[BRIEF NOTE] My Final Note on Chomsky

[rfmcdonald]

autopope kindly pointed me in the direction of The Guardian's withdrawal of Emma Brockes' controversial interview with Chomsky.

The headline used on the interview, about which Prof Chomsky also complained, added to the misleading impression given by the treatment of the word massacre. It read: Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough.

No question in that form was put to Prof Chomsky. [. . .]

Ms Brockes's misrepresentation of Prof Chomsky's views on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have ever denied the fact of the massacre.

Strictly speaking, that's not quite true. At East Ethnia, Eric Gordy has blogged an extended takedown of the Srebrenica Research Group's independent report on the Srebrenica massacre, in which the existence of Srebrenica as an unjustifiable massive atrocity is denied by, among others, Johnstone. He writes about how the genocide is denied based on the context of the event, on presumptive equivalence of this and other atrocities, on the incomplete information available about the dead and the circumstances of their deaths, on the anticipated consequences of recognizing the genocide, and on the attribution of shady motivations. The deaths of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of men after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave to Bosnian Serb forces is, if unfortunate, expectable. A massacre of eight thousand civilians would be inexplicable, leading us to Gordy's straightforward conclusion:

It never ceases to amaze me that there is a group of people who describe themselves as progressives (and who find some part of the left audience willing to accept that description) while in practice so much of their rhetorical effort goes into creating apologies for violent criminals of the extreme right. The implicit logical connection to be made is that anybody who is concerned about US foreign policy or globalisation is required to support any regime that is declaratively against these things. In the same breath, Diana Johnstone tries to preemptively state her worry that she might be "condemned as an apologist for frightful crimes." She might be, yes.

Does Johnstone have a right to be published? Certainly, there's plenty of agencies which might be interested in publishing her work. What Johnstone does not have is a right to expect her work to get published by anyone she might want, or to get praised by any of the relevant experts, not only on moral but on factual grounds. Chomsky isn't a genocide denialist, thankfully. He is blinkered morally, though. Take him, and this, for what it's worth.