From: Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jul 29 1997 - 12:18:05 MDT
On Mon, 28 Jul 1997 14:13:01 -0700 (PDT)
dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:
[snip]
>The political philosopher (still the best theorist and critic of
>totalitarianism I've ever read) Hannah Arendt said in an interview that
>"If one is attacked as a Jew one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a
>German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the rights of Man,
>or whatever..." Her point was that antisemitism (like racism, like
>sexism, like heterosexism, or what have you) can too easily exist in
>societies that imagine themselves staunch defenders of these more
>general conceptions. The problem is that certain kinds of people, for
>lots of mostly contingent historical and sociocultural reasons, come to
>be thought of as less-than-properly-human and the smooth function of
>regimes of civility based on respect for rights crank along quite
>cheerfully even when these less-than-properly-human humans are treated
>unfairly (or sometimes even genocidally).
[snip]
Enjoyed your post, but on the other side, pace Arendt, isn't defending
yourself as the despised group giving sanction to the (usually essentially
collectivist and anti-individual) group definition used by the abusers?
Well, at least this is something to be careful of.
Guru George
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