Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 12:54:17 -0500 (EST)
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Re: roger doesn't want diplomacy




On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Joel Ng wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 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.


No, this is way different.  What I was responding to in this latest thread
is Dave's charge that NATO's actions have rallied even anti-Milosevic
activists to the base nationalistic cause.  I do not for one instant think
that every one of those people rallying daily for Greater Serbia and
Milosevic see their own lives in fatal peril; What they see is their STATE
in peril and they are choosing to rally to that cause.  On the american
frontier it was not the survival of the state that drove the people to
commit crimes against humynity or support the state's efforts, rather it
was the perception of their very own life's peril.  Capital and the state
then twisted these fears to their own ends.  The number of Serb
non-military casualties is very low and it is quite obvious the civilian
population is NOT being targeted.  So to claim the Serbs are rallying out
of fear for their own persoal safety is quite a stretch.

Like Dave said, the nationalistic tugs in Serbia are quite strong.

>  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.  

Not quite.  In the american West the settlers hardly were the
inteligentsia, they were subsistence dirt farmers; they did the dirty wirk
of state and capital. In Serbia it's the college and university
professors, the shopkeepers, the factory wirkers, and of course the tired
left along with the ultra-nationalists.  Even though the only thing most
Serbs are threatened with is the lowering of lifestyles.  I can't really
cry over that one.  I don't like the bombing.  I don't like NATO.  what I
like even less is people swallowing some really loopy theory that if the
bombing would just stop John Lennon will return and Milosevic will
suddenly give peace a chance.  The man is a proven homocidial maniac.  If
the ordinary Serbs rally to him, then there's not much to say.


> 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."

Then perhaps they should be sitting in front of MIlosevic's palace instead
of going to rock concerts and watching "Star Wars."


carp