Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 06:14:26 -0600
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: Rahul, Political murder and Holocaust


Marcus:

>Just wanted to make one comment on the below.
>
>I don't think we can carelessly say: "There is a holocaust going on
>every year." The Holocaust was a particular policy of genocide. I do
>not think that the deaths from hunger, poverty et cetera can be
>compared.
>
>Although I do agree with the thrust of your point. I just wanted to
>make a clarification

I wasn't being careless. The differences between the cases are quite clear
and I would not attempt to elide them. The Holocaust involved among other
things diabolical sadism on the part of a large number of SS offices,
concentration camp guards, etc. What I'm talking about here arises from the
urge for profit from a few (drug companies, government officials, etc.) and
the appalling apathy of the masses. It's not a question of self-interest
(for the masses); we're not talking about socialism or even establishing a
decent welfare state. We're talking about pennies; children dying from
cholera when the oral rehydration therapy costs ten cents a dose; two
million a year dying from tuberculosis in India, which has been treatable
since the 50's; 600,000 children a year in India growing up with
irreparable brain damage because of a lack of iodine in their diet, when
all you have to do is sniff the sea air to get enough. The list goes on
forever. Over 13 million children a year die of infectious diseases that
are easily treatable; when you add in the toll in lives and years of
malnutrition the number becomes hard to calculate. The amount of money
necessary to make a serious dent in this is less than Americans spend on
cosmetics and deodorants every year.

If your concern is that I'm depicting all (or most) of us as concentration
camp guards, I'm not. On the other side of the balance, note that any
ordinary German who wanted to fight the extermination in any small way
risked ending up in a concentration camp herself. There's no such risk in
trying to fight the results of this calculated neglect.

If you wish to consider the Holocaust as strictly worse, go ahead. I look
at it differently. The Holocaust was a result of hatred and brutality*;
this holocaust is a result of profound and stupid selfishness*. Two
different but to me equally important facets of the multifarious wonder
that is man's inhumanity to man.

Rahul

*Standard disclaimer for Marxists: I am not attempting to promulgate a
purely moralistic analysis of either of these two phenomena. I am simply
not addressing structural factors at this time.





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