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rfmcdonaldBack in March 2003, I fisked an alas not-atypical column by columnist and fiction author Ralph Peters that condemned Europe for its unwillingness to support the impending Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. He wasn't altogether clear on what we was condemning--he talked about "Europe"'s moral degeneracy while praising the Romanians and Latvians, he criticized the Netherlands as "Old Europe" even though the Dutch supported the American invasion--but the gist of his argument was nonetheless clear. A Belgium that, alternatively, is responsible for the Congolese genocide and has loose morals, a Germany eternally tainted by Naziism, a France forever marked by Vichy--none of these countries had a right, Peters argued, to criticize the United States.
Peters' argument would have made sense if, in fact, these three countries hadn't examined their past. I can't speak about Belgium, since I lack the in-depth knowledge of Belgian history, and what I do know about Belgian historical memory about the Congo Free State isn't reassuring. His argument is completely off-base in relationship to a France where the Vichy years have been restored to full public memory and the role of the French state of the Holocaust has been formally acknowledged. As for Germany, it seems to me that the Federal Republic of Germany--the country with the fastest-growing Jewish population in the world, incidentally--is a mature polity that isn't at likely to repeat the Holocaust, and is in fact a role model for post-conflict environments. His argument, however, was that whenever a given nation-state has committed sins, no amount of time or no degree of policy change can ever clear the sins away. Such a nation-state lacks moral standing, whether in general or on specific crimes. More, he implicitly argues that members of the communities associated with these states also lack any moral standing. This argument, I observed at the time, taken to its logical conclusion meant that it was impossible for any state, anywhere, to stand in judgement over any other, that, in fact, moral judgement was impossible. The United States was built on the shattered ruins of hundreds of native American polities, after all, and who hasn't persecuted the Jews at one time or another? Anarchy's the consequence.
Even so, I do have to admit a certain sympathy for this argument. David Remmick, in his Lenin's Tomb, described the terrible effects that forced relocations and residential schools had on the native peoples of the Siberian north. The overall effect on these indigenous populations, in fact, reminded me strongly of stories from the Innu community of Davis Inlet in Labrador, in fact. If I, or the Canadian government, was to condemn Soviet and Russian treatment of Siberian indigenous populations without caring about the plight of their Canadian counterparts, or falsely claiming either that the situation was better or that it was improving more quickly, that would be a cynical argument indeed and I would be a cynical arguer. But if I wasn't, or if it was, would my argument still be nullified by the fact of my citizenship?
This, alas, isn't the way that this argument is usually used. Last December, back when I discovered that a posting of mine on the Armenian genocide received a hostile fisking of its own because I treated the genocide as historical fact, I noticed that one of the major critiques was that I didn't mention the genocide of the Cirscassians, say. I agree that examining the fate of the Muslim peoples on the Black Sea littoral subjected to genocide provides useful background information, and in fact I argued as much elsewhere. Why didn't I mention the Circassian genocide in my original piece, then? I didn't raise the Circassians because I wasn't writing about the Circassians, or about genocide in general, or about genocide on the Black Sea littoral. Rather, I was writing about the Armenians. My fault, it seems, for not having taken the sensitivities of Turkish nationalists into account.
This argument of universal sin, then, is an argument almost built entirely for cynical use. It has very little to do with morality as such. Instead, it has everything to do with power, with legitimating one's own power and right to debate and trying to strip that away from others. It matters if there is a possibility that your interlocutors are being hypocritical, if, for instance, she praises Canada's settlement of Manitoba in the 19th century while condemning China's settlement of Tibet in the 21st, or if he accepts the legitimacy of the Soviet invasion of Hungary while condemning the American invasion of the Dominican Republic. If they are consistent, though, and states believably that they are, what grounds are there to attack them? Few other, I fear, than blind nationalism of one sort or another, the sort that condemns the crimes of the Other but passes by its own easily.
Peters' argument would have made sense if, in fact, these three countries hadn't examined their past. I can't speak about Belgium, since I lack the in-depth knowledge of Belgian history, and what I do know about Belgian historical memory about the Congo Free State isn't reassuring. His argument is completely off-base in relationship to a France where the Vichy years have been restored to full public memory and the role of the French state of the Holocaust has been formally acknowledged. As for Germany, it seems to me that the Federal Republic of Germany--the country with the fastest-growing Jewish population in the world, incidentally--is a mature polity that isn't at likely to repeat the Holocaust, and is in fact a role model for post-conflict environments. His argument, however, was that whenever a given nation-state has committed sins, no amount of time or no degree of policy change can ever clear the sins away. Such a nation-state lacks moral standing, whether in general or on specific crimes. More, he implicitly argues that members of the communities associated with these states also lack any moral standing. This argument, I observed at the time, taken to its logical conclusion meant that it was impossible for any state, anywhere, to stand in judgement over any other, that, in fact, moral judgement was impossible. The United States was built on the shattered ruins of hundreds of native American polities, after all, and who hasn't persecuted the Jews at one time or another? Anarchy's the consequence.
Even so, I do have to admit a certain sympathy for this argument. David Remmick, in his Lenin's Tomb, described the terrible effects that forced relocations and residential schools had on the native peoples of the Siberian north. The overall effect on these indigenous populations, in fact, reminded me strongly of stories from the Innu community of Davis Inlet in Labrador, in fact. If I, or the Canadian government, was to condemn Soviet and Russian treatment of Siberian indigenous populations without caring about the plight of their Canadian counterparts, or falsely claiming either that the situation was better or that it was improving more quickly, that would be a cynical argument indeed and I would be a cynical arguer. But if I wasn't, or if it was, would my argument still be nullified by the fact of my citizenship?
This, alas, isn't the way that this argument is usually used. Last December, back when I discovered that a posting of mine on the Armenian genocide received a hostile fisking of its own because I treated the genocide as historical fact, I noticed that one of the major critiques was that I didn't mention the genocide of the Cirscassians, say. I agree that examining the fate of the Muslim peoples on the Black Sea littoral subjected to genocide provides useful background information, and in fact I argued as much elsewhere. Why didn't I mention the Circassian genocide in my original piece, then? I didn't raise the Circassians because I wasn't writing about the Circassians, or about genocide in general, or about genocide on the Black Sea littoral. Rather, I was writing about the Armenians. My fault, it seems, for not having taken the sensitivities of Turkish nationalists into account.
This argument of universal sin, then, is an argument almost built entirely for cynical use. It has very little to do with morality as such. Instead, it has everything to do with power, with legitimating one's own power and right to debate and trying to strip that away from others. It matters if there is a possibility that your interlocutors are being hypocritical, if, for instance, she praises Canada's settlement of Manitoba in the 19th century while condemning China's settlement of Tibet in the 21st, or if he accepts the legitimacy of the Soviet invasion of Hungary while condemning the American invasion of the Dominican Republic. If they are consistent, though, and states believably that they are, what grounds are there to attack them? Few other, I fear, than blind nationalism of one sort or another, the sort that condemns the crimes of the Other but passes by its own easily.
