The Cherry Orchard

I really appreciate Alessandra Stanley’s New York Times article about The War, the latest PBS series by Ken Burns. It takes a brave critic to say what many of us have felt about the increasing mythologizing of America’s participation in the Second World War. Yes, of course heroism should be celebrated. Yes, of course we as Americans are proud to have fought so resolutely against utter evil. But this was a world war, not just an American war, and to those of us who would like to stand proudly not just as Americans but as citizens of the world it’s disappointing to hear that Ken Burns series tells us nothing new about the broad, complex realities of the global conflict, but instead focuses on the American experience alone. Why tell us yet again about what we’ve already heard so many times before?

Here’s how Stanley puts it:

World War II didn’t happen just to us.

The war was necessary, but is this approach?

She also writes, bravely:

World War II is as fascinating and terrible a subject as we have, but America’s role in defeating Germany and Japan has not been underestimated in this country. And it can hardly be argued that the heroes of Guadalcanal and D-Day remain unheralded.

I recently read Herbert Bix’s Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan in a desparate attempt to understand World War II in a different historical context. It’s a fascinating book, and as all good history books do, it left me hungry to understand more alternative global perspectives on this horrific period. I do understand that Ken Burns specializes in American culture, but it’s still disappointing to hear that this new series stays tight in the pocket of warm, cozy World War II nostalgia and doesn’t attempt to challenge the mythology of angelic America fighting demonic evil in Germany and Japan. Yes, Germany and Japan were evil, but we’ve already heard the bedtime story over and over. Now let’s reach for greater understanding of all the complex issues involved.

The hyperbole that surrounds America’s glory in World War II was really made clear to me when I was recently arguing with a friend about why I should love the American military unquestioningly. “The American military saved your ass in World War II!” he said. “The Jews would have been slaughtered if it wasn’t for us!”

I had to remind him that actually the Jews were slaughtered.

Suffer in silence. So you were removed from your home, and informed you had no right to live there. So you were told that you were an insect, that your family was a family of insects. So you were barred from working where you have always worked, even though you did a good job there and everybody liked you. So you were put in a train. So you were stripped of your clothes in the cold. So they took all your food away. So your family was shot. So they made you march. So they put you in a camp. So you were forced to breathe poison gas. So your kids were killed. Suffer in silence. Shut up and take what you deserve.

This blog hasn’t been very cheerful the last few days. I’ve been immersing myself in the historical records of one atrocity after another, and it’s been screwing with my state of mind. So many facts to learn, so many pictures to look at, so much I still don’t understand.

But here’s one thing I’ve figured out: genocide works because the persecutors manage to shame their victims into silence. Fear and shame are two of the main weapons in the genocidal toolbox, and we need to ask hard questions about why so little is known about the atrocities of our time. Where is the literature of the Ukranian Holodomor (a word I’ve just learned today)? Who is the Primo Levi, or the Cynthia Ozick, or the Steven Spielberg of Cambodia, of Rwanda, of the Ukraine, of China, of Bosnia, of Darfur? Dave Eggers is doing his best, but mostly there is silence.

It happens that silence is what the persecutor wants to hear from his victims. The experts know what they’re doing, and they know how to manipulate and dehumazine their targets into submission and silence. This is why our modern planet cannot stop the threat of genocide, even today. The technique still works, and it’s happening again as we speak.

One of the several books I’m reading is The Holocaust Chronicles, which begins with this line: “It exists alone in history.” Hardly. This is a question I brought up earlier in this series: why is so much known about the Jewish holocaust and so little about all the others? Well, maybe the Jews were the first people to actually speak — loudly, defiantly, and absolutely incessantly — about what happened to them. I’m proud of this. I’m even proud to be continuing to complain about it here today, and I’m not halfway done complaining yet.

How about you — when are you going to complain about it?

Before I dive into the following inquiry, I’d like to clear up why I think I’m qualified to write about history even though I have no training as a historian (though I have degrees in philosophy and computer science and consider myself well-read).

The fact is, our “experts” aren’t getting the job done. History is an absolutely critical piece for anybody trying to understand modern politics, and in fact a good understanding of the past and present is probably the single most important tool in the toolbox of anybody engaged in a political field (as a journalist, a candidate, a commentator or a supporting player). When it comes to strong popular coverage of the stunningly important debates of the day, though, it seems like we’ve let the room get taken over by yammering monkeys. There’s a lot of noise, but nobody’s saying much at all.

I think we should do better. In the series of posts I’ll be writing for the next few weeks, I’m focusing on one particular question, and I hope you’ll help me figure out the answer by posting comments if you’d like.

It’s a simple question, the kind only an amateur would ask. What is genocide?

What is genocide? Well, let’s see what some of these events share in common. Thinking about, say, the Turkish murder of a million and a half Armenians during World War I, the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, and the monthlong killing spree in Rwanda in which a million Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus, one big fact pops out right away. All three of these events occured during wartime, and the victims were ethnic minorities who were considered likely to betray their nations to invading armies.

The nation of Turkey (during the last years of the Ottoman empire) was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary against France, Britain and Russia in the First World War. After Turkey lost critical battles to the Russians, the government resolved that the minority population of Armenian Christians were likely to welcome the coming invaders, and planned to kill them all. They carried these plans out for three years.

The Jews of the varied nations of Europe were already reeling from the incredible discrimination and dehumanization of the German Nazi regime when the death trains began rolling in 1942. The Nazi brand of anti-semitism has deep roots, but the German drive to clear Eastern Europe of Jews during its vicious war against Russia was rooted in military strategy as well.

The Rwandan million-person massacre of 1994 was, incredibly enough, a carefully plotted and insidiously executed political maneuver. Hutus form the majority population of Rwanda, but remained in many ways economically and politically subservient to the wealthier minority Tutsis. In 1994, the weak Hutu-led government seemed about to collapse to a powerful invading force of Tutsi exiles when a Hutu radio station began broadcasting instructions that all Tutsis must die (the machetes had already been distributed).

What is genocide? Well, it seems to have a hell of a lot to do with war. Ahh, those masters of war! Genocide belongs to them too (no, to us, all of us, since we are all to blame).

Here’s a slogan more people should hear: War Causes Genocide. War causes genocide like cigarettes cause lung cancer. Something to think about the next time you’re about to reach for a pack, or call up some troops.

More on this subject to follow, of course! Please feel free to comment and tell me how you think this inquiry is going so far.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new campaign of disinformation regarding the European Jewish genocide of half a century ago has had a positive effect for me: it’s inspired me to do a lot of thinking on this subject. Since writing this article, I’ve been studying up on the actual histories of the Jewish holocaust and several other holocausts of the 20th century, and learning some surprising things.

I wrote in the article linked above that, contrary to popular perception, genocide is anything but rare in the world today. I’ve been gathering more information (though my knowledge of the subject is still sparse), and I’m continuing to find many surprising patterns and similarities between what appear to be isolated histories. Here are some of the more well-known cases of genocide on our planet in the last hundred years, listed chronologically:

1. Turkish Armenians, 1915-1918

2. Russian Peasantry, 1932-33

3. Eastern European Jews, 1939-1945

4. Chinese Peasantry, 1958-1961

5. Cambodian Peasantry, 1975-1979

6. Iraqi Kurds, 1988

7. Rwandan Tutsis, 1994

8. Bosnians, 1992-1995

9. Sudanese, now

We are accustomed to examining these incidents in isolation, but what can we learn by comparing them, and why is that most popular treatments (books, movies) of genocide focus so tightly on specific incidents but draw back from any attempts at universal conclusions?

I believe this is a natural result of the intensely private experience we each have when apprehending the ugly facts of our own history. It is very difficult for me, as a Jew, not to see Hitler’s Jewish holocaust as a searingly unique event, despite the fact that a wider look reveals it was nothing of the sort. Historians with personal connections to any of the other ethnic groups or economic classes above will likewise tend to individuate, and if we stop our inquiries there we are likely to miss the obvious fact that genocide follows clear and distinct universal patterns. In fact, once we separate ourselves from our emotional reactions of victimhood and take a close look, a shocking truth quickly emerges: genocides happen because they serve a functional purpose.

This contradicts the prevailing idea of genocide as the work of madmen. I’m sorry to report that no such easy excuse can survive close examination. I only wish we could blame this horrible phenomenon on human insanity, but this explanation does not hold.

Today is Martin Luther King Day, which seems like an appropriate time to announce the beginning of a new inquiry that I will conduct here at the ol’ Cherry Orchard Blog, Fruit Stand and Political Theme Park. I am going to attempt a field guide — a broad, fact-rich overview — of the worst known incidents of man’s inhumanity to man (as we like to call it) in modern history. Please visit again during the next few weeks as I prepare my first summaries on this topic.