Truth in agitprop (was Re: Fallout from Srebrenica massacre in Netherlands)

"Tell no lies, claim no easy victories."
-- Amilcar Cabral

Cabral's admonition is one we would do well to heed if we are to be taken
seriously.  That is one reason why I am so insistent on this point.  On a
related note, there are plenty of people from ex-Yugoslavia who were victims
of the Serb chauvinists' program of "ethnic cleansing," and the fact that
other sides in the war engaged in the same practices (and probably would
have been responsible for more had they received the weaponry they were
asking for) does not change the responsibility of the Chetniks for their
crimes.  (What this means is that there are now plenty of people who are
refugees from ex-Yugoslavia living in countries like the United States --
and who now occupy various niches in the immigrant working class -- and they
will appreciate principled people on the left who tell the truth about what
happened.  If you're going to be a successful organizer in communities where
people from ex-Yugoslavia are present, you will have to recognize that the
majority of people from all of the ethnic groups are prey to the various
ethnic myths -- though if you stand up for multiethnic cooperation in a
principled way, most of them will respect you.)

Macdonald Stainsby writes:

> John, so you understand why I find it "a
> reasonable question" is simple. The massacres
> of the Palestinian people (take your pick,
> decade, etc) are deliberately hidden. They are
> taken as 'massacres' by the media if mentioned
> at all.

<snip>

> What I say next has nothing to do with whether
> or not it happened (I admit to having almost zero
> background on Srebrencia - beyond what I get from
> the sides none of which I trust on the issue). The
> point in how often it has been referred to has been
> to paint the Serbs as worthy victims for what
> eventually was Nato's imperialist war (leading to
> a uni-ethnic Kosovo)

Stainsby here makes a point about the organization of information in the US
and other Western countries, one that may be taken for granted by people on
this list but which is not immediately obvious to most people.  But the
point I am making is that we cannot afford to be casual with the truth in
the manner that the imperialists are.  That means we neither inflate nor
minimize the atrocities of either the imperialists or their selected targets
of the moment.

And at Srebrenica, there was a massacre, pure and simple.  It happened. To
even enter a "debate" about these obvious facts is the height of
irresponsibility.  If someone were running around saying that no plane
crashed into the Pentagon (and yes, there are a few people on the lunatic
fringes of the left who are saying that), we'd all tell that person to go
away for the obvious reason that most people would rightly think us insane
for so much as entertaining the possibility that people like that should be
taken seriously. 

Now, there is some debate as to the extent of Milosevic's "command
responsibility."  (I would argue that it was somewhat less than the
responsibility of Ariel Sharon for the behavior of the Phalangists at Sabra
and Chatila, although perhaps on a par with the responsibility of the US for
the behavior of the Israelis.  Mladic's command responsibility for
Srebrenica, of course, is beyond dispute.)  We do not know the precise
casualty figures because, like almost all massacres, there was an effort to
cover that up.  But Andy Pyle is right to ask: If there was no massacre,
then where are the people?  The ICRC lists over 7,000 missing.  The
exhumation teams have so far turned up 4,000 corpses.  Recently the Red
Cross has been exhibiting a photo book of items recovered from the corpses
and allowing survivors to inspect the book for evidence of their loved ones,
since that is the only way many of these bodies ever have a chance of being
identified.

Obviously the various sides in the war are not reliable sources.  But there
ARE reliable sources of information on what happened. It seems to me that
Amnesty International has a very strong respect for the truth.  This does
not mean I share their politics -- their "non-political" stance which, of
course, is itself a form of politics -- but that I respect their ability to
find out the truth about what happened and to stick to telling that truth.
Amnesty's investigations in Kosovo pointed out that the casualties were far
lower than what NATO was saying they were in 1999, which is exactly what
those of us who opposed the war were saying would happen.  But the
casualties WERE in the thousands, and as far as I'm concerned that's bad
enough.  

One of the best analyses of how the media operate is Chomsky's and Herman's
classic "propaganda model," where they distinguished between the
"constructive bloodbath," the "benign bloodbath," and the "nefarious
bloodbath."  The "constructive bloodbath" is always denied or minimized
because the United States or its allies support it as a means to achieving
their ends.  The "benign bloodbath" is of little concern to the US and
usually receives little attention.  The "nefarious bloodbath" is
exaggerated.  (Sometimes the character of a bloodbath can change.  For
example, Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds at Halabja was a "benign
bloodbath" when it actually occurred, but retrospectively became a
"nefarious bloodbath" when it became necessary to demonize Saddam Hussein
later on.)  

It is true that it is incumbent on people who have respect for the truth not
only to expose the "constructive bloodbaths" but also to take on the much
harder task of pointing out the exaggerations attached to "nefarious
bloodbaths."  But under no circumstances can we afford to -- nor should our
principles allow us to tolerate any attempt to -- cover up a really-existing
"nefarious bloodbath" entirely in the name of some mirror-image of
imperialist propaganda.

Note that in my column "Victory to the Intifada" I did NOT say that "the
Serbs" were "evil," but I made a point about how information is organized in
the context of this society: everyone recognized that Serbian-style "ethnic
cleansing" was repugnant (CORRECTLY SO, I feel I have to hasten to add, even
though people should know better), but why shouldn't people recognize that
Israel's plans for "population transfer" were also criminal?  That makes a
point about how propaganda is constructed and information is organized, but
it does not play fast and loose with the truth, which is the unfortunate
practice of a tiny minority of people on the left in the imperialist
countries.  I get a feeling that these people would have been hailing the
"anti-imperialist" credentials of the Boers 100 years ago, heroically
fighting the British (to take another example of a war where imperialism was
indeed a major part of the story, but where the people they were directly
fighting were not only NOT virtuous anti-imperialists but outright racist
criminals).

It does not besmirch my credentials as a polemicist (and an activist!)
against imperialism to point out -- in passing, no less -- that the
propaganda of the imperialists is, more often than not, based on a kernel of
truth.

It besmirches us all to make ourselves into apologists for the political
heirs of the Chetniks, who Tito rightly had purged and -- in the case of the
criminal Draza Mihailovic, whose bust has long adorned many a
Serbian-American hall since the left was driven out of the US ethnic
fraternal organizations with the demise of the International Workers Order
(IWO) during the post-WWII Red Scare -- shot.

By the way, there IS a significant section of the left that is soft on, if
not any more sympathetic to, Zionism.  We shouldn't forget that Israel was
created when the Haganah imported guns from Czechoslovakia -- with the
enthusiastic backing of the USSR -- to drive the Palestinian Arabs from
their homes in the first Nakba.  There was a split in the CPUSA over the
issue well into the Fifties, with some people in the Daily Worker calling
for "Arms to Israel" even at the height of the Suez Crisis in 1956.  Huge
sections of the left -- including not just social-democrats but people
further left -- had huge illusions about Oslo, many of which they still
harbor.  I think illusions like this need to be criticized and the urgency
of the Palestinian cause stressed.

John Lacny


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