wolfgang von skeptik
10-27-2007, 12:56 AM
More years ago than I like to remember -- as I recall I was in my middle 20s and living in Manhattan -- I read a controversial short story in which pacifism failed because the ruling class exterminated peaceful protestors as reflexively and brutally as it killed any of its other enemies.
The context of the story was an alternative history of World War II in which -- because America had voted Republican in 1940 and thus gone fascist -- the Axis had won, and Germany and Japan had divided the Far East: India to the Greater Reich, all the remainder to the Emperor's East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Confronted by Mohandas Gandhi and his pacifists in a continued quest for Indian national liberation, the Germans merely responded in accordance with Nazi doctrines: they executed Gandhi, and when that proved insufficient, the Germans rounded up all Gandhi’s followers and either worked them to death in slave labor camps or killed them outright. As a consequence, the Indian Viceroyalty gave way to the Thousand-Year Reich, the implication of which was that India and indeed the whole world would remain enslaved until humans themselves became extinct.
What made the story controversial -- I'm sorry I remember neither its name nor the name of its author -- was the invariably self-righteous, often sloganistic and frequently vindictive response of the pacifists, who argued fanatically against the author's conclusions, not with rational postulates but with lies: the glib falsification of history. The prime pacifist assertion was that no modern dictator would ever be so murderous as the fictional German occupiers of India. The pacifists thereby rejected the overwhelming evidence of German and Japanese atrocities and gained for themselves -- and the Left in general -- the odious distinction of becoming the first in a dismal and ongoing succession of Holocaust deniers.
Moreover the pacifists claimed the U.S. would never go fascist -- not during the Axis years, not in the future -- another falsification that denies both the Nazi-Republican alliance and the huge terror that, from the 1930s until Pearl Harbor, frightened Americans into abandoning then-standard medical practice and leaving an entire generation of American gentile males uncircumcised -- all because, once the nation became part of the Axis, any circumcised male might be labeled a Jew and so liquidated. (I know of the widespread abandonment of circumcision and the fear of fascism that prompted it because I was one of the males left uncircumcised for precisely that reason; I know it was a generation-wide phenomenon because while I was in Manhattan during the 1980s, I met a sociologist who was documenting its regional and national magnitude. Her book, which she said was already supported by a generous publisher’s advance, was apparently later suppressed -- no doubt as part of the ongoing campaign to eradicate all memory of the fascist terror and how it shaped U. S. politics and culture in the decade before the War.)
What makes all this relevant today is that the pacifists are again up to their usual tricks, lying -- rewriting history -- trying to transform the legacy of their curious ideology of fake resistance, defacto collaboration and suicidal dementia into something other than unspeakable horror and utter futility -- as if disinformation can somehow muffle the shrieks of protestors burned alive in crematory ovens and hide the stacks of body-bags containing the corpses of those lucky enough to have died more quickly, all the while concealing the now-obvious victory of the Myanmar despots over their pacifist-placated victim population.
Indeed -- barring the (extremely unlikely) prospect of military intervention from without -- the warlords have clearly triumphed forever.
But the effluent of pacifist lies continues to flood the political cesspit in which the Burmese -- and by extension all the rest of us -- are increasingly trapped. The following smug manifesto was issued by the pacifists Cynthia Boaz and Shaazka Beyerle -- each pontificating safely behind the protection of global capitalism and amidst the decadent comforts of the U.S. bourgeoisie:
Sunday 07 October 2007
Just because we can't see protestors any longer doesn't mean they aren't there. The Burmese regime wants us to believe their claims that they have "restored normalcy" to the country. They want us to conclude that the repression was successful and that the resistance has been crushed. But that's not the real story from Burma…
A final sign of the strategic planning and strength of the movement is its ability to maintain "nonviolent discipline." Despite the horrors committed by the regime over the past days, there has not been a single report of protesters becoming violent. And why should they use violence? It would only give the regime more pretence to repress, and perhaps even allow many individual soldiers and police officers to rationalize doing something they otherwise could not bring themselves to do. The maintenance of nonviolent discipline - along with the growing size, diversity, and commitment of the resistance in Burma - has garnered more sympathy from the international community, and is a critical factor in building the movement's own legitimacy…
The full text of this outrageous example of pacifist disinformation -- if you can bear to read it -- is here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100707A.shtml
Two days later, Boaz is at it again, claiming “resistance, not repression, is the real story from Burma”:
With no moral authority, no remaining political legitimacy, increasing pressure from the international community, an increasingly tenuous hold on the country's remaining sources of economic support, and more signs that its own defenders may be less willing to risk being on the losing side of the actual - as well as moral - conflict, the issue is becoming not whether this regime will disappear, but when. There's no doubt this group of generals has thus far appeared unwilling to budge, but stubborn reliance on repression can be just another form of denial. And there's no denying the people of Burma have had enough.
Full text of her elaborate fantasy here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100907J.shtml
But the Associated Press had already begun reporting the hideous truth:
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- One hundred shot dead outside a Myanmar school. Activists burned alive at government crematoriums. A Buddhist monk floating face down in a river.
After last week's brutal crackdown by the military, horror stories are filling Myanmar blogs and dissident sites. But the tight security of the repressive regime makes it impossible to verify just how many people are dead, detained or missing.
"There are huge difficulties. It's a closed police state," said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand. "Many of the witnesses have been arrested and are being held in areas we don't have access to. Other eyewitness are too afraid."
Authorities have acknowledged that government troops shot dead nine demonstrators and a Japanese cameraman in Yangon. But witness accounts range from several dozen deaths to as many as 200.
The full report is here:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/333878_myanmar02.html
And within a few days Kevin Boyle of The Guardian had made it obvious Boaz and Beyerle were just another group of typical pacifists, spinning deadly lies to seduce the foolish not just into suicide but -- as in the crematoriums -- a strong possibility of being burned alive, the most horrible death of all:
Saturday 13 October 2007
It's 9.30pm and the buses in downtown Rangoon have stopped running. People scuttle home across the city's potholed roads and broken pavements and the few taxis still operating will only make short trips. With only 30 minutes to curfew, no one takes chances with the Burmese military these days.
With the killing of an unknowable number of peaceful protesters and the imprisonment of thousands more during the pro-democracy demonstrations last month, many people fear reprisals by the military. At the Shwedagon pagoda, the nucleus of the protests, the military is still in force. Wearing steel helmets, flak jackets and carrying extra ammunition, the number of troops far exceeds the few old monks who potter among the golden spires of what is the spiritual centre of Burmese life…Dozens of monastic houses lining the route to the gate remain locked and empty, despite reports in Burma's state-controlled media that most of the monks have been released from jail.
Sources said that around 1,000 monks had lived and studied at these small monasteries, but where they have gone is not a question that anyone ponders aloud. One man simply put his wrists together in the sign of locked handcuffs when asked where they are.
"We cannot speak. We cannot defend. We have no weapons. They have all the weapons," said another 30-year-old man, who cannot be identified for his own safety.
Full text:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101307Y.shtml
“We cannot speak. We cannot defend. We have no weapons. They have all the weapons.”
Which demonstrates perfectly how pacifism is ultimately nothing more than a cunningly rationalized form of collaboration with the status quo -- how the shrill, angry and ultimately false objections of the pacifists themselves are utterly refuted by such grotesque evidence as the foregoing. Not to mention -- lest we forget -- how the frightened man’s lament illustrates precisely the reason our own Founders entrusted us with the powers implicit in the Second Amendment.
(26 October 2007)
The context of the story was an alternative history of World War II in which -- because America had voted Republican in 1940 and thus gone fascist -- the Axis had won, and Germany and Japan had divided the Far East: India to the Greater Reich, all the remainder to the Emperor's East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Confronted by Mohandas Gandhi and his pacifists in a continued quest for Indian national liberation, the Germans merely responded in accordance with Nazi doctrines: they executed Gandhi, and when that proved insufficient, the Germans rounded up all Gandhi’s followers and either worked them to death in slave labor camps or killed them outright. As a consequence, the Indian Viceroyalty gave way to the Thousand-Year Reich, the implication of which was that India and indeed the whole world would remain enslaved until humans themselves became extinct.
What made the story controversial -- I'm sorry I remember neither its name nor the name of its author -- was the invariably self-righteous, often sloganistic and frequently vindictive response of the pacifists, who argued fanatically against the author's conclusions, not with rational postulates but with lies: the glib falsification of history. The prime pacifist assertion was that no modern dictator would ever be so murderous as the fictional German occupiers of India. The pacifists thereby rejected the overwhelming evidence of German and Japanese atrocities and gained for themselves -- and the Left in general -- the odious distinction of becoming the first in a dismal and ongoing succession of Holocaust deniers.
Moreover the pacifists claimed the U.S. would never go fascist -- not during the Axis years, not in the future -- another falsification that denies both the Nazi-Republican alliance and the huge terror that, from the 1930s until Pearl Harbor, frightened Americans into abandoning then-standard medical practice and leaving an entire generation of American gentile males uncircumcised -- all because, once the nation became part of the Axis, any circumcised male might be labeled a Jew and so liquidated. (I know of the widespread abandonment of circumcision and the fear of fascism that prompted it because I was one of the males left uncircumcised for precisely that reason; I know it was a generation-wide phenomenon because while I was in Manhattan during the 1980s, I met a sociologist who was documenting its regional and national magnitude. Her book, which she said was already supported by a generous publisher’s advance, was apparently later suppressed -- no doubt as part of the ongoing campaign to eradicate all memory of the fascist terror and how it shaped U. S. politics and culture in the decade before the War.)
What makes all this relevant today is that the pacifists are again up to their usual tricks, lying -- rewriting history -- trying to transform the legacy of their curious ideology of fake resistance, defacto collaboration and suicidal dementia into something other than unspeakable horror and utter futility -- as if disinformation can somehow muffle the shrieks of protestors burned alive in crematory ovens and hide the stacks of body-bags containing the corpses of those lucky enough to have died more quickly, all the while concealing the now-obvious victory of the Myanmar despots over their pacifist-placated victim population.
Indeed -- barring the (extremely unlikely) prospect of military intervention from without -- the warlords have clearly triumphed forever.
But the effluent of pacifist lies continues to flood the political cesspit in which the Burmese -- and by extension all the rest of us -- are increasingly trapped. The following smug manifesto was issued by the pacifists Cynthia Boaz and Shaazka Beyerle -- each pontificating safely behind the protection of global capitalism and amidst the decadent comforts of the U.S. bourgeoisie:
Sunday 07 October 2007
Just because we can't see protestors any longer doesn't mean they aren't there. The Burmese regime wants us to believe their claims that they have "restored normalcy" to the country. They want us to conclude that the repression was successful and that the resistance has been crushed. But that's not the real story from Burma…
A final sign of the strategic planning and strength of the movement is its ability to maintain "nonviolent discipline." Despite the horrors committed by the regime over the past days, there has not been a single report of protesters becoming violent. And why should they use violence? It would only give the regime more pretence to repress, and perhaps even allow many individual soldiers and police officers to rationalize doing something they otherwise could not bring themselves to do. The maintenance of nonviolent discipline - along with the growing size, diversity, and commitment of the resistance in Burma - has garnered more sympathy from the international community, and is a critical factor in building the movement's own legitimacy…
The full text of this outrageous example of pacifist disinformation -- if you can bear to read it -- is here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100707A.shtml
Two days later, Boaz is at it again, claiming “resistance, not repression, is the real story from Burma”:
With no moral authority, no remaining political legitimacy, increasing pressure from the international community, an increasingly tenuous hold on the country's remaining sources of economic support, and more signs that its own defenders may be less willing to risk being on the losing side of the actual - as well as moral - conflict, the issue is becoming not whether this regime will disappear, but when. There's no doubt this group of generals has thus far appeared unwilling to budge, but stubborn reliance on repression can be just another form of denial. And there's no denying the people of Burma have had enough.
Full text of her elaborate fantasy here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100907J.shtml
But the Associated Press had already begun reporting the hideous truth:
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- One hundred shot dead outside a Myanmar school. Activists burned alive at government crematoriums. A Buddhist monk floating face down in a river.
After last week's brutal crackdown by the military, horror stories are filling Myanmar blogs and dissident sites. But the tight security of the repressive regime makes it impossible to verify just how many people are dead, detained or missing.
"There are huge difficulties. It's a closed police state," said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand. "Many of the witnesses have been arrested and are being held in areas we don't have access to. Other eyewitness are too afraid."
Authorities have acknowledged that government troops shot dead nine demonstrators and a Japanese cameraman in Yangon. But witness accounts range from several dozen deaths to as many as 200.
The full report is here:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/333878_myanmar02.html
And within a few days Kevin Boyle of The Guardian had made it obvious Boaz and Beyerle were just another group of typical pacifists, spinning deadly lies to seduce the foolish not just into suicide but -- as in the crematoriums -- a strong possibility of being burned alive, the most horrible death of all:
Saturday 13 October 2007
It's 9.30pm and the buses in downtown Rangoon have stopped running. People scuttle home across the city's potholed roads and broken pavements and the few taxis still operating will only make short trips. With only 30 minutes to curfew, no one takes chances with the Burmese military these days.
With the killing of an unknowable number of peaceful protesters and the imprisonment of thousands more during the pro-democracy demonstrations last month, many people fear reprisals by the military. At the Shwedagon pagoda, the nucleus of the protests, the military is still in force. Wearing steel helmets, flak jackets and carrying extra ammunition, the number of troops far exceeds the few old monks who potter among the golden spires of what is the spiritual centre of Burmese life…Dozens of monastic houses lining the route to the gate remain locked and empty, despite reports in Burma's state-controlled media that most of the monks have been released from jail.
Sources said that around 1,000 monks had lived and studied at these small monasteries, but where they have gone is not a question that anyone ponders aloud. One man simply put his wrists together in the sign of locked handcuffs when asked where they are.
"We cannot speak. We cannot defend. We have no weapons. They have all the weapons," said another 30-year-old man, who cannot be identified for his own safety.
Full text:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101307Y.shtml
“We cannot speak. We cannot defend. We have no weapons. They have all the weapons.”
Which demonstrates perfectly how pacifism is ultimately nothing more than a cunningly rationalized form of collaboration with the status quo -- how the shrill, angry and ultimately false objections of the pacifists themselves are utterly refuted by such grotesque evidence as the foregoing. Not to mention -- lest we forget -- how the frightened man’s lament illustrates precisely the reason our own Founders entrusted us with the powers implicit in the Second Amendment.
(26 October 2007)