From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@gondwanaland.com)
Date: Sun Dec 15 2002 - 17:50:57 MST
On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 12:27, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > This is indeed very peculiar behavior from a liberal standpoint, but
> > it might make a bit more sense from a libertarian or anarchist one.
> > Certainly it is plain that one can't simultaneously `deny the
> > holocaust' while describing it as `the most fantastic outburst of
> > collective insanity in human history'. So John Clark has not
> > *really* said it all; more remains to
> > be said. (And of course it has been said, but it's late...)
>
> What is so interesting about it is that Chomsky, along with many left
> wing sociologists, have come to define collective violence by the right
> wing as 'insane' or 'irrational' while defining collective violence by
> unionists, anti-war demonstrators, Palestinians, leftist
> revolutionaries, etc as entirely rational (see "Collective Violence",
> Barkan and Snowden). Similarly, they avoid studying state terrorism, as
> well as other state conducted forms of collective violence.
[I can't tell who wrote the text Mike Lorrey quoted, but felt it needed
to be included for context anyway]
Lorrey, you really know how to take a strong case and turn it into a
strawman. Relative to the cases you cite above, the holocaust is
singularly insane and evil. Leftists are often guitly of ignoring the
mass violence of communism, or of excusing it relative to that of
right-wing socialists, but the violence done by Palestinians, for
example, doesn't even begin to hold a candle to that of the Nazis or the
Communists. Sheesh.
-- Mike Linksvayer <http://gondwanaland.com/ml/>
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