Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 00:20:16 +0800
From: Joel Ng <jngkj-AT-mbox2.singnet.com.sg>
Subject: Re: roger doesn't want diplomacy


Ok.  I was going to stay out of this thread, but somehow, I must step in to point
out the irony at play here.

danceswithcarp wrote:

> Well, bullshit to that.  Saying that somehow the serbs are FORCED tinto
> making bad CHOICES is apologism of the highest extreme.  If the people
> oppose Milosevic and his henchmen then they oppose them.  Nothing NATO has
> done should change that.

Come on carpo.  Remember when we split on that list thread about genocide against
native americans?  You wrote a long piece which included the following ("Is the
anarchy-list intolerent of genocide" thread sometime last december):

Carp wrote (under the nom-de-plume "Sound of Great Wind Breaking"):

And I keep coming back to the same point:  The people who actually
committed the acts were almost exclusively of two classes.  One was the
monied people and their paid servants, the U$ military.  The other is the
people who were on the edge of the frontier and settlement movement;
People whose very survival was a tenuous day-to-day prosepct; People who
had fled established communities when their options for better living ran
out?  Were 100% of the settlers in this class?  Of course not.  But
everything I've read indicates that most of them were.

Think about it for one moment; why would someone leave +comfort+ to go
fight drought, locusts, and starvation?  There is only one reason:
Because they thought things would be better.  How bad would things have to
be to uproot your entire life and go settle in lands so romantically
called "The Great American Desert?"  Anyone who says that the people who
settled the U$ plains were of the comfortable classes must simply be
deluded when it comes to answering the question I just posed.

I mean pretty much all of the great political-economic thinkers have said
that it is economics which drive the social engines and activities of the
citizenry; Smith explained it for capitalism, Marx for communism (and and
of necessity for capitalism), and Proudhon for anarchists (and again, for
capital). +All+ of these guys agree on that basic tenet:  people and
societies act because of economic drive.  I have no idea how many times I
have seen this type of argument used on the -AT--list, in particular as it
regards racism and hate:

"Why racism?"

"Because it serves the interests of the economic bosses."

Yet when I put this generally agreed upon economic analytical overlay on a
hystorical happening in an attempt to *explain* it--not defend, but
explain--I am told it is an attempt to deflect blame and is a "bullshit
theory."----------------------

See carpo. .. although we managed to sort out some of the differences in the end,
what you are saying ("Saying that somehow the serbs are FORCED into making bad
CHOICES is apologism of the highest extreme")  to the more classical anarchists
is exactly the same criticism I levelled at you (although I'm pretty sure I put
it in nicer terms) when you said "it serves the interests of the economic bosses"
and that white american settlers were somehow "forced to act on capital's, and
thus the state's, wishes, upon the perceived peril of non-survival for want of
cash.".  Same idea, different excuse.  It happens and it happens.  What's really
sad is the striking parallels between the two threads in which you've made a
complete about-turn when it came to criticising the Serbs.  While I normally
can't stand taking a middle ground in an argument, I think the answer in this
case lies somewhere in the middle.Aaron also wrote, and it's worth repeating,
that "the lure of an ideology of power appeals most to people who otherwise feel
powerless."