Hobson's Choice

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More on Nationalism

April 20, 2004

(Right, Left, & Imperialism, 1 | 2 | 3 | 4; On Nationalism)

Two fascinating posts on the way in which historical narratives are distorted by nationalism. The first is by Donald Johnson (Body & Soul)

The New York Times has a story today about new mass graves uncovered in Iraq...I don't know what this tells us about the number of people murdered by Hussein. Some bodies were dug up by locals before investigators came and not all of his victims are necessarily in these mass graves...

But whatever the true number of bodies, journalists should make a clear distinction between what is known and what is only propaganda. Human Rights Watch estimates that at least 290,000 people were killed by Saddam's regime.

Compare the way the press covered the Lancet paper on the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the war: A statistically sound survey is done and finds that the number of violent post-invasion deaths is likely to be several times higher than what the press reports collected by Iraq Body Count show. The paper is treated with skepticism in the US press. That would be fair, if people made consistent distinctions between estimates and actual counts of the dead and always preferred the more conservative count of actual bodies. But when it comes to Hussein's victims, the estimates of government officials on the number of bodies contained in grave sites is treated with a respect that can only be called ludicrous.

This reminds me of the passage in Hobson's Imperialism I cited before (Hobson's Choice, with context). But we know all too well why there is a double standard:

The mainstream American press is afraid to accuse an American official of war crimes or something equally serious (such as winking at drug-smuggling by the contras), because if they don't have all their ducks lined up in a row, the accuser will probably find his career finished. That may still happen even if he does have his ducks lined up.

But there are no career-ending consequences if you act as a US government stenographer with respect to enemy atrocities . If anything, the career-ending risk comes with any expression of skepticism about what the government says. Nobody doubts Hussein was a mass murderer and my guess is that he killed hundreds of thousands, but according to the Observer article last July, the mass graves searched so far don't really support the larger estimates. But if any American commentator were to point this out, he would probably be labeled as a Saddam-supporting pinko, and if later evidence showed conclusively that there were 300,000 people buried in the uninvestigated graves, the charge would probably stick. The safe course of action is to report what the US/British/Iraqi government says about the mass graves, just as the safe thing to do two years ago was to treat Colin Powell's UN speech on Iraq's WMD's as definitive. If even a fraction of Powell's charges had been shown correct after the invasion, the skeptics would have been crucified.

This is exactly right and well-worded, so I'll go on to my next example, this time from the truly distressing bitterness between China and Japan.

EastSouthWestNorth:

In discussing the anti-Japanese marches, it is often asserted (especially by Hong Kong people) that the culture of demonstration is superior in Hong Kong. There would never be the kind of rock throwing, toppling over of cars and smashing of shops and restaurants that were seen in Shanghai and elsewhere on mainland China. On Sunday, it was Hong Kong's turn to hold a demonstration. The organizers originally predicted a turnout of 500. In the end, the police gave an estimate of 5,000 while the organizers claimed 12,000. Indeed, there would be no rock throwing, car-toppling or shop-smashing. The marchers went past the big Japanese stores such as Sogo without incident, because they recognized that their gripe was not with the citizens or properties, but with the Japanese government and the Japanese school history textbooks.

...From a letter published in the comments of an InMediaHK post:
We are four citizens who participated the anti-Japanese march today. We demand the Japanese government to treat its invasion of China properly and at the same time we demand the Chinese Communist government to treat our own national history properly. But before the march began today, we were assaulted by other dissenting citizens. We are deeply angered by this.

Today at 3pm, the four of us brought along our own paper placard and flyers to the assembly point in Victoria Park. We hope to express our opinions about the anti-Japanese issue and the proper treatment of history. Our placard read: "The history of invading China must not be revised; the truth about June 4th must not be distorted." We also intend to distribute related flyers during the march.

We arrived and we stood therefore without shouting any slogans. Within one minute, someone proceeded to destroy our placards. There were more than 50 people surrounding us, even as two female police officers attempted to mediate. But the crowd did not stop. They cursed us out with foul language, and then they shoved us. It was chaotic. More police officers arrived to assist us. In the melee, people were pulling our hair and scratching us with their hands and my glasses were broken. One of the placards was torn up, and its bamboo stick was snapped. We left the scene of the demonstration under police escort, all the while being cursed. Some of the people attempted to break the police line to snatch away our flyers.

At this point I need to break in and explain that the Tiananmen Square Incident began 4 June (1989). Now, as the narrators point out, the incident was another episode in the passion of the Chinese. However, imagine if you were to go to a demonstration where Americans were demonstrating angrily about the 11 September attacks, and you have a banner denouncing both that act AND the 19 April '14 Ludlow Massacre? Or the much more ugly Fort Pillow Massacre (1864)? Or the Colfax, LA massacre (1874)? Non-American readers might possibly be confused, but the point here is for closet White nationalists (who are the most indiscriminantly vindictive chickenhawks in our current security predicament), the home-grown massacres are off-limits. Those were used to thrash radicals into line, something the devout ultranationalist seldom objects to:

(The Standard) Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China chairman Szeto Wah was booed at SAR Government Headquarters when he mentioned Tiananmen Square. "In 1989 a protester in Beijing carried a banner saying the Nanjing Massacre was Japanese killing the Chinese, but June 4 was Chinese killing Chinese,'' he said. "Regardless of where they are from, no one should be allowed to rewrite history," Szeto said.

(Sing Tao via Yahoo! News) When Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China chairman Szeto Wah got invited to speak on the podium, some in the crowd booed. He declared: "The Japanese government revised its history, and refuse to rectify its past crimes and misdeeds. This is a mistake on top of another mistake." Then he reflecetd: "This incident reminds me of the day after June 4, 1989, when I went past a bookstore and saw a banner that said ..." Before he finished, some in the crowd yelled: "We are here today to protest against the Japanese!" Others chanted "Down with Japan! Down with Japan! Down with Japan!" to get Szeto Wah off the podium. In the end, the organizers sent someone out to lead other anti-Japanese slogans and calmed the people down.

Or, as one commentor wrote at a Chinese chat site:

Rubbish! Even if the Chinese Communists tell lies all the time, what is wrong about wanting to protect the integrity of China? What kind of logic is it to say that as long as the June 4 incident is not vindicated, then the Chinese must permit the Japanese to occupy our territory and steal our resources? To exaggerate somewhat, if China and Japan should go to war tomorrow while the Chinese Communists have not yet apologized for June 4, are we supposed to turn our guns around to help the Japanese ghouls? Stupid!

I hope the analogy to our own national madness is clear. I hope, I hope, I hope.

NOTE—Colfax, Louisiana, 1874: part of the extremely violent campaign by Whites to disenfranchise Blacks after Reconstruction. Described here:

Violence was a principal means of direct disenfranchisement in the South before Redemption. In 1873, a band of whites murdered over 100 blacks who were assembled to defend Republican officeholders against attack in Colfax, Louisiana. Federal prosecutors indicted 3 of them under the Enforcement Act of 1870, which prohibited individuals from conspiring "to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise and enjoyment of any right or privilege granted or secured to him by the constitution or laws of the United States." The Supreme Court dismissed the indictments in U.S. vs. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875), faulting them for failure to identify a right guaranteed by the federal government that had been violated in the slaughter: (1) Conceding that the right to assemble for the purpose of petitioning Congress or vote in federal elections was derived from the federal government, the Court argued that the right to participate in state politics was derived from the states, so individuals could look only to the states for protection of this right. (2) Conceding an exception, that the U.S. Constitution grants individuals the right against racial discrimination in the exercise of their rights to participate in state politics, the Court faulted the indictment for failure to charge a racial motivation for interference in the victims' right to vote (even though the racial motive was obvious). (3) In any event, the Court ruled that this federal right against racial discrimination was enforceable against the states only, not against individuals. (4) Other rights violated in the slaughter, such as the rights to life and against false imprisonment, were not derived from the federal government, so individuals had to resort to the states for protection of these rights. Cruikshank "rendered national prosecution of crimes against blacks virtually impossible, and gave a green light to acts of terror where local officials either could not or would not enforce the law." (Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 1989, 531).

This episode is so horrible and shameful words fail me completely. If you really want an example of an activist judge nullifying the laws of the land, then here it is—the 9/11 of judicial activism. What? Silent? Why aren't those fine opponents of judicial activism at Bob Jones University pounding the table into matchwood with indignant allusions to... Never mind, I've got to calm down.