The Normalization of Genocide
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Genocide is not a new phenomenon in human experience. It was practiced in Biblical times[1] and long before that. Indeed, many historians postulate the theory that Cro-Magnon deliberately exterminated Neanderthals.
Yet, as civilization developed and certain humanist values were formulated by philosophers and theologians, the rulers realized that they had to control the narrative if they did not want to succumb to resistance from rival lords and competing scenarios. Democracy may have been born in Greece, when rulers understood that information is power and that they had to cater to public opinion, at least to the views of other powerful players. Gradually the logic of the “rule of law” emerged, not just dura lex sed led (the law is hard, but it is the law), but a feeling that summum jus, summa injuria (an excess of law entails injustice), that the rule of law somehow should correspond to the rule of justice[2]. While the use of force remained the prerogative of the sovereign, it was not absolute and had to be legitimized. Thus, self-serving myths were concocted, the self-righteous narrative that the king or President is presumed to do the right thing, which, of course, would exclude gross injustice and crimes such as genocide. As information management became crucial, State secrecy became an enabler of crime.
In my book “Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis”[3] (Olzog, Munich, 2011, only in German, no English translation as yet), I explored the mechanisms of secrecy that surrounded the Armenian genocide[4], the Holocaust, the massacres of Halabja and Srebrenica.
The common denominator of these mega-crimes was the effort by governments and the complicit media to hide or deny the atrocities, to use coded language and euphemisms, while maintaining a semblance of legality and “business as usual”.
In the digital world, the world of television, memes and social media, it has become impossible to hide a genocide, thus creating an image problem for governments in democratic societies. Policy shifted to blaming the victims for their own misfortune. As Tacitus wrote Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris, (Agricola, 42) — it is human nature to hate those whom we have hurt.
Thus today’s strategy dictates how to depict the victims as terrorists, dehumanize them as beasts, accuse them of crimes and depravity, reverse cause and effect, ignore the pre-history of conflicts, flood social media with narratives built on fake news, fake history, fake law, provide an artificial atmosphere of normalcy, as if a specific war and the ensuing genocide were tantamount to natural disasters, not man-made, something that had to happen, because it was in the fates, because God willed it so – Deus vult!
Paradigm change
A quantum change in our perception of genocide has taken hold. Once seen as the ultimate crime, as the gravest violation of international law and morals, as a justification to completely break diplomatic and commercial relations with the genocidal state, today genocide is quasi-accepted by governments that are ostensibly committed to human rights and international law. Large swathes of the international community look the other way and keep silent about the enormity of the crime, qui tacet consentire videtur.
Major powers like the US, UK, France and Germany have become partners in genocide by supplying the weapons to carry it out, by providing military, economic, political, diplomatic and propagandistic support to the genocidal state. Future generations will look at us as the generation that legitimized genocide as something that “happens”, like a volcanic eruption or a tsunami.
Remarkably enough, the “collective West” has not withdrawn from the 1948 Genocide Convention, which requires all members to take concrete measures to prevent genocide[5], but prefers to apply the Convention à la carte. We may condemn Pol Pot, Jean-Paul Akayesu[6] and Jean Kambanda[7], but try to spare Netanyahu and Gallant. This is classical cognitive dissonance.
Alas our generation has already been trained in living with contradictions and is not concerned by the corrosive insanity of this behaviour. We consciously avoid reflection on the implications of the destruction of language, values and meaning. We do not reflect on our own complicity in the crimes and the long shadow that this collective guilt will throw on future generations.
Collective guilt syndrome
The Nazi Holocaust of European Jews caused a national trauma in Germany and resulted in self-hate and widespread rejection of German history and culture. The baby was thrown out with the bath water.
Post-war Germany was built on collective guilt for the Holoacust. Many politicians see themselves not as the heirs of Kant, Goethe or Beethoven, but as the heirs of Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. The German “identity” became uncompromisingly pro-Israel. The defence of Israel became German Staatsräson[8], raison d’état.
It is to be seen whether the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since 1945, the daily practice of Apartheid in the Occupied Territories, the genocide in Gaza will eventually generate a generalized guilt complex and trauma in the current and future generations of Germans. Will they develop a guilt complex comparable to the Holocaust syndrome?
In this context it is instructive to note that many prominent Jewish thinkers and Israeli Professors fear that the magnitude of the crimes against the Palestinians may result in an Israeli trauma. Indeed, those Jews who have seen themselves as a victimized people may not be able to handle a new identity as a “Tätervolk”, as a people of perpetrators of genocide. These concerns have been expressed by Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs, Illan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein and Richard Falk, among others.
Collective responsibility
Any person committe4d to the “rule of law” must reject the concept of “collective guilt” as a gross violation of the foundational principle of justice and due process. Guilt and merit are necessarily individual categories.
It is patently unjust to hold a person guilty of the crimes of another person or group with which he may be associated, however loosely. The concept of “guilt by association” is immoral, unless there are strong reasons to impute personal responsibility by reason of knowledge of the crime and failure to act.
In most civilized legal systems, there exists the concept of solidarity, the obligation to render assistance in situations of grave danger or distress. Many countries have “duty to rescue” legislation that would criminalize inaction in certain cases. Even without specific laws, it would shock our conscience if we were to legitimize indifference and inaction. Imagine a person who would rather take pictures of a drowning person, instead of attempting to save the person, throw a lifeline to the victim, alert the authorities, seek help. Law also knows the concept of crime by omission.
Extrapolating from this, do we all become “guilty” if we know about an on-going genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan, Palestine, say “that is none of my concern”, and do nothing about it? Do we become civilly and penally liable, when we invest in the arms industries, when we know that the weapons are being used for genocide?
Yes, we become complicit and share the responsibility for the crime, thus giving rise to our legal and moral liability. Should we be punished ?
More important than any punishment, which is always ex post facto – the damage has already occurred – is prevention of genocide. This is the core of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the reason why Raphael Lemkin focused on the obligation to take measures to prevent[9] a genocide, “early warning,” information, humanitarian intervention, Responsibility to Protect (R2P)[10].
Knowledge by the population with regard to the Holocaust and Gaza
Who bears greater responsibility for genocide – the German people 1941-45 who lived in a terroristic, totalitarian State, where all the information was controlled by the Nazi authorities and listening to the BBC or foreign radio was tantamount to treason, or our own generation who knows too much about the genocide in Gaza, who sees it daily on television, on YouTube, and sees it confirmed by politicians, academics, think tank pundits, interviews with the victims and perpetrators?
Is it not our duty – the responsibility of each and every one of us – to stop the Gaza genocide by all diplomatic, commercial, and – if necessary – military intervention? Is it not our obligation to ensure immediate humanitarian assistance and respect of the UN Charter and the Geneva Red Cross Conventions?
Or – in the alternative — are we prepared to “normalize” the practice of genocide and become professional negationists?
Notes.
[1] SAMUEL 15: 3 Now go and attack the Amalekites and devote to destruction all that belongs to them. Do not spare them, but put to eath men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
Deuteronomy 13:15,16 Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword…
Deuteronomy 7:1-2 When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to possess, and He drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— / and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.
Deuteronomy 25:18 When the LORD your God gives you rest from the enemies around you in the land that He is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you are to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.
Joshua 6:17-21 Now the city and everything in it must be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all those with her in her house will live, because she hid the spies we sent. / But keep away from the things devoted to destruction, lest you yourself be set apart for destruction. If you take any of these, you will set apart the camp of Israel for destruction and bring disaster upon it. / For all the silver and gold and all the articles of bronze and iron are holy to the LORD; they must go into His treasury.” …
Judges 1:28 When Israel became stronger, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor, but they never drove them out completely.
Jeremiah 50:21 Go up against the land of Merathaim, and against the residents of Pekod. Kill them and devote them to destruction. Do all that I have commanded you,” declares the LORD. This is what the Lord GOD says: I will stretch out My hand against Edom and cut off from it both man and beast. I will make it a wasteland, and from Teman to Dedan they will fall by the sword. / I will take My vengeance on Edom by the hand of My people Israel, and they will deal with Edom according to My anger and wrath. Then they will know My vengeance, declares the Lord GOD.’
Numbers 31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
Psalm 137:8-9 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us. / Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
[4] https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/777663
https://groong.org/dezayas-summary.html
https://www.cnarmeniens.org/portfolio/some-thoughts-prevention-genocide
[6] https://unictr.irmct.org/en/news/historic-judgement-finds-akayesu-guilty-genocide
[7] https://unictr.irmct.org/en/news/ex-rwandan-prime-minister-jean-kambanda-pleads-guilty-genocide
[8] https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/kontext/deutschland-staatsraeson-israel-100.html
[9] https://www.lemkininstitute.com/
[10] https://www.globalr2p.org/what-is-r2p/
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