, in Nature, could be nasty, brutish, and short (mistranslated in the colonies as “nasty, British, and short”). The ‘Hobbesian dilemma’ is as follows: If we restrain our own nation from going out and grabbing all the resources and killing whoever is in the way, we still must worry that another group will do it.

Hence, you shouldn’t instruct your group to become saintly. Frankly, though, I think it would work wonders. Such a group would have the moral high ground, and there’s much to be said for having the security of feeling that you are in the right. Much.

Genocide by My Group Today (US and Australia)

The article at hand came about following a discussion I had with Dalia Mae Lachlan, editor of Gumshoenews.com, about the circumstances under which General Wesley Clark informed the world (via an interview with Amy Goodman in 2002), that the Pentagon had a list of seven countries to be knocked off in five years. These are: Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and “finishing off with Iran.” (Twelve years later, we have crushed six of them.)

Lachlan had assumed that, since Goodman is (supposedly) ‘indymedia,’ the Clark revelation was a whistleblowing. In my opinion, that could never have been the case. Clark had been a big guy in NATO, which is the military force of World Government. In the unlikely instance that he wanted to tell the world to stop the carnage, he’d have made a moral plea. Did the general condemn the proposed ‘laundry list’ of conquests? Nope. He described the whole thing casually.

I am guessing that he did so in order that Americans would all follow his lead and feel ‘casual’ about it. It looks to me that this is what has happened. Granted, the only Americans who even know what Clark said are those who surf the Net. The major TV ‘anchorpersons’ shrank from mentioning Clark’s list even when he ran for president in 2004.

Rather, mainstream media was thoroughly busy advising Americans and allies that military force was needed because:

1. Saddam Hussein has “weapons of mass destruction”
2. Libya’s Col. Gaddafi has dangerous mental delusions
3. We were attacked by “Arabs” on 9-11
4. Iran intends to nuke Israel
5. The Taliban in Afghanistan curtails women’s rights (Fathom it, curtailing women’s rights!)
6. Beheaders are lurking in the suburbs of Sydney

-- and such like things. Surely there is no room in that media machine for anyone to hold a debate on whether the US ought to be a monstrous bully worldwide, or whether the cultures of the Middle East, the ‘cradle of civilization,’ have a right to, maybe, survive.

Anyway, the laundry list came to pass. ‘The Pentagon’ -- or was it ‘NATO’ (Mom and Pop have no idea which is which) -- let loose the dogs of war. Millions of people have been bombed. The result of that, i.e., the mass of bereaved people, injured people, displaced people, isn’t portrayed on TV, so even the power of sympathy to stop cruelty does not arise in most Americans. You almost wonder how far the cruelty can continue to go these days. Maybe ‘Sky’s the limit’?

Genocide and the Jews

I’ve been told by a Jewish-American friend that, as a child, he was heavily indoctrinated about the Holocaust. I presume that his family and teachers considered it useful to ‘rub it in’ to Jewish children, both to alert them to future dangers, and to provide a narrative that could deepen the group’s identity. (That’s what the 9-11 Museum is supposed to be doing for New Yorkers today. Who orchestrates these things?)

No doubt the claim for uniqueness of the Nazi genocide inhibits discussion of the genocides that are rife today. For millennia, Jewish intellectuals have been major contributors to the articulation of moral principle and the practical solving of social problems. I miss their voice. I haven’t heard it in a long time. What do you bet this is because many of the nations being genocided are Arab, and a Jew anticipates anger from his fellows if he is seen to support the “enemies of Israel.” (A perfect Catch-22, really.)

In 1972, I heard Hannah Arendt lecture at the New School for Social Research in New York. She was famous for her study of the trial of Adolf Eichmann and her view that evil can be banal. This is what we need to hear! To say that man’s humanity to man is something esoteric and rare is very misleading. We go around killing foreign peoples at the drop of a hat.

Most of us are descended from a group that was a recipient of genocidal behavior, aren’t we? There’s no reason to assume that any particular group practiced moral restraint towards other groups! The various First Nations in Canada, for example, or the aboriginal tribes of Australia, must have gone in for conquering weaker groups. The recent academic trend to ‘political correctness’ does a disservice by making it taboo to say important things like that.

Holocaust Denial

The ruckus about ‘holocaust denial’ may be part of a scheme to prevent Jews, and anyone else, from tackling the subject of genocide in all its manifestations. As stated above, I take genocide to be normal. We do it. It’s as human as inventing weapons or worshipping God. We do commit genocide. This needs to be said. It specifically needs to be said that the present plan to conquer the Middle East is just that kind of disgusting behavior.

Many people have a stake in the outcome and therefore should be allowed to speak. Clearly, the victims (the ‘laundry list’ people) deserve a voice. We Americans do, too. These days it appears that America is ‘going to the dogs’ and one of the reasons is the constant patriotic pressure to say that anything our military does must be good. Nonsense! It is horrible, and anyway, who knows if it’s ‘our’ military? The motives of NATO may be very anti-American. Quite frightening, eh?

Yet another group that should be voicing opinions is the Jewish community. Ah, there’s a real barrier here, in that many European countries have legislated a prison sentence for anyone who minimizes the Nazi’s killing of precisely six million Jews in World War II. (France, Hungary, Germany, have such laws.) That puts that genocide off the table for discussion. Instead of the matter being discussed in the Academy, it is whispered during the criminal trials of those who dare to be ‘revisionist.’ Geez. Even Orwell didn’t contemplate that!

In the US, the matter of free speech directed against an ethnic group was settled by the Supreme Court decades ago. It concerned the case of Nazi skinheads wanting to march in Skokie, Illinois, waving a swastika. Held: yes, that could be offensive to families who lost members under Hitler’s regime, but, well, we all get offended occasionally and you can’t just cancel the vital right of persons to say what’s on their mind.

I think most Americans would condemn the laws that forbid ‘holocaust denial’ today but for a fear that they would be called anti-semitic! Isn’t that absurd? How easily we succumb to the doctrine of political correctness! Note, though, that now the subject has gone underground, and consequently much anti-Jewish sentiment is being whipped up all over the place. Who will speak out against this?

Above, I opined that the victim nations and the American public and Jews are three groups whose members should be discussing genocide today. I also want to support specifically the right of Israelis to talk. That nation has a huge – greater than 50% -- number of protestors of the policy of bombing the Palestinians. It looks like Israelis are being gagged. The Jews of the diaspora need to get riled up about that. “Unfair! Unacceptable!” “Take the gags off!”

A few years ago, in Australia,I submitted an amicus curiae, about freedom of speech, in the Fred Toben case. He ran a website offensive to Jews (I mean it really was outrageous), and the Oz Human Rights Commission told him to douse it. He had also specifically claimed, on Youtube, that one of the buildings at Auschwitz had no gas chamber. Refusing to do what the court ordered, he was held in contempt and went to jail. My amicus submission was declined. It should have been made part of the record; Australians deserve to hear more than just the matter of whether Toben obeyed an order or not.

Anyway, I think somebody should pass a law criminalizing the shutting up of persons who have an interest in the outcome of any social issue! (See the website Zundelsite if you want to learn more about the way in which the holocaust-denial prosecutions are perverting courts and judges in Germany. You will be embarrassed for that great nation.)

In sum, let’s air the subject right now of the conquering of people in Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and “soon to come,” Iran. You, if you are on the conquering countries’ side, are doing genocide, even if you claim that your leaders have arranged it against your will. How did they know what your will was, if you did not open your yap?

Speak out, please, without delay. Even if it means only talking to someone at the bus stop. Remember how we expressed amazement that white South Africans could turn a blind eye to the brutalizing, by police, of their country’s Blacks? Well, that is how South Africans – and folks everywhere -- are talking about you today.

Mary W Maxwell is a graduate of Adelaide Law School. She currently writes for Australia’s strong independent news site Gumshoenews.com. Please contact Mary at her website prosecutionfortreason.com, or view her stuff at the Youtube channel “Mary W Maxwell.”