Genocide Continues

Anybody up for some patter on the Armenian Genocide? Or if nobody remembers because it was so long ago, and nobody paid any attention at the time, maybe Darfur? People will continue to be murdered there day after day, week in week out, month after month, perhaps many additional years into the future.

No one did anything in Rwanda recently while millions were slaughtered. Will we be looking back on Darfur, which has already been going on for years, and saying "Isn't there something we could have done if we had really wanted to?"

And isn't this particular genocide really relevant to us in one respect? This is not just a civil war between tribes we do not recognize and could not easily differentiate from each other. It is the systematic and continuous murder of blacks by the ISLAMIC power elite. Why wouldn't we be doing something about that? I mean, isn't it sort of... TERRORISM? Isn't that what we are all supposed to be fighting right now? Any Imam's or Mullah's out there who could explain the rationale for mass murder to me? I still can't quite get it. I promise not to crack wise about Allah, his name be blessed.

So refreshing to be on a subject in which we might be able to do some good, while we can still do it.

Hitler, insane though he was, made one valid observation. Or perhaps it was Stalin. I don't remember which. Actually maybe both. They were like two peas in a pod. But the observation was with relation to genocide, and it was, "Who remembers the Armenians?"

The meaning of course is clear. There was a lack of outcry in a remarkable and recent previous large scale obliteration of a people. It was pretty totally ignored by the world at large. And these two dictators were not the only ones who noticed this widespread apathy. They took it to be a license for mass murder.

There are a few dozen other hot spots of racial or ethnic cleansing that come to mind in current events. Bear in mind, the Armenian Massacre was a current event for Hitler, not many years before his rise to power. Today's Republic of Turkey is as revisionist as they can be. It wasn't us, they say. It was the Ottoman Empire.

And it wasn't a million and a half people slaughtered they say. It might have been only 900.000 or even less. And there was nothing systematic about it. It was just sort of... spontaneous. A fluke. No one is responsible. And it is just an unfair exaggeration to imply that they were all murdered. Some of those deaths were purely natural causes, during deportation of Armenian terrorists who were collaborating with the Russian Empire. They weren't exterminated. Some of them just "expired" during the lengthy deportation process.

And the deportees were not very cooperative. They often refused to watch until forced, their children being slaughtered, or their wives, mothers. grandmothers, sisters, daughters being gang raped and murdered before their eyes. Terroristic babies impaled on bayonets or their little heads bashed on the rocks.

The truth is that the Turkey of today is comparatively speaking, within the region, quite a forward looking and moderate regime trying to cope with some really serious complexities in their geopolitical situation. So it is a little hard to understand why they would expend so much energy on the denial of history. There could be a consistency of sorts in the long run though. If they succeed in their denial, then a future "solution" of the Kurdish "problem" becomes... more feasible.

The aftermath of the Rwandan tragedy showed everybody who is interested in genocide as an instrument of policy, much more recently, that it is still possible to kill millions of people at a rate of perhaps 10,000 per day for many months, with hardly a ripple of practical response from the world at large. Apparently it was just an outpouring of Rwandan national spirit.

And after it was over, because there had to be some healing, almost none of the actual participants were actually tried or punished. It was more important to "put it all behind us." It doesn't appear to be all behind us. I think there will be a lot more ahead of us. I think it's going to keep going on continuously.

Currently, genocidal incidents are going on in so many different places in the world it is hard to accurately enumerate them. And here I am, a bit like an Ottoman Empire soldier, saying "No, you can't close your eyes. You have to see this! Open your eyes!"

But history is not entirely cyclic. If we start paying attention, we really do often learn from our mistakes. One of the ways history is not repeating itself is in the information explosion. There have been many slaughters in the world throughout history. We know of a fraction of them.

But at the same time, many more of us do know of them, and we have available many more of the real details of what went on, with something approaching forensic precision. It is just so appalling that one can hardly contain it.

But we must face it. and we must continue to be vigilant for the signs that the horrors will again erupt, and may well do so in our own towns and villages.We all tend to look at the governments, as somehow quite central either in fomenting genocides, or in tacitly allowing them by inaction.

But each citizen bears some responsibility. That is where to start. It needs to be socially acceptable to deal with the subject. And each culture needs to realize that the roots of the problem are not far beneath their own social soil.

Regardless of history suggesting that we are powerless to stop these sorts of things, rather than be pessimistic, we need to search for the solutions, not only privately in our hearts and private prejudices, but with one another.

There is no one beyond the reach of a purge. No one. That is the razors edge of reality. First we must really pay attention, to the best of our ability. We must ask the right questions. We need to try to find ways of identifying the various social pressures which build up to the point where one group feels justified to exterminate another.

There is no one cut-and-dried answer. The number of social crises and their severity are increasing, not decreasing, and each has unique characteristics. Even so, we should be looking for the principles. For the things all genocidal hatreds have in common. If we do this we will find the clues which will help us succeed in prevention. If there are no evident pat answers, let us look harder. And let us look within ourselves as well. It is not just "those others" who are doing it. Everyone who ignores it is complicit.