Re: <nettime> Re: the personal is political/Trivialising Holocaust

[Joerg Koch <koch@well.com>]

At 14:53 Uhr +0000 31.03.1999, Richard Barbrook wrote:

>A Kosovan representative said yesterday that: "To oppose the bombing is to
>support fascism in Europe, to support the new Holocaust." Do you dare to
>disagree with her analysis?

Dear Richard,

A simple answer: OF COURSE.

it's interesting to observe how a lot of so-called left-winged people morph
into Nato-cheerleading boosters. Whether the likes of former street
fighters like our  German foreign minister Joschka Fischer or French
intellectuals or British academics like you, they all believe in the power
of bombs.

History teaches us that bombing a population has NO effects on the state
policy. The allieds did massive bombings in Germany in the 2nd WW, hoping
to avoid using ground troops. More than 500.000 people died. Did the
Germans rise up? No.
America has dropped more bombs on Iraq in recent years than throughout the
Gulf War. Did the Iraqi people rise up? No.
If you bomb a country ruled by a dictator, the attacked people won't rise
up to topple the dictator. They do not associate the bombs with Milosevic
but simply with those who drop them. What the Nato has achieved so far with
their air attacks is a political homogenization of the Serbian political
landscape (copy'n'paste from my posting to the rewired list).

Opposing the Nato bombs is not about supporting Serbia or Milosevic, it's
about thinking a little bit more & optioning for other possibilities.

But what really PISSES me off, Richard, is that a well-educated mind like
you tosses around the word Holocaust as if this is a tag attachable to
every bad incident in human history.
I am NOT defending NOR downplaying the Serbian assaults in Kosovo, but I
really can't see how the war in Kosovo even slightly resembles the
dimensions of the Holocaust. If there's a holocaust in Kosovo, then there's
a holocaust in Turkey, then in Burma,in Colombia, etc. But when the
Holocaust is no longer an unique atrocity in human history. It's just
another war-related story. And that's exactly what neo-nazis and
revisionists worldwide work for. As horrible as the war in Kosovo is & as
horrible this must sound to fleeing Albanians in Kosovo or in the refugee
camps, you do trivialize the Holocaust, a mass-industrialized genocide, by
comparing it to a bloody civil war.

greetings from berlin, joerg koch
__________________________________________________
Joerg Koch | gps 52°31'N - 13°24'E I koch@well.com

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