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rfmcdonaldOne reason I've been so hard on Chomsky is his detachment from the consequences of the causes he champions (like, say, revanchist Serb nationalism). If the 20th century has demonstrated anything, it's that intellectuals unwilling to engage with the foreseeable consequences of their actions end up being used to justify remarkable horrors, especially in ages where technologies and economies outpace the human capacity to cope. Intentionality doesn't matter, alas; good intentions ended up creating the regimes which made cattle cars take people to Siberian gualgs and central European extermination camps.
The world's poised for a repeat. Somewhere, or somewheres, vulnerable pools of humanity will be dried out by the energetic and concerted actions of determined individuals and peoples. I'd like to believe that Canada won't play a role directly in these traumas, that we'll limit ourselves to our past record of turning back boatloads of frightened refugees and "repatriating" ethnics of enemy nation-states, but there's no guarantee of that. Germany was an established pluralistic polity with an well-integrated Jewish minority, even if German pluralism at all levels was challenged by the difficult decade after the First World War. Even if there was a guarantee, this doesn't avert the spectre of horrors happening elsewhere, of detention camps turned into concentration camps turned into death camps, of some of the miraculous new technologies we have being used to generate frighteningly long lists of the dead. The first time, perhaps, might come about by accident, the equivalent of the First World War's railroad time tables. The second time will be for fun.
We may not be able to do anything about this. One descendants may be doomed to noting, in conversation this time next century, that we didn't learn from the 20th. What we can do, at least, is point out those people who, through willful incompetence or through misghuided politics, are distorting reality according to their own biases. If holocaust there must be, we should at least be able to respond to its creators with the truth easily at hand.
The world's poised for a repeat. Somewhere, or somewheres, vulnerable pools of humanity will be dried out by the energetic and concerted actions of determined individuals and peoples. I'd like to believe that Canada won't play a role directly in these traumas, that we'll limit ourselves to our past record of turning back boatloads of frightened refugees and "repatriating" ethnics of enemy nation-states, but there's no guarantee of that. Germany was an established pluralistic polity with an well-integrated Jewish minority, even if German pluralism at all levels was challenged by the difficult decade after the First World War. Even if there was a guarantee, this doesn't avert the spectre of horrors happening elsewhere, of detention camps turned into concentration camps turned into death camps, of some of the miraculous new technologies we have being used to generate frighteningly long lists of the dead. The first time, perhaps, might come about by accident, the equivalent of the First World War's railroad time tables. The second time will be for fun.
We may not be able to do anything about this. One descendants may be doomed to noting, in conversation this time next century, that we didn't learn from the 20th. What we can do, at least, is point out those people who, through willful incompetence or through misghuided politics, are distorting reality according to their own biases. If holocaust there must be, we should at least be able to respond to its creators with the truth easily at hand.
