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Kosovo and the 'Clean Left'By Charles Keil
April 29 As horrible, racist (their lives so much less precious than ours), tech-fixated, ineffective, counterproductive (as the air strikes continue building the fasc around Slobo), Pentagon inflating, etc. etc. as it is, I still support the bombing with the further clarification by Blair, Clinton, that there can be no compromise, no negotiation, no appeasement of cleansers. NATO has not gone far enough in declaring the right of self determination, arming of KLA to defend their villages and people, insisting on war crimes trials for Slobo, the leaders, the thugs, and full reparations paid for by all Serbian citizens. Collective guilt exists when citizens elect and reelect a fascist government. I think we should be extremely grateful to the 18 nations that have been able to reach a consensus on doing something to oppose public rape, slaughtering unarmed civilians, this whole process we have come to call 'cleansing.' UN forces witnessing atrocities, consolidating turf cleansed by Serbs, not resisting the siege of Sarajevo, not arresting war criminals, not doing police work -- drove me crazy back in the Bosnia era leading up to the appeasement and complicity in war crimes represented by Dayton. UN forces exiting Rwanda at the very moment when 800,000 lives could have very easily been saved with some tear gas, a few swift international police responses -- that too disgusted me and disgraced us all. The Dayton accords made WITH the war criminals, in effect saying yes we can make a deal with people who murder unarmed civilians by the hundreds, create concentration camps, conduct public rapes as a matter of policy -- all this reconvinced me that Hannah Arendt was right about the spreading 'banality of evil' in our century. I don't hear this line of reasoning in a recent public letter from French
intellectuals. Statements by leading left intellectuals in the U.S. seem
morally evasive, alienated, cynical. Former friends and comrades arguing
with me by e-mail consistently fail to talk about how they would stop
the ongoing Serbian crimes against humanity over the past 6, 7, 9 years.
Given the UN record in Bosnia and Rwanda, they can't realistically argue
for a UN force being assembled and deployed and acting like police soon
enough to make any difference. Won't happen. Russia in Chechnya and China
in Tibet showed why they don't want anyone standing up to Slobo or seeking
rough justice (or any kind of justice) for oppressed nations trapped inside
fascist and genocidal states anywhere in the world. Should Russia and
China have veto power over 18 democratic nations resisting crimes against
humanity in the only way they think they can manage it politically? States forfeit sovereignty in the moment that a regime commits crimes
against humanity. April 30, 1999 May 6 We all fear it in others. I don't know about you, but I fear it in myself.
This deep, deep urge to be bonded, to be of one mind and body with kindred
spirits, to feel righteous and strong in quantity of numbers and quality
of truth, to have some shared beliefs you are willing to sacrifice for
and even to die for if necessary, and...and...to kill for? Go to war for?
No. Wait a minute... Add big victimage to alienation. The Germans thought they were the big victims after World War I. Reparations were Hitler's fuel for World War II. The Serbs think of themselves as big victims and justified in their new role as aggressors and executioners in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo -- ask the survivors in Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Bihac and all of Kosovo what kind of victims the Serbs are... How did a solid majority of those good, rational, intelligent, Mozart-loving, very civilized Germans become Nazis or Nazi sympathizers? Why do Serbs rally round Slobo instead of saying 'guess we better stop butchering Albanians and burning villages, cause 18 nations are finally saying that's a no-no in 99.' Even more fascinating, why do 90% of Russians and 60% of Greeks side with the Serbian fascists and war criminals? How does that deep identification with the Serbs overlook the manifestly evil ways they have searched for lebensraum the past 8 years? How does demonstrating against NATO bombing assuage Russian and Greek senses of alienation, victimage, powerlessness, wanting to belong, wanting to love. I haven't liked or trusted Mikis Theodoras ever since his music after 'Song of the Dead Brother' got more mushy, sentimental, pseudo-folky, pretentious, but he seems an intelligent, creative man of left who calls Milosevic a butcher and monster in one breath, only to say that fascist Serbia must be defended in the next breath or all of Greek history and honor will have been in vain! Fascinating... Since Roman times there has been an ax in the middle of the fasc. 'Fasces -- a bundle of rods, bound together about an ax with the blade projecting, carried before magistrates of ancient Rome as an emblem of authority.' The power tribe...How do we make the world safe for non-power tribes? How do we get the ax out of every bundle? The most recent administrative massacres have been very low tech. The Hutu, using mostly machetes, were more efficient than the Germans! Slobo's thugs in ski masks use mostly small arms and their Serbian penises. (Those masks are very important; some shame or fear of being identified and taken to the Hague seems to exist. Progress?) It might be too hard to stop the Hutu or the Serbs as they search and destroy in small groups. But superfast high tech planes flying 15,000 feet and higher don't seem to be the appropriate technology to stop or deter cleansing and genocide... We have never said 'No' to the administrators of massacres or the leaderships who generate other genocidal events in the first place. Read While Six Million Died and realize that no one ever tried to bomb the railroad tracks to Auschwitz. Fascinating. We don't even know the names or recognize the faces of the men who masterminded, planned, propagandized, ordered, and executed the most efficient slaughter of innocents ever accomplished. Who wants to know? I don't. I went and got the names of the Hutu evil geniuses and then promptly forgot them. Long names. Funny names. Too many syllables. Always faceless. Fascinating. Since there are no conclusions to these paragraphs. Fascinations but no findings...I'd like to end by going over my only personal experience of fascism/racism/pogroms circa 1967 over thirty years ago in Nigeria. My wife Angie and I could see, hear, sense the pogrom coming to Makurdi, the polyglot administrative center of Benue Province, feel the anti-Ibo racism rising, read about unpunished pogroms in other cities. The dozen or so white expatriates working for the provincial government didn't think anything would happen, the Tiv people we were working with denied the possibility, but we felt it was just a matter of time and a trigger. Only the town madman, Gypsy Fullstop -- a.k.a. Lord Rolling Stone, R.G.T. Above (RGT the initials for Royal Government Tyrannical) -- was clearer than we were about the impending massacres, bringing word salads each day filled with truth-telling phrases ('gangs of jealousy' and 'jeopardy, jeopardous'), signing himself 'cruciferous' or more than crucified. When the day came and elements of a Nigerian army battalion showed up
to lead the mob, I thought about going down the hill to the market area
and trying to stop it. White people were still respected, distinguished
visitors, closest to distant authorities -- it was not a completely crazy
thought. But I was afraid. And what happens to my wife and infant daughter
if my bluff is called and I'm killed or incarcerated? I stayed home and
watched the dust rise over the market from the hilltop. When we went across
the Makurdi bridge by car the next day to see what the buzzards were circling
over, to count the eviscerated bodies, to smell the most nauseating stench
of rotting flesh in the tropics, to at least witness what had been done,
we were greeted on the trip back by a Nigerian army officer at the bridge
who cheerfully invited us to tea that afternoon and smilingly explained
that we could discuss how important it was to rid the world of Ibos, what
recent progress had been made in this area and what further progress could
be expected. Chilling. The expatriates back at the social club, a few
missionaries included, explained to us the next day that while indeed,
it had happened, some had been killed, it was 'just the riffraff,' a few
of the unemployed and hangers on, no one important. What I learned from
this personal experience, and from the inability of Ibos and other 'Eastern
Nigerians' to find freedom, dignity, justice, in an independent Biafra
over the few years of struggle and starvation that followed, is that:
1)no-one wants to see it coming, to be alert to signs of oncoming fascism
and genocidal events, to send out warning signals; 2) few recognize it
when it does come -- this is not an exceptional crime, it's 'just cleansing'
the riffraff, just how things are 'in Africa' or 'in the Balkans;' 3)the
fascists think they are doing themselves and the world a favor 'cleaning'
up a problem, and, 5) by and large, the world would rather agree than
get over it's fascinating fear of fascism.
June 7 There is nothing sublime about this essay, and we can't wait for a long
time to achieve successful anti-fascist strategies. The response to 'genocidal
events,' to fascism and 'cleansing' must be swift, smart and efficient
in the future. The first thing to understand is that fascism is a potent
psychosocial brew or fusion of Whatever fascism is, seems like the international community of open societies should try very hard to identify and squish it in the larval stage, bop it on the head before it feeds and grows, treat it with big doses of biting satire and laughter before we have to take it seriously indeed. Fortunately, it is very easy to identify in the egg or the bud stage. Every fascist dictator has announced his willingness to stand alone in the field of corpses early in his career, has heaped scorn on the untermenschen of choice early on, and usually these crazy leaders, believe it or not, win an election or two on this platform before they drop poison gas on a minority village (Saddam) or invade a neighboring country (Slobo four or five times, I've lost count). Everyone with a responsibility to do something about it can see the fasc forming. In today's world of high tech communications the very first repressions at home and aggressions abroad will register on political seismographs everywhere. So what do we do? Set up criteria for fascistic societies and when those criteria are met, start applying very, very gradually the sanctions, ostracism from the market, embargoes by stages on the economic side and apply our imaginations very quickly on the cultural or aesthetic side, turn loose lots of truth-squad attacks, international conferences of humorists, air drops of cartoon and subversive propaganda showing how absurd fascism looks in both the egg and larval stages. Big ideas, esthetics, famous lost battles centuries ago, all manner of nonsensical ideologies are wrapt up in the growing fascism and need to be unwrapped in constant feedback from free world opinion before the creature evolves and becomes violent. If and when the fasc does become violent, either internally or externally, the response must be swift rather than gradual. Complete economic sanctions announced by world leaders simultaneously: no trade, no aid, no normality whatever while aggression against neighbors or genocidal events internal to the country are on-going. (We have seen that long-term sanctions, embargoes, only punish the people not the leaders, but complete, short-term sanctions tell the administrators of massacres that they have become pariahs and pain is on the way.) World court indictments, quick arrest attempts by tough world police units, trials and punishments that fit the crime are what we should be working toward. But given the prevailing power structures and the time it will take to create enough world government, world court and world police to do the job, we need interim strategies, policies, understandings of what is possible and productive rather than counterproductive. During the recent air war to stop Serb 'cleansing' in Kosovo, there were times when many of us were asking for ground troops, a full and comprehensive response to the humanitarian crisis, an invasion from the north that would force Serb armies to defend Belgrade and remove troops from Kosovo, etc. I still think selective, tactical, in and out use of helicopters and professional soldiers to attack Serb staging areas for an hour and leave, to defend specific village populations while they packed up or to protect fleeing refugees would have sent the Serbs a message that they didn't have a completely free hand to commit atrocities. But I also think that fascism requires or feeds on blood sacrifices from powerful enemies. A Milosevic or a Mussolini would especially like to be standing in a field of enemy corpses. Why give the fascists the satisfaction of killing our young men? Why dignify a peculiar thirst for war by giving them the kind of war they want? Why satisfy their death-wish by giving them the kind of deaths they want? These questions could be multiplied and come under the lead question: 'Which kinds of force are most parsimonious and humane in undermining and stopping a fascist power's aggressions and cleansings?' The answer, I believe, is an air campaign directed 100% against energy, fuel, electricity, power lines. A dark Belgrade is a thinking Belgrade. A thirsty Belgrade going to the river for water is a thinking Belgrade. But cluster bombs? Hitting TV buildings filled with reporters rather than hitting the transmitting towers? Downtown buildings? Clearly this was never a 100% energy targets campaign, or a 100% materials and infrastructure targets campaign, and it could have been that and only that from day one. And been more effective. A squeaky clean air campaign would still have too many civilian casualties and would still be obscene, alienated, refusing to engage in the mortal combat favored by Norman Mailer who [in a Washington Post op-ed piece] likens it to 'first sex' (glad I wasn't his high school sweetheart!), but it matches better with the obscenity of 'cleansing' or what Mailer calls 'psychic genocide.' The Serbs amputate Albanian pasts with their atrocities, make 'home' into a place you will never want to return to. Shouldn't we at least have used our high tech to turn out the lights in all Serbian homes while they thought about what their thugs were doing in Serbia's name? Here's a much darker vision of response, but perhaps a punishment that fits the crimes. If we had announced in leaflets and in all available media exactly which bridges would certainly be hit on which nights next week, then the patriotic rock concert crowds with target t-shirts would know just where to assemble for annihilation by NATO bombs. Only the Serbs who would like to party and hug bridges rather than stop butchering Albanians would be killed and this would sort out over time, culturally or eugenically (I think it's in their values to die for Slobo's dreams, but who knows, maybe it's in their genes), the good Serbs from the bad, the fascists from the non-fascists, and entirely on a voluntary basis. Perhaps this plays unfairly on the death-wish and racism parts of fascism, but simply contemplating this strategy of assigning bridge targets for martyr wannabes to cluster upon takes the Mailer insights about what it is in humans that lets fascism grow and thrive, and asks us to think further. Given what we know about how fascism works, is going back to macho, mortal, hand to hand combat really much of an answer? A 'cowardly' air war better fits the cowards who butcher and bully unarmed civilians.
[A few minutes later on the 16th] How about the 'clean left.'
seven sonnets for the serb in uscleansingdon't put ' ' around the cleansing a poem is no place for philosophy crying over spilt yipsi will not stand vigil outside your church in lackawanna one night at the orthodox folk fest slimeI'm sorry serbs that you're the targets eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth reverse epicyour best friends think of you as needing thought reform indians on reservations and big new prisons filled with blacks genocide as too post factowe've made some conceptual progress genocide may work on indigenees, delicate, small, not immune preventionthe alternatives to slobo are much worse numb chawmsky chews on the data c.o.u.r.a.g.e.* to face the 'fer factor'seriously screwed up ingroupiness 'fascist ethnocentric racism' On July 7, 1999, Keil sent 'An Open Letter to Foundations' proposing that funds be gathered to set up *Councils On Understanding Racism And Genocidal Events. In a footnote to these sonnets he clarified why he was committed to the phrase 'genocidal events.' We probably need to stick with the G word in organizing and communicating with the world as it is. Only recently has American officialdom started to use the word 'genocide' in relation to Rwanda or events in the former Yugoslavia. Even though it feels a little like getting the New York Times to use a capital N on Negro -- one belated, 'dignifying' fix for a double mistaken reification -- it would feed into the 'holocaust denial' and 'blaming the victim' syndromes simply to abandon the term/concept of 'genocide'....By using the phrase 'genocidal events' we can keep the term, focus on the processes, see racism and cleansing as the problem we need to understand and solve if 'genocide,' an end result, is to be stopped. November 7 In the aftermath of the war it is sad to note the lack of Serbian contrition and that the leading cleansers have not yet been brought to trial. Most of the opposition in Serbia scapegoats Milosevic for 'losing Kosovo' not for committing crimes against humanity there. Similarly, Hutu genocidaires are still active in Rwanda and few, if any, of the masterminds behind the most efficient administrative massacres ever accomplished have been apprehended or brought to trial. We need more books like Philip Gourevitch's We wish to inform you that
tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda (this
book may not quite be the equal of Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, but
it is a fine book, a model, and a worthy sequel to While Six Million Died).
We need a matching fund from a consortium of foundations for starting
up COURAGE councils in the USA and abroad. We need regional and world
prevention strategies by well-trained and ever-ready mediation teams backed
up by well-trained and ever-ready regional and world police forces. While
diplomats dicker over the use of force, composition of forces, people
have been and will be killed in droves. Currently every cleansing crisis
is met or not met at the whim of the USA and big regional powers. Preventing
Violent Conflict -- A Swedish Action Plan, available from the Swedish
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at www.ud.se on the net, deserves study,
wider distribution and support. Finally, demilitarizing the US economy
and arms control of every size, shape and description is our and the world's
number one need. With just a third of what the world spends on armaments
each year (800 billion dollars) every major social problem could be solved,
and that includes stopping the cleansings that destroy their bodies and
our souls. |
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