Sustaining Necessary Illusions: The Bosnia Genocide Lobby Strikes Again
A recent post to The Comment Factory chided Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges over his profile of Noam Chomsky in April.[1] Drafted by “three activists,” it took Hedges to task for focusing on Chomsky’s views on a variety of urgent topics, such as the ominous spread of “late Weimar”-like “parallels” across U.S. society, and went on [...]
By David Peterson on Monday, June 7th, 2010 - 757 words.
NATO-bloc troops occupying Kosovo provide an apt metaphor for the thought-police of the Bosnia Genocide Lobby
A recent post to The Comment Factory chided Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges over his profile of Noam Chomsky in April.[1]
Drafted by “three activists,” it took Hedges to task for focusing on Chomsky’s views on a variety of urgent topics, such as the ominous spread of “late Weimar”-like “parallels” across U.S. society, and went on to praise Chomsky for his “courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture….”
Hedges, the “three activists” objected, ignored Chomsky’s views on the former Yugoslavia, which “Chomsky persistently misrepresents….” As one of the “three activists” added, “Numbers of progressives…have been awakened to [Chomsky's] limitations by his non-supportiveness of the populations victimized by Serbia’s aggressive wars, and by Chomsky’s tributes to deniers of that victimization…” (Roger Lippman).
We have heard this all before—indeed, so many times over so many years in so many different venues that we’ve coined the phrase Bosnia Genocide Lobby to refer to a cadre of right-thinking, party-line-toeing activists who police the public sphere and assail and defame anybody whom they deem to be insufficiently sympathetic to the Bosnian Muslim cause and, worse, insufficiently hostile towards ethnic Serbs.
Chris Hedges profiled Noam Chomsky. In the profile, Hedges did not mention the former Yugoslavia, much less press Chomsky about it. Yet Chomsky “persistently misrepresents” Serb villainy and Bosnian Muslim suffering, the Bosnia Genocide Lobby contends. Therefore, Hedges helped Chomsky minimize or deny both Serb villainy and Bosnian Muslim suffering.
We have heard this all before—indeed, we have written about it. While we agree with John Hawthorne‘s comment that the “three activists” have produced a piece of anti-Serb “hate rhetoric,” we disagree with his assertion that “[they] obviously don’t have a clue what [they're] writing about.”[3]
Roger Lippman, Daniel Simpson, and Owen Beith, the “three activists,” know perfectly well what they’re really up to. As the present authors have shown elsewhere and will now repeat below, the pragmatics of language use make it clear that whenever someone accuses others (Noam Chomsky or Diana Johnstone or us) of “denying Serbian criminality,” “reinforc[ing] murderous Serbian nationalism and war-crimes denial,” and “defend[ing]…the Serbian genocidal project” (here sticking to Lippman’s rhetoric), the authors of such charges do not intend to say merely that they believe others are guilty of getting historical facts wrong. Instead, they seek to tag others with the graver charge of knowingly lying about history—of deliberately falsifying the historical record.
This is the standard tactic of thought-police and political enforcers.
This is what the work of our “three activists” really amounts to.
We have answered this type of attack before—indeed, many times.[4] We have provided a cogent alternative narrative to the establishment’s history of the Balkans, and with detailed facts and arguments that the “three activists” and their associates systematically fail to come to grips with. They favor instead name-calling and the repetition of untrue “truths” that have been institutionalized in the West, with the aid of political enforcers such as the three we deal with here. We urge readers to examine these documents, for which we provide hyperlinks below.
_____
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, June 7, 2010
References:
[1] Chris Hedges, “Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’,” Truthdig, April 19, 2010,
[2] See Daniel Simpson et al., “Criticising Chomsky on the Balkans: Three activists speak out,” May 30, 2010, /
[3] John Hawthrone, in the Comments thread, http://www.thecommentfactory.com/criticising-chomsky-on-the-balkans-three-activists-speak-out-3043/#IDComment77918281
[4] For some examples of a reality-based alternative to the establishment narrative that our “three activists” enforce here and elsewhere, see:
(a) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The New York Times on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda Service,” ColdType, 2004, http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.04/Essays.04/YugoTrib.pdf
(b) Edward S. Herman, “War Crimes Reply,” ZNet, May 24, 2004, http://www.zcommunications.org/war-crimes-reply-by-edward-herman
(c) Edward S. Herman, “Reply to Roger Lippman,” ZNet, July 18, 2005, http://www.zcommunications.org/reply-to-roger-lippman-by-edward-herman
(d) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Milosevic’s Death in the Propaganda System,” ColdType, 2006, http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.06/Essays.06/0506.Milosevic.pdf
(e) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia,” Monthly Review, Vol. 59, No. 5, October, 2007, http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson1.php
(f) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Open Letter To Amnesty International’s London and Belfast Offices, on the Occasion of Noam Chomsky’s Belfast Festival Lecture, October 30, 2009,” MRZine, November 22, 2009, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/hp221109.html
(g) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “In Response to the Bosnia Genocide Lobby,” MRZine, December 8, 2009, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/hp081209.html
(h) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2010), http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/politicsofgenocide.php
Articles related to Sustaining Necessary Illusions: The Bosnia Genocide Lobby Strikes Again
Criticising Chomsky on the Balkans: Three activists speak out
Shattering unnecessary illusions When Truthdig interviewed Noam Chomsky in April, three activists who had respect for his work were disappointed. The article ignored how Chomsky ...
How to deconstruct our lying media
There are several approaches to media criticism, but I'll contrast just three: meta-journalism, propaganda model and frame semantics. Before I do, I need to define ...
The West abandons Bosnia’s Muslims
In initial months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs destroyed more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslim villages and hamlets in eastern Bosnia and took control of ...
Serb provocations over Srebrenica massacre
In 1999 the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) illegally misappropriated Muslim-owned land for the purpose of constructing a church in Potocari, a village that was almost ...
Noam Chomsky on Alvaro Uribe
What He Said: "The more investors come to Colombia, the less difficult for us to defeat terrorists. Investment is the real alternative to illicit drugs." ...
18 Comments
Leave a Reply
Articles by this author
-
Kagame: darling of the West, torturer of Congo
Paul Kagame relies on the myth of his savior role to maintain his domination of Rwanda,[16] although this merely supplements his primary dependence on force. But he has made …
Read more
-
Peter Erlinder jailed by one of the major genocidaires of our era
The May 28 arrest of U.S. attorney and Chicago native Peter Erlinder by the Paul Kagame dictatorship in Rwanda reveals much about this regime that is routinely sanitized in establishment …
Read more
-
Sustaining Necessary Illusions: The Bosnia Genocide Lobby Strikes Again
A recent post to The Comment Factory chided Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges over his profile of Noam Chomsky in April.[1] Drafted by “three activists,” it took Hedges to task for …
Read more
David Peterson writes: "We have answered this type of attack before". Yes, indeed, but you tend to answer without refuting any of the substantive points made by, for example, Daniel Simpson. And once again you've failed to respond to any of those points. Instead you coin the phrase "Bosnia Genocide Lobby" to characterise your critics. That's a rather nasty piece of framing – the kind of thing that Frank Luntz would be proud of.
I don't think you do Professor Chomsky (whom I admire) any favours with your prolific "answering" (without actually answering). Your post amounts to not much more than a list of links to your previous "answers".
What a shameful piece here. If there was a Bosnian Genocide Lobby it wouldn't exist today if it were not for the actual genocide that took place there. If Serbia itself, and the ICTY itself has found that genocide happened in Srebrenica and grave war crimes in Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia then why is it so hard for people like you to acknowledge and make peace with it? Revisionists like you should be ashamed of themselves, as should Chomsky for his failure to put his personal biases aside and recognize the terrible faith Bosnian Muslims suffered at the hands of Serbian murderers for what it is – genocide.
Yes, it is Genocide. According to the latest report on the results of the OTP investigation, of 8.372 victims the number of DNA-identified Srebrenica victims has reached 6557.
"The latest report containing information on the newly discovered graves and exhumations was completed in April 2010. The purpose of the report was to give the Trial Chamber an accurate number of victims from Srebrenica, the number of graves where their remains were exhumed and other forensic evidence establishing connection between the findings and the events described in the indictment…. DNA analysis of remains helped establish the identity of the victims. However, body parts belonging to a single victim were found in two, three, and in one case in four mass graves."
http://www.sense-agency.com/en/stream.php?sta=3&a…
In Popovic et al judgement, the ICTY judges ruled:
''The scale and nature of the murder operation, with the staggering number of killings, the systematic and organised manner in which it was carried out, the targeting and relentless pursuit of the victims, and the plain intention – apparent from the evidence – to eliminate every Bosnian Muslim male who was captured or surrendered proves beyond reasonable doubt that this was genocide.''
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32926486/Popovic-et-al-…
Those who criticize Chomsky or Peterson and Herman on Yugoslavia are those who blindly accept the mass media-Nato generated mythology of the wars that took place in Yugoslavia; wars designed to destroy the last working socialist country in Europe. As the French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote in his book "Propaganda", the intellectuals are the most easily propagandized by government as they believe they must hold an opinion on every issue and so readily adopt the party line put out, in the case of the Nato powers, by the United States government. that the Socialist Party of Serbia, which in fact was trying to maintain a multi-ethnic society, were rabid nationalists . Slobodan Milosevic forcefully shattered that mythology in his defence at the US run show trials at the ICTY and was ultimately silenced for daring not only to speak the truth but to prove it with facts, against the calumny and distortions of the Nato prosecutor. Those who attack Chomsky et al are nothing less than apologists for the truly fascist gangsters who turned the Cold War into a hot war, defied the Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and common morality by mercilessly bombing Serbia for simply refusing to accede to the diktat of Madeleine Albright that Serbia abandon socialism for capitalism and accept its occupation by Nato that she presented at Rambouillet, France. The war on Yugoslavia was a war to force the acceptance of this diktat. All the lies about "Serbian atrocities" were the propaganda cover for that war. There was no truth to any of it. The Bosnian Genocide Lobby are the attack dogs of fascism.
Christopher Black
Barrister, International Criminal Lawyer
Toronto, Canada
OK. I am not an intellectual, just a fellow Torontonian. I became one because 11 members of my immediate family were murdered while I watched. It my book, this is not a myth, nor am I fascist, nor an Islamist. Just a woman with no family. Someone killed them for NO REASON whatsoever. I go back to Kozarac every year and every year I attend yet another mass burial. If you would like to come along to count the bones and the graves, I'd be happy to take you with me. Perhaps then, the armchair propaganda you are spouting will get a context you clearly don't have. Call it what you will, but my town is STILL not allowed to erect a monument commemorating the 3000 dead. In the widely held opinion by the Serb authorities, these people "disappeared."
Maya's comment should give Noam Chomsky, Ed Hermann, David Peterson and Christopher Black pause for thought. She's referring to the 3000 people of Prijedor whom they airbrush out of the picture. Those people certainly were murdered by the people that Chomsky claims the Western media have tried to demonise.
Maya, I'm afraid I part company with you when you say they were killed for no reason whatsoever. Although Chomsky and his friends like to hedge around the word genocide the reason your family, friends and neighbours in Kozarac were murdered was in order to eliminate their community and change the demography of an area that was key to the logistics of establishing a Serb "hegemony", for want of a better word.
I wish one of this sorry crowd would take up your offer, Maya, you might open a window on the real world of human beings to them.
Part 1:
David Peterson, on the subject of Srebrenica genocide, what are you disputing: that it didn't happen, or that it wasn't genocide, or that there weren't that many victims, or that the victims deserved to be murdered as revenge for something that happended 60 years ago?
I find it hard to believe that given all the evidence presented in the international courts (ICTY & ICJ), with some of the most damning evidence being video tapes of executions supplied by Serbia itself, the identified victims, that you could question the verasity of the courts findings, especially given the very narrow definition for genocide adopted by the ICJ meaning that any applicant to to the court must meet very high legal test (almost impossible some might say) to have an event legally classed as genocide.
David Peterson is full of adjectives.
He says it's "right-thinking" and "party-line-toeing" to stick to facts, because he doesn't. Instead, he constructs "a cogent alternative narrative" from demonstrable falsehoods. These are widely recycled, and endorsed by such influential commentators as Noam Chomsky, who help to misinform well-meaning activists.
If you ask them to stop making things up, Peterson and Chomsky (like their mutual co-author Ed Herman) shoot the messenger. When presented with facts that refute his claims, Peterson simply sidesteps the evidence. His critics must be "thought-police and political enforcers", even though they don't tell him what to think. He can write what he likes if he sticks to facts. It's distorting them that's the problem.
Chris Hedges reported first-hand on atrocities in Bosnia. He knows the Serb-run Prijedor camps were concentration camps (not places that "people could leave if they wanted", as Chomsky claims). He also accepts the evidence that 8,000 Muslim men were murdered at Srebrenica (as does Chomsky, despite repeatedly endorsing claims to the contrary). Peterson calls this death toll "incompatible with the basic arithmetic" of "thousands of escapees". But he can't produce a single survivor from the named list of missing, who've mostly been DNA-matched to remains from mass graves. This alone speaks volumes about his propagandising.
Chomsky, meanwhile, refuses to acknowledge he's ever distorted a fact, no matter how often he's made aware that he has. He sees critics as ideological enemies, out to smear him. And "right-thinking" admirers toe this "party line", ignoring the absence of what Hedges called “rigorous scholarship”, or “a remarkable grasp of detail”. That amounts to an endorsement of peddling lies. It would cost Chomsky nothing to be honest about other people's crimes while focusing on "ours". By failing to do so, he undermines his work, unless he wants to say the truth is irrelevant.
Rather than blow smoke about "untrue 'truths' that have been institutionalized in the West", Peterson should admit he has no evidence for many of his own claims. He knows this, because his critics keep demonstrating it to him. So he's not just "guilty of getting historical facts wrong", as he puts it. "The graver charge of knowingly lying about history – of deliberately falsifying the historical record" is already proven.
–
For examples, see: http://danielsimpson.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/med…
The basic issue is simple. Professor Chomsky sometimes gets things wrong. He refers to events of which he has no personal knowledge. He draws on other people's arguments when they support the case he is making. But his sources aren't always reliable. And he simply won't deal with that.
Chomsky has been confronted more than once with very substantial evidence showing that his sources were wrong about the camp at Trnopolje and he has been told that he has been repeating misleading assertions. He refuses to acknowledge any mistake and he won't refute the evidence put before him. He just blusters.
Chris Hedges, having reported on the atrocities that were perpetrated in north-eastern Bosnia in 1992, is in as good a position as anyone to tell Chomsky that he has got his facts very seriously wrong where Trnopolje is concerned. Hedges knows at first hand the importance of confronting the perpetrators with the truth about ethnic cleansing and murder. That's why it was reasonable to ask why his article had ignored this controversial area of Chomsky's political engagement.
Chomsky is not always right. He makes mistakes and more importantly he repeats them. He's not a god whose infallibility is beyond question. If he is convinced he is still right in the face of evidence to the contrary then what is so terrible about asking him to justify himself? If he can't or won't do so, Herman and Peterson aren't going to make the issue go away by complaining about "Thought Police".
Chris Hedges knows what life in the real world is about and what actually happened in Bosnia. Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and David Peterson could do worse than address themselves to him.
Some intellectuals in Europe and the US couldn't resist the propaganda of Serbian intellectuals and institutions (such as the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, SANU). Chomsky in the US and Peter Handke in Europe are the most salient examples.
They damage the truth, the victims of the Serbian aggression as well as many Serbs who distance themselves from the crimes of their fellow men during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Hopefully the Bosnian side remains consistent and doggedly continues to publicize the undeniable facts about the war. Even though the world already knows about these crimes. Since the facts are on the table, one must be willing to deal with them.
Thanks to Roger, Daniel and Owen who refuse to just let those dangers minds keep going. The sacred cow Chomsky belongs to the past. When will Herman and Peterson get this?
Roger Lippman, Daniel Simpson, and Owen Beith are wonderful human beings. Especially Owen Beith. In the Jewish community, we thank him dearly for everything he has done to help us bring the truth about the Holocaust to the wider public. He has done many translations for us. He is just an amazing individual. A huge applause also goes for Roger and Daniel and their contribution in bringing the truth about the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
Apparently, Edward Herman and David Peterson do not understand that three years before the Srebrenica genocide, Serbs destroyed hundreds of Bosnian Muslim villages around Srebrenica and committed horrendous massacres against Bosniak civilians (SEE PHOTOS!). Serbs never demilitarized around Srebrenica, despite of being required to do so under the 1993 agreement. In July 1995, Serbs perpetrated genocide: 30,000 Bosniaks were forcibly expelled and at least 8,100 summarily executed (DNA confirmed).
Christopher Black, you are a bad lawyer and your credibility is questionable. To say that Serbs commited no crimes is a punch line in a joke. Serbs commited genocide against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), the first genocide in Europe since the Nazi Holocaust. On Thursday 10 June 2010 three Serbs were found guilty for the Srebrenica genocide and two were sentenced to life imprisonment, the third to 35 years in prison.
If you look carefully, you'll notice that the Srebrenica Denial Mafia have never tried to publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal or in an university press? Of course not, those places have standards of evidence that they cannot meet and they know it. However, the intertubes, Chomsky lectures, and random blogs rarely have experts on hand, willing and able to dismantle their nonsense.
History Punk, the reason they never published their 'fidings' in peer reviewed academic journals is simple: No Garbage Accepted! You will notice that David Peters and Edward Herman (aka: Ed Herman) have not yet provided a shred of credible evidence to deny the Srebrenica genocide. The only thing they know to do is to lie and deliberately falsify the history. They were never in Srebrenica, and yet they consider themselves experts. What kind of experts? Herman's field is economics, not genocide. Peterson doesnt even have any education. Sad, indeed.
Okay. The bottom line… I have noticed that every time people criticise Noam Chomsky, he immediately sends Edward Herman and David Peterson to defend him. Isn’t Chomsky capable of defending himself? Why does he always need to send these two discredited Srebrenica genocide deniers to fight his own battles for him? Chomsky has no courage to respond to legitimate critics. Therefore, the “three activists” win.
As for Prof. Ed Herman and David Peterson, they have no academic degrees in history or international justice and they are not competent to make conclusions about genocide.
Nice round up looking forward for the next one.
Thanks for writing this informative post. I never knew that opinions could be this varied. Peacemakeityourring diamond engagement rings