When presented with the problem of evil – whether natural or moral – the theist can present several responses. One common response is the appeal to Divine Reasons. If atheist A says to believer B, ‘hey, if God is so good, then why is there so much evil in the world?’ B could reply, ‘well, God could have His reasons that us, as mere mortals, cannot fathom.’ This reply dates back to at least the Book of Job when Job reaps his whirlwind and God rebukes Job’s cries for a justification for his profound suffering. In that story God states, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ – thereby contrasting human ignorance and weakness to Divine wisdom and omnipotence.
So, the problem is this: we experience and witness seemingly unjustified evils. A traditional example is a faun being caught in a naturally occurring forest fire, getting horribly burned, suffering agonisingly for days only to die alone the woods (E1), or a 15-year old girl in Pakistan getting shot in the head just because she went to school (E2).
Now, E1 and E2 both seem unjustified if anything is and so either E1 and E2 i) count as evidence against the existence of God, or ii) they do not.
A committed theist wouldn't easily accept (i), and thus (ii) is more likely to be accepted.
If (ii) is accepted, then it's because either because a) they are not unjustified, or b) they are not evil.
Starting with (b) first: that is a fairly unbiteable bullet. There are numerous reasons why we try to prevent such things from occurring precisely because we think them evil. If one states that killing an innocent child is not evil, then one must provide a reason for it, which is precisely what the theist is supposed to do in this case.
For a), it is presumably because God would not allow an unjustified evil and so there must be a justifying reason for it. But what reason could there be for allowing E1, E2 …. En? We have searched and not found. In fact, with regards to natural evils (like earth quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and forest fires) we find that they are caused by the very mechanics of the world we live in. So, even if there is no Divine plan, the evils are an inevitable result of the workings of the world.
Now, the belieber B can say, ‘hey, just because we haven’t found any does not mean that they don’t exist’. True, and this takes us to the issue of Divine Hiddenness. Perhaps God has reasons that we cannot detect or know, and to my mind, the real issue is that such undetectability would render our moral judgement completely moot.
For instance, on this position, I cannot conclude that the 2004 Indian Tsunami was evil because maybe God had reasons for allowing it. Ditto for the Holocaust or Rwandan genocide because God could have a reason that I cannot know for allowing it in the service of some greater good. Pick any evil thing and perhaps there is a reason out there that God has that we can never know about. This really is just stating (b): that these evils are not really evil. It also seems like special pleading because this is not how we act in our lives.
There has been a spate of robberies in Winnipeg Liquor Marts. Winnipeg Police say there are 10-20 liquor store robberies per day.
Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries, the provincial purveyor and distributor of alcohol in Manitoba, said that despite efforts implemented in March to curb the crimes, the rate of thefts and robberies at liquor stores in Winnipeg is 'as high as it's ever been.'
People are obviously concerned. Theft and violence ought not be tolerated, and the increasing rate of the two has led to some serious discussions about public safety. This has also led some to accuse those of engaging in such discussion of.... yes. Bigotry.
Enter magazine called Canadian Dimension, 'the longest-standing voice of the left in Canada', with an article rife with tactical moral excoriation regarding the increase in liquor store robberies.
At the outset the reader is treated with a dire picture:
Winnipeg’s media outlets are salivating at the chance to create a moral panic over alleged liquor store thefts. Nearly non-stop headlines regale readers with seemingly horrific stories of brutal crimes: an old man has his hand slashed while trying to prevent a robbery, guns and pepper spray are wielded, and businesses face the 'darkest time in Winnipeg history.'
The situation is troublesome; escalating to a degree that has prompted people take photos and videos of thefts to be posted on social media. There have even been shoppers who have engaged in citizen's arrests: apprehending thieves through physical force until the police arrive.
Personally, I understand the motives of these citizens. I can see how they'd be pissed off at the idea that such belligerent and dangerous behaviour can be seen as the 'new normal' and wish to take matters into their own hands. It may not be the most prudent decision: after all, the thieves could be armed with knives or other weapons, and the risk of physical injury is real, but more often than not, the people who are engaging in the theft are half-in-the-bag themselves - as is evidenced by numerous videos.
The author of the article has a different take on the matter. According to him, 'camoed shoppers [who] tackle suspects to the ground in a sort of bizarre and unprompted citizen’s arrests to protect bottles of liquor... [are] living out latent fantasies of racist conquest.'
To describe this as poor psychology and poor history would be an understatement. Painting these vigilantes as some illogical, quasi-militaristic, racist force whose goal is to protect liquor and carry on a resentful, vicious and 'unprompted' White Man's burden is altogether ridiculous and beneath contempt. Though, somehow, predictable.
You see, the thieves are Indigenous - not 100% of them, but enough are to warrant this racialised assessment by our author - and given this fact of the indigeneity of the culprits, the rubric for moral assessment gets all skewed since, as we're told by progressives, oppressed people cannot be held to the same standards as the rest of the moral community. To do so is to impose Western moral standards that overlook the centuries-long struggle of subaltern peoples in North America against white supremacist imperialism... or something.
Well, talk about projection. If camoed white men are persisting in racial conquest of bygone years, then what are the Indigenous thieves doing? Resisting white supremacy by engaging in low-scale, race-based class conflict? 'You steal our land, we steal your booze'? After all, violence of the under classes is often minimised or justified as responses to oppression and poverty.
What we require is a principled demarcation between acts of spontaneous defiance and political resistance, and we're not given one here. In fact, the author states that:
Staff will be best protected when these thefts are understood in the broader sociopolitical context of poverty, housing crises, and colonization, with responses geared to promoting empathy and reducing harms rather than escalating them with state violence. [italics added]
First off, no one is trying to protect the booze, per se. The employees cannot apprehend thieves for safety reasons, as well as legal ones, and thieves know this. Hence the targeting of these stores. I think that vigilantes are fed up with what they perceive as this 'new normal' and wish to intervene.This is theft, after all, and theft is a crime. As crime increases, the sense of public safety diminishes.
Secondly, what exactly does this author mean when he states that 'staff will be best protected when these thefts are understood in the broader sociopolitical context...'? Does this mean that staff would be better off if they were to interpret these thefts and robberies not as what they are - spontaneous acts of deviance - but as what this author wants them to be - permissible acts of political resistance?
I wonder what righteous cause these thieves have intended for the bottles of booze they steal once they get them to a safe place. Selling them on the black market, drinking them before going back for more, or perhaps sharing the spoils with family and friends? I don't know but I'm sure it will help the cause...
One point that stood out to me in this article was the argumentation presented in order to minimise the problem of theft.
We're treated to another gem:
What is completely ignored in all of this is basic facts. Journalists have sensationalized these robberies to the point of parody, systematically refusing to interview anyone with an evidence-based perspective on the situation. The public has been provided little information about whether the number of alleged robberies, totaling 10 to 20 per day according to the police, is particularly unusual for retail stores in general, or why it justifies the commitment of enormous financial resources to counter.
So what's 10-20 robberies? Is that really a problem or is it par for the course? C'mon guys. We need to put this into perspective. Not only do we need to keep things in perspective, we need to consider that lack of credible evidence for the cases, as well as the motivations for perpetuating inflated narratives.
OK. Let's see how they like this reasoning applied to some project they care about: campus sexual assault.
What is completely ignored in all of this is basic facts. Journalists have sensationalized these sexual assaults to the point of parody, systematically refusing to interview anyone with an evidence-based perspective on the situation. The public has been provided little information about whether the number of sexual assaults, totaling 1 in 5 women per year, according to the police, is particularly unusual for university campuses in general, or why it justifies the commitment of enormous financial resources to counter.
Doesn't sound too good. Does it?
There are obvious differences between the two examples, one being that the robberies are documented on camera, be the camera a liquor store CCTV camera feed or a cell phone video recording. A crucial issue regarding campus sexual assaults is ambiguity. It is often a 'he said, she said' scenario, or it is not reported, or it is reported much later after the event and often there is no evidence. Certainly there isn't video evidence.
There is also a similarity between the two: the concern is about safety. The problem with these thefts isn't that products are being stolen, it is the the very real threat to individual and public safety that they imply. In fact, there have been instances of pepper spray, and machetes, as well as guns or hammers, being wielded by would-be robbers.
Now, one can anticipate a response: 'most instances of theft/robbery, though threatening are not violent, and the likelihood of violence increases when bystanders try to intervene. Don't be a hero. Don't risk your life for a bottle of booze.'
This smacks of the charge of 'victim blaming' that we hear from people who decry the advice given to young women on college campuses: don't get drunk, stay with friends, do not accept drinks from strangers, don't go to a stranger's home/dorm room. In short, don't put yourself in a compromising or vulnerable position. This isn't bad advice, but it seems to be inconsistently applied.
The article also talks about entrenched racism towards Indigenous people and increased securitisation, as well as a need for increased harm reduction, education and ending austerity, but nowhere does it talk about the threat to safety that these thefts embody.
This rhetoric is akin to the argumentation laid out against the recent implementation of security and screening at the Millennium Library in downtown Winnipeg. If you want to get in, you will be searched. This is seen as a discriminatory act that marginalises the already-marginalised members of the community, and subjects the vulnerable to dehumanising treatment.
I think it is a detriment to all who want to enter the library, but the need for safety is clear. We cannot have people shooting drugs and having sex in a public building where children read and play on the ground level floor. Are you advocates missing that point? What could the unintended consequences be? What cost are you willing to pay for the implementation of your recommendations for community outreach? What consequences are you willing to accept?
I think it necessary to extend an olive branch, though. The poor should not be demonised, or dehumanised, nor should they be romanticised. They certainly shouldn't be treated as though they are beyond moral evaluation which includes praise as well as condemnation. One should also be aware of the appropriateness of such evaluations and be aware of the self-congratulatory forms that exist on either end.
That said, I understand what these advocates are saying. They have a position akin to the early post-9/11 arguments about how safety and security shouldn't trump individual liberty, and that we need to be a community and help each other without falling down the rabbit hole of endless suspicion, but I don't believe them. They are the same people who harp on about white supremacy, Nazism, racism, fascism, and the like. They foment discord, suspicion, and guilt. It is hard to tell if such people care about principles - they certainly don't apply them consistently. Their principles are situational: they'll wait to see the race and/or sex of those involved before they bestow judgement, and side with the member of the group deemed to be more inherently oppressed. Using their overly-educated verbiage to undermine peoples' common sense and concerns whilst twisting them to their own esoteric and abstract morality that is rooted in historical oppression, ressentiment, and utopianism. Such are the weapons of the woke. This breeds inconsistency, at best, and distrust, at worst.
In the article's final paragraph we're told:
If journalists and politicians really care about dangers facing Winnipeggers, they would turn their attention to a lack of public housing, pedestrian deaths, and police violence itself. And if money is their primary concern, they could pay some mind to the province’s appalling low minimum wage, the fact a single family in Manitoba owns $6.6 billion in wealth, or the ever-increasing police budget that diverts funding away from public transit and community services. Until then, we can only conclude the media are consciously peddling in racist and classist fear mongering for clicks and votes.
Again we can see the big issues being found in the smaller contexts. The problem isn't theft: its poverty. The poverty comes from a lack of public housing, and wealth inequality. The pathologies expressed in belligerent acts of lower class deviance are but symptoms of larger structures that we, in some way, are responsible for.
In short, until the author's particular set of demands are met, in a way that he see fit, he'll continue to judge you to be racist and classist fear mongers. That is what this is about: demands. Not anything else.
Professor of Philosophy a the University of Toronto, Mark Kingwell, has written an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail. In it he focuses on the recent Justin Trudeau black-and-brown face scandals, as well as some instances of US comedians getting axed from their jobs for making crude, politically incorrect jokes.
Kingwell criticises the multiple instances wherein the young Trudeau rather extravagantly painted his face (and most of his body) black or brown in order to appear in costume as some person of colour or other. In the piece, Kingwell states that Trudeau's decisions were 'bad, perhaps despicable...'
Personally, I don't care about these scandals. To my mind, they were exercises of poor judgement, but they weren't 'insensitive' or 'racist' let alone 'despicable'. They were imprudent decisions made by a young man who lacked the maturity to see how his actions could be judged. But even that seems to go too far: how could a 29 year-old Trudeau possibly know that his over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall Aladdin costume would cause so much 'hurt' and strife a decade hence? There is a whiggishness to the moral condemnation Kingwell and others have thrown at Trudeau that isn't warranted.
I think Trudeau probably dressed to impress - to go above-and-beyond in a cartoonish fashion and upstage people around him. He did it for attention and to hog the spot light. Retrospectively, he is also a hypocrite, and that is his worst offense, in this case.
Kingwell then ties this to the issue of 'Cancel Culture' - the phenomenon of boycotting someone who expressed questionable, problematic, or unpopular opinions, or has behaved in a way that is perceived to be either offensive or problematic called out on social media is 'canceled'. This is often accompanied by public shaming across social media.
The first instance I recall of this phenomenon was in 2014 when a twenty-three-year-old Asian writer and activist named Suey Park, attempted to start a campaign to get Steven Colbert booted from his show.
The catalyst: a joke...
The joke: a tweet...
“I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever”
This was intended to be a satirical analog to the Washington Redskins' team owner's announcement of the 'Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation' - which was a tepid attempt at trying to appease the public outcry against the team name 'Redskins' which had been deemed offensive and insensitive to North American Indians in the United States.
Park saw Colbert's joke as yet another example of the dominant white male zeitgeist poking fun at the US Asian community and immigrants. The joke went totally over her head. She took it to be callous, and wished to have Colbert punished. Luckily for Colbert, the public wasn't buying it and he was able to maintain his program.
To Kingwell, 'cancel culture' is right-wing code for 'political correctness'. Well, it may or not be right wing code (though I fail to see the 'code' as it seems obvious enough to me) but that in no way delegitimizes the concerns - unless you take 'right wing' to be, in and of itself, delegitimizing. Also, what else is one to call this form of social sanctioning and policing of disapproved speech other than political correctness?
That said, Kingwell provides no argument for why 'cancel culture' is permissible or a desirable mechanism for social policing. He just asserts that those who oppose it are '...just wrong. Wrong. Period'.
Well, consider that settled. QED.
He does follow up with the trope that actions have consequences, and that folks who get mobbed via the cancel culture had it coming.
Some people, lamenting the new vigilance over what public figures say and do, wonder if there is no statute of limitations on bad behaviour. “Sheesh, guys, it was 2001! I was a kid!” In 2001, Justin Trudeau was 29 years old. Shane Gillis was 30 when he recorded the now-infamous podcast. “But I’m a comedian who takes risks.” Again, no. It’s not being overly sensitive or too social-justice warrior or “millennial” to respond: “Sorry, no free pass on that one, now or ever.”
This isn't overly sensitive and social-justice warrior-y, is it? We have our moral essentialism about categories of social groups as conceived via the progressive stack, and we're going to publicly condemn and shame those who transgress the orthodoxy. And if you don't like it. Tough. You are just wrong.
Sure. Nothing SJW about that.
I wonder what kind of consequences Kingwell would suggest happen to Trudeau. After all, those comedians can lose their jobs because of un-PC statements. So, what should happen to Trudeau? Should he step down? Or should he be called out, be allowed to apologise and move forward? If the latter, why isn't that afforded to the others? Perhaps it is because he supports Trudeau's politics, and doesn't much care for the edgy comedy, and so Trudeau can be given more leniency whilst the comedians can be cast to the wind. But that seems totally arbitrary and capricious.
Our liberal traditions of the politics of power requires that the burden of justification of restraint be laid upon the person calling for the restraint. Mob justice doesn't change this, and adding numbers to the mob doesn't justify calls for restraint.
Restriction on speech/expression ought to be limited, and if they are to be enacted, they ought to be exact and clear. For my money, there are three criteria for the warranted restriction of speech/expression.
Restriction on speech is warranted if and only if:
1) The restriction of speech causes less harm than the speech being restricted,
2) The restriction of speech is effective (it targets what it aims to restrict without collateral damage), and;
3) The harm caused by the speech is substantive (degrades form or function) and not mere offense.
I also think that such restrictions have to be intelligible, justifiable or acceptable, in some way, to those upon whom the restrictions are being laid - albeit in some idealised form.
(3) is the main sticking point in our current zeitgeist. There are slogans such as 'Silence is Violence' as well as 'Hate Speech is Violence'. We have this bizarre misinterpretation of speech acts such that certain types of speech is violence and unacceptable, but punching 'Nazis' is permissible or encouraged.
We need to be able to distinguish between harm and offense - this was an understood distinction that has since been muddied, for various reasons, and now we have idiosyncratic phenomenological responses to words and ideas motivating punishment and censure instead of argument and appeals to public reason.
The lack of clarity regarding the distinction between what is distasteful and what is intolerable is why Kingwell and those who agree with him shouldn't get their way.
The popularity of Thunberg et al. doesn’t come from the belief that the world will end in 12 years. I think it comes from the fear of the very probable consequences of climate change coupled with the fact that many adults – some of whom are in positions of considerable power - still don't accept it and/or want to action to avoid them.
The condemnation of Thunberg et al., I think, also doesn't come from the denial of the belief that the world will end in 12 years - but rather it comes from the sensible suspicion that people have towards those who appear to cry wolf whilst admonishing others for not adhering to their cries.
Thus is the nature of this debacle of a debate.
From what I can see, calamity is inevitable. If we were to snap our fingers today and stop 100% of all emissions, the residual effects of the emissions already in the atmosphere would continue to impact the climate for decades to come.
This isn’t based on some esoteric physics that only men in white lab coats possess. Rather, it is also based on myriad geological findings that are easily and readily observable to the average person: we have the shrinkage of sea ice, the retreat of glaciers, a rise in sea levels, salination, storm surges, and net ice sheet melt. We also see plant and insect life migrating northward indicating that once inhabitable biomes for these creatures are now becoming habitable due to changes in temperature and environment. All of these have downstream effects that will cause further disruption of previously established natural cycles.
Given the inevitability of calamity, the better use of energy is thus to prepare for, rather than avoid, what gets thrown our way. This also means that we should be wary about taking options of the table because they violate some ideological a priori assumption – for instance we ought to be able to consider geo-engineering solutions that could very well aid in the mitigation of crises.
We also have to come to the understanding that Left and Right can come together on this issue to provide possible solutions. The Left doesn’t have a monopoly on the environment, and, in fact, it used to be a conservative issue. Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, the Goddess of Neoliberalism, was the first head of state to bring the climate change, acid rain, and pollution issues to the forefront of public attention – though right-wing environmentalism goes back further to Edmund Burke.
Nonetheless, the point is that there are conservative, market-based solutions that can be wielded in the service of mitigating further risk and preserving what we can. This point has to be recognised because the only solutions being proposed are solutions from the Left – the so-called ‘big government’ solutions. This, I think, is the main objection people on the Right have towards moving on the climate change problem: the proposed solutions are big government solutions, the Right is against big government, and so those solutions are off the table – similarly with the Left’s view towards Right-wing solutions. This problem doesn’t lie in the interpretation or debate on technical data: I don’t think many heads of state and other decision-makers who oppose climate change measures have read a technical paper on the matter. The disagreement is political, economic, and social. The issue lies in the underlying passions and dispositions people possess, and the values that they hold.
What we see is that since passions are rising on both sides, hyperbole is being used and getting mixed in the debate. Furthermore, we see hyperbole getting mixed in with the science – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stating that the world will end in 12 years, is but one of the most obvious examples. By mixing scientific conclusions with hyperbole, a bewildered public will confuse the two. This isn’t their fault: it’s the fault of those pontificating to them. We see this on both sides: we’ll have the Left misrepresenting the scientific findings to support its claims and agenda, whilst the Right will misrepresent the scientific findings to attack it.
To my mind, when it comes to the misrepresentation of the science, it doesn’t matter which side it comes from nor how disproportionate it may be to which side. What matters is whether the science is being done diligently and reported accurately.
To swing it back around to Thunberg and her fellow travelers: I see hyperbole, and I see some misrepresentation, but I do not see direct contradiction of the evidence. She is not saying ‘A’ when the science is saying ‘not-A’. She is embellishing her calls to awareness and action with moral denunciation, and this is divisive – attitudes towards her and her message predictably break down political lines, and due to this, she could very well cause some backfire on the environmentalist movement, but perhaps not.
Thunberg and others are engaging in political theatre. Now, theatre is a part of politics, but it doesn’t count as politics. Asking people to ‘look into their hearts’ and exclaiming ‘how dare you?!’ only effects those who are susceptible to the need for soul searching. That said, there is organisation, and that has been effective in mobilising the message. This organisation may very well be AstroTurf'd, and one can see the focus groups, special interests, and political machinations behind it. In addition, the social justice crowd has latched on to it. Folks say ‘climate change is a social justice issue’ because people-of-colour, LGBT folks, women, and children, particularly in third-world countries will be affected. This is a category error, and a sleight of hand which can make any issue a social justice issue subject to the banter of the social justice crowd. To that, I say climate collapse is too important and too real an issue to be surrendered to the vanity and narcissism of the social justice-types.
At a microlevel, what we see with Thunberg are the scales of youthful idealism falling from her eyes, and since she lacks the maturity to properly assess the situation, she finds herself blinking at a post-apocalyptic dawn that was built on betrayal.
Now, there certainly has been remarkable corruption, and there has hitherto been a lack political will to address climate change, but, at a macrolevel, this is a technical problem that will require hard work and diligent use of technical expertise, as well as savvy political action to obtain, if not a consensus, at least a convergence, on the path towards addressing climate change; not moral condemnation from children.
'The death count from antifa is still zero' - George Ciccariello-Maher (Democracy Now!, August 6th, 2019)
Well, that quote didn't age well...
If the recent reporting surrounding the Dayton Shooter is correct, it looks like the antifa death count has just increased to ten.
There has been the incessant justificatory refrain from the progressive left that is echoed in Ciccariello-Maher's above quote, which refers to the killing of Heather Heyer by James Fields Jr. at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
Whenever one offers criticisms of antifa violence, whether against right-wing demonstrators or even bystanders, the typical response is something like, 'someone has died already - the young woman in Charlottesville in 2017 who was run over by a car driven into a crowd by an avowed neo-Nazi. Antifa hasn't killed anyone.' As if this is a legitimate defusion of the criticism.
There are myriad examples of antifa causing violence and arming themselves – with firearms and/or knives - in protests. In fact, the antifa groups Redneck Revolt and the Socialist Rifle Association came armed to provide 'security' and protection to counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally. Now, one could say that there is a difference between the armed white supremacist groups who came to Charlottesville, and the armed anti-racist groups who came to Charlottesville, but the march and demonstration was lawful until it wasn’t, and it became unlawful through a bungled mess of poor policing as well as antifa agitation.
There are also additional incidents of antifa violence against innocent people: there was the assault of journalist Andy Ngo, as well as a few other documented assaults whereby men had their skulls bashed and bloodied by pipes, crowbars, or batons. There is the bike lock-wielding philosophy teaching assistant, Eric Clanton, who attacked multiple people in a Berkeley protest, and bludgeoned an innocent man in the head with the bike lock, as well as times when antifa has thrown piss at people, and there is the infamous punching of alt-right figure, Richard Spencer. Finally, there is the instance of the self-identified antifa man who attacked an ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) detention centre armed with a rifle and 'incendiary devices' before being shot by police.
But what does this have to do with the Dayton shooter? Isn't associating the Dayton shooter with antifa illegitimate - just a cheap attempt at guilt by association? After all, antifa is not an organisation but a movement composed of loosely amalgamated but autonomous people who wish to fight the far-right.
The Dayton shooter, if reports are true, was a self-identified leftist who voted in Democratic primaries, tweeted opposition to Donald Trump and ICE , and supported Elizabeth Warren and socialism. He was also an armed counter-protester at a KKK rally, and had 'he/him' pronouns on his Twitter bio. Finally, in response to an essay by news commentator Mehdi Hassan titled, 'Yes, Let’s Defeat or Impeach Trump -But What If He Doesn’t Leave the White House?', the Dayton shooter wrote, 'arm, train, prepare'.
'Well, that doesn't mean that he's a part of antifa', one may retort. 'After all, he shot a bunch of innocent people and antifa would never condone such a terrible act.'
Ah, but then it seems that the goal posts have been moved: it has gone from 'antifa hasn't killed anyone', to 'no one has been killed for overtly antifascist reasons'.
Similar things could be said for James Fields, perhaps. After all, he was loosely connected to the alt-right - aside from sharing extreme ideological positions that exist throughout the alt-right, he was not a member of any group that was marching. He wasn't a part of any coordination, and no one has come out to defend his actions resulting in Heyer's killing. (There may be cynical reasons for this, people may be trying to get out with reputations as intact as possible. But that assumption would need to be expounded upon for more justification.) Even if he is as guilty has he has been said to be, how connected is his killing of Heyer, and injuring of dozens more, to the overall demonstration that day or the demonstrations that have occurred before or since?
As with the Dayton shooter and antifa, no one on the alt-right wants to claim Fields as their representative. But unlike antifa, the alt-right has recognised Fields as one of their own.
Now, this whole back-and-forth smacks of an ad hominem and tu quoque fallacy (an appeal to hypocrisy), but at a group level.
The standard tu tuoque is as follows:
1. Person A makes claim X
2. Person B asserts that A's actions/past claims are inconsistent with claim X
3. Therefore, X is false.
What moderates and right-wingers are saying to antifa is, 'you say you are against fascistic political violence, but you engage in the same sort of activity. You're the real fascists!', and what antifa and their progressive allies say is, 'you say we shouldn't engage in political violence because it is destructive, and yet, look! Our political opponents are fascists! They cannot be trusted to NOT beget violence.'
This antifa statement has been echoed by Mark Bray, the author of the Antifascist Handbook, when he stated:
You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.
Well, it seems like the time for letters and phone calls has long since passed, since fists and knives are the standard fare, and guns are standing on the sidelines.
To be clear, I’m not saying antifa and their progressives allies are hypocrites for responding to violence with violence, I am saying they are hypocrites for their understanding of violence and how they react to it. We have this bizarre situation where speech is violence worthy of physical confrontation, but milkshaking isn’t. Right-wing groups like Patriot Prayer are seen as more blame-worthy than antifa for violence because they’re 'far right' and they ‘incite’ violence. Well, being 'far-right' is one’s right, and they don’t 'incite' violence: unless you count their lawful marches, posters, and MAGA hats to be inciting. However, if this is that case, then you mean to say is that incitement to extremist political violence is actually incitement to political violence by extremist people. For instance, antifa and/or the Revolutionary Communist Party can march and chant their ridiculous slogans and chants, and no violence will be elicited by the right, whereas the opposite isn’t the case. I cannot think of an event wherein the presence of antifa hasn't increased the likelihood of violence - and yet they are treated with kid gloves by government and law enforcement.
In an attempt to close up this meander: there is a malignant asymmetry that has been operative for sometime now, and has become exasperated in the so-called Trump era. Left-wing political violence is often given a pass, or is framed in terms of 'resistance', and right-wing, specifically white nationalist political violence is framed as a 'surge' that is a part of a 'global threat'. Even Jihadist violence is occasionally framed in terms that obscure obvious religious motives, or is framed as an intelligible response to Western aggression and imperialism. A major problem, though, is that Jihadist violence is neck and neck with Far-right violence (104 and 109 attacks in the US since 9/11, respectively). Given the disparity in populations, the rate of violence is shocking.
What we see is the demonisation of the young men, particularly white men, when they engage in violence that is on the right-end of the political spectrum. Whereas left-wing violence and Jihadist violence have a modicum of mainstream advocacy willing to stand up and expound upon the growing issues in their communities, as they see them, these young white men have none of that.
Now, these people don't deserve advocacy for what they've done, nor for their ideological position - unequivocal condemnation alongside a desire to expose the causes and motivations for such actions is key in order to prevent future violence - but the overt lack of any advocacy coupled with an ill-concealed disdain for that set of people can only beget future horrors.
More and more young white men are in crisis, and are festering in isolation and hopelessness, and this isn't bad because they're ticking time bombs waiting to go off, it is just bad. Period. It is indicative of problems with mental health, but also problems with family, local communities, and society.
Marginalised people are attracted to marginalised groups, and these groups often act as breeding grounds for malformed paranoid sociopaths to find any kernel of justification for their malformed paranoid sociopathic worldviews. They lack leadership and any real sense of community, responsibility or obligation - there is a just a shared pessimism directed at a world that has gone off the rails and which they view from a message board. And when these young men come up for a breath of air, what are they greeted by? A barrage of media exclaiming: incel, white fragility, white privilege, male entitlement, toxic masculinity, colonialism, white supremacy, misogyny, genocide, fascism, whiteness, racism, unconscious bias, and the like. Now, I imagine people on the Left will see these items as problems to be solved, and not as condemnations to be foisted upon any one person. However, these items, and their trends upward in the media, are indicative of a certain kind of white liberal consciousness that creates moral outrage in the viewer, which, in turn, creates an outrage feedback loop that appears to degrade group solidarity. This degradation of group solidarity comes at the further expense of community, which in turn erodes a sense of duty and ethics.
Individual actions can be judged and condemned in relation to a group/community context, but to take an individual action and use that to defame an entire group/community/ethnicity/religion - especially a group that one is a part of - is petty and craven. Moderates on both sides of the political spectrum, though particularly leftists, explicitly point out that this form of condemnation is illegitimate when it comes to violence committed by marginalised groups.
This post started off cheeky, but it has left me with a certain amount of melancholy. Where exactly are these politics taking us in this winding and lurching modernity? How is it to be resisted? In this increasingly fractious society how are we to build intentional communities with shared values, goals, and virtues? What sort of future is to be built, and what are we to do with tradition, heritage, and wisdom passed down from those who came before us when the modern world has turned its back on them? Is there to be a retreat into quietism?
I don't think so. I think we need to be honest about where we find ourselves: we live in a world that is increasingly isolating and hollow. Whether intentional or emergent, this isolation, in part, leads to radicalisation and resentment. We need movements to help young men get away from their computers and find meaningful activities and social connections in the real world. We need to build movements and communities in which such people can feel pride again - to have skin in the game and have a profound sense of mattering in the world and to those around them.
What we have currently are people looking to alternate identities (radical ethnic/racial/political) as a way to find meaning and connection in this world. The far-right holds human nature to be primary, and thus has exalted race/ethnicity/region since it is a tangible and intuitive expression of that nature, and also gifts one with a sense of temporal depth and connection to the ancestral past. To them, these natures, gifts, and pasts are different, and these differences are to be preserved - and though this thought is a minority, violence, at times, may be necessary for its preservation.
Far-left people also exalt human nature, but believe that it has not been truly allowed to express itself since it has been constrained by unjust social norms and institutions. As with the far-right, violence may be necessary since such structures must be challenged or abolished in order for human nature to flourish. Hence the expressions of emancipation and progress. As Karl Marx stated:
[c]riticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.
Karl Marx - Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
The tension between these views is where the truth lies: humans are social beings with a natural history, and the communities and societies we form - from tribe to band, city to civilisation - consist of in-group preference, hierarchy, and tradition - in short, 'order' - that may, in fact, be incompatible with other conceptions. On the other hand, we do have a shared human nature that has cross-cultural validity: there are universal interests and drives, such as the concern for well-being, autonomy or freedom from coercion, for creative expression, and respect, for example, and these can bridge gaps.
What the right is arguing, in part, is that the cultural and ethnic particularities of nations and peoples are being subsumed under the dull economic churn of neo-liberal socio-economics and mass immigration, and this is happening without the assent of the people. We see this in Brexit, Trump, and the rise of myriad right-wing populist groups in Europe. The left seems to argue that such concerns are proxies for racism and xenophobia.
Perhaps what we are seeing is the denial of the legitimate concerns coming from the right which is feeling increasingly isolated and marginalised. Perhaps the folks on the left don't believe that the right has any legitimate concerns, but if that is so, if folks keep chipping at the flint, the tinder box could start to blaze.
Those posts wherein a young lady goes on a diatribe about being catcalled by a random male stranger and, perhaps even physically touched by him.
There was a recent post I saw describing such an event. The woman was catcalled, then touched: first held by the shoulders as she was told she was beautiful, and then touched on the small of her back while this stranger showed her off to his gang of miscreants. It was the touching that made the whole affair noteworthy, as she wrote. Very scummy, indeed.
I have a tendency of skipping such posts since I can only muster so much concern for inconvenient confrontations that are used to pronounce boilerplate feminist rants: which this was. However, what stood out to me was the last sentence: 'Use your damned privilege'. That prompted me to look at the rest of the post.
This plea, or demand, was prompted by the fact that the man who was working the station did nothing to intervene. He just offered some mild condolence, 'I'm sorry you had to put up with that'.
Fair enough.
Now, here is where I think this whole assessment is illustrative of a misguided view that has been taught to young women. This will be a bit facetious.
First, telling someone that they ought to do something doesn't sound like there is much privilege at play. And what sort of privilege is this? The privilege
to stand up to an unknown male on the behalf of an unknown vulnerable female
with the risk of engaging in physical conflict? I think the woman has the
privilege, here: to call on male protectors to swoop in and defend her honour.
Now, if you ought to do something, that is an obligation. Men, I think, do have an obligation to stick up for women, and I think that obligation arises from the fact that most women, on average, are physically weaker than men. Men, who, on average, are stronger than women, may try to take advantage of women, and other men should protect women from such men. However, this is at odds with what feminism, in its contemporary guise, tells us again and again: that women are independent and interchangeable with men. This demand calls for a recognition of the damsel in distress. By demanding that men intervene, one is recognising that one needs help, particularly from men.
To buttress this claim: I'd ask, 'is this experience typical for women, today?' I would predict an almost certain 'yes', given the rank patriarchy that is supposed to roam throughout the channels, arteries and capillaries of society. There isn't a space, institution, or practice that isn't infected with it. So, either events such as these are common, or not. And if they're common, and women feel like they need men to intervene, that shows that women need the help of men.
Second, modern feminism is constantly critiquing men for 'traditional masculine behaviour', however, some of those characteristics are what is needed in situations like the above. As such, being aggressive, assertive, or adhering to traditional male gender roles isn’t necessarily toxic if done ‘in the right way’ - or at least they aren’t toxic if some feminist or other asks you to engage in them on behalf of the sisterhood. What's more, women, as evidenced by this post, and other articles, require masculine men to protect them from other masculine, though less empathetic, men. Ideally, they'd like to have a more masculine man taking care of business - just to ensure success in the 'intervention' department.
So there is a tension: if women are capable, they deserve to be independent, particularly of men, and if they are vulnerable, they need to be protected, particularly from men - and yet, of course, by men.
What these feminists want is, in their own weird way, a man who is capable of violence and assurance in the social hierarchy but has that capacity tempered by an ethic of care. Sounds a bit like a traditional man, to me.
This is more of an suspicious concern of mine. It goes beyond the Report, and to the way it has been used.
Trudeau holds a copy of the Report presented to him
by the commissioners of the National Inquiry.
When
I was listening to the public speeches given at the MMIWG presentation
of its Final Report (found here), I couldn't help but feel a sense of subversion.
Here we were: witnessing a crowd of people with the Prime Minister
sitting in the front row, all listening to the Chief Commissioner speak
of her findings. She spoke of the violence and neglect faced by women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA Indigenous peoples - the repetition of that acronym is distracting and
borders on irritating, as she trips over its clunkiness in attempting to maintain political posture. Then she drops the bomb: 'this is
genocide', and the crowd cheers. She smiles and nods in recognition. The Prime
Minister applauds, tentatively.
Now,
I find the cheers suspect. I don't think they're cheering the fact that
a genocide has been uncovered. I don't think they're cheering that
their communities have experienced crimes against humanity. I don't
think they're cheering their entrance into a club that involved Rwanda,
the Holocaust, Indonesia, and myriad other horrible mass murders and
targeted exterminations. I think they were cheering the signalling:
they're were cheering the fact that they can call Canada genocidal to its face.
In a recent Leger Poll, 44% per cent of respondents agreed with the National Inquiry's conclusion that the MMIWG situation was an 'ongoing genocide', while 37% disagreed.
Do these folks who agree with the genocide charge understand that there are legal consequences that come with that? Do they understand how serious the crime of genocide is? Do they understand that it is an internationally recognised crime against humanity? Or do these people think it is just some conscious-raising exercise to tacitly accept the term and reflect on it so as to atone for the crimes of their forefathers? Or perhaps even the crimes of other peoples' forefathers?
This wasn't a recognition of the truth: it was a catharsis - and these
can be very different things.
There is a lot to say about the Final Report. Firstly, if they're studying missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, why isn't it a 'femicide' instead of a genocide? Well, because they added the 2SLGBTQQIA acronym, which seems to be an unwarranted expansion of scope, they would have to include men into the report on women and girls. There is also their retroactive treatment of the law, as well as the ambiguity of mens rea, and the way they jump from lex ferenda (or what the law should be) to lex lata (what the law is). Despite these, I'm going to restrict myself to the question: are they justified in their classification of the MMIWG phenomenon as 'genocide'? In doing so, I'll provide the definition of genocide, as well as a schema of common features. I'll then explicate the Goldilocks Problem, and explain the concepts of family resemblance and concept creep as they all apply to the Final Report's claim about Canada being guilty of a present-day genocide. Definition of Genocide:
According to the UN, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
A part from this definition, there is an instructive format for predicting genocides as they emerge from preceding activities. Created by Gregory Stanton, former Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the George Mason University, his 8 Stages of Genocide suggests a series of 'predictable but not inexorable' developmental features of genocide. These stages are listed and briefly described below. 8 Stages of Genocide:
Classify in-group and out-group – i.e., Hutu from Tutsi;
Create and impose symbols to identify in-group and out-group – i.e., ID cards or yellow stars;
Exclude out-group from full civil rights – i.e., apartheid or segregation;
Dehumanise out-group – i.e., equate them to animals, vermin or insects
Organise militia and/or special military units for killings - i.e., Janjaweed militia, Schutzstaffel;
Polarisation via propaganda – i.e., kill moderates, broadcasting hateful propaganda;
Plans for deliberate killing of out-group are created; members of out-group separated – i.e., land and property are expropriated, forced displacement; and,
Deliberate killing of out-group in mass murder – i.e., often called 'extermination' due to dehumanisation of out-group.
It is important to note that the UN definition of genocide makes no mention of the word 'State', meaning that the actions do not (necessarily) need to be conducted with explicit governmental support. Additionally, intent is said to be directly proven from statements or orders by the perpetrators, however, more often, it must be 'deduced' from the systematic pattern of their acts, a pattern that could only arise out of specific intent. These 8 Stages would be indicative of such a pattern.
The Goldilocks Problem:
The name refers to the tale of The Three Bears, in which a little girl named Goldilocks tastes three different bowls of porridge and finds that she prefers porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold, but has a temperature that is 'just right'. For our purposes, the Goldilocks Problem refers to the criteria for demarcation. It asks if our system deemed 'too cold' by ruling-out warranted cases, or is it 'too hot' by ruling-in unwarranted ones? Or is it 'just right'. Now, this effort of demarcation is tougher than one may like. Take 'science', for instance. What counts as a science, and what counts as a pseudo-science? When asked this question, we have to distinguish between what counts as a science and what counts as a pseudo-science in a motivated and non-arbitrary way. Now, not every non-science is a pseudo-science: art, engineering and mathematics are not science, but that doesn't mean they're pseudo-sciences since they do not claim to possess the same epistemic status as science for the reasons that science gets that status, whatever those reasons happen to be. Pseudo-sciences, however, claim to possess the same epistemic status as sciences for the reasons that science gets that status, and yet does not merit such status. Astrology being a classic example. I cannot get into the demarcation problem, here, suffice to say that issues, of criteria, merit and status are certain to follow in the discussion on genocide. Family Resemblance:
The Principle of Family Resemblance states that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities. This idea comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical analysis of language wherein he explains the plurality of languages via an analogy to the plurality of games.
When you look at what are considered games; games played with balls, cards, sticks, gambling, Olympic tournaments, martial arts, in groups or alone, etc., one notices that there isn’t a single thing that all games have in common, but rather there is a series of relationships that criss-cross to form a constellation of similarities. These resemblances are comparable to the resemblances that members of a family have to one another, hence the ‘family resemblance’: Concept Creep: Concept creep refers to the expansion of a concept via semantic shift that dilates the original meaning of the term. There are two sorts of expansion: 'horizontal', which captures qualitatively different examples than before, and 'vertical', which captures milder and less severe examples than was originally the case.
Let's take 'trauma' as an example. This concept has changed significantly; initially it meant severe physical injury, but then the term expanded to include distressing events that were beyond the scope of normal human experience like torture, or being shell-shocked in war. Later on, trauma began to encompass distressing events that occur within the scope of normal human experience like learning about a death or serious injury of a close family member. So here we see the horizontal shift from physical injury to psychological injury, and the vertical shift to include more examples of distress. Now, words can have fluid meanings, and semantics can shift over time, but it is important to know what a word has commonly meant in order to understand how it has been changed. Sometimes words change for good reason, sometimes they are changed out of good intentions, but sometimes they're changed for political reasons that are not firmly rooted in either. Analysis:
With these concepts in mind, let us look at the features of genocides, past and present, and see what similarities crop up and disappear. Let's make a family. (This list certainly isn't exhaustive, though I tried to incorporate a wider array of examples than the standard - certainly more than are accepted by the Canadian state which only accepts five (5). The list is organised from oldest, to most recent.)
Event
Location
Proportion of population killed *
From
To
Genocide of Indigenous Brazilians
Brazil
38% of all indigenous tribes went
extinct
1900
1985
Armenian Genocide
Ottoman Empire
Half of Turkish Armenians
1915
1922
Holodomor
Ukranian USSR
10% of Urkanian Population
1932
1933
The Holocaust
German-occupied Europe
2/3 of European Jewry
1941
1945
Serbian Genocide
Croatia
21% of Serbian population
1941
1945
Cambodian Genocide
Democratic Kampuchea
1/3 of Cambodians
1975
1979
East Timor Genocide
East Timor
44% of East Timor population
1975
1999
Rwandan Genocide
Rwanada
70% of the Tutsi population
1994
1994
Darfur Genocide
Darfur
38% of total Fur, Maasalit and Zaghawa
tribes' population
2003
Present
Yazidiz Genocide by ISIS
Iraq
Approximately 17% of Sinjar, Irqai
Yazidis
2014
Present
* Proportions are the high-end estimates of deaths.
Now that we have this list of genocides, what is common to the phenomenon? Here, I'll apply the 8 Stage of Genocide to see what is found in common. Not all of the above features apply to each of the listed genocides in the same way - how each of the Stages were executed, methods used, etc., vary - but the constellations formed by the genocidal events and their applicable features do show a family resemblance.
Event
Common Features Present
Genocide of Indigenous Brazilians
1,3,4,5,7,8
Armenian Genocide
1,3,4,5,6,7,8
Holodomor
1,3,5,6,7,8
The Holocaust
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Serbian Genocide
1,3,4,5,6,7,8
Cambodian Genocide
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
East Timor Genocide
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Rwandan Genocide
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Darfur Genocide
1,2,4,5,6,7,8
Yazidiz Genocide by ISIS
1,3,4,5,7,8
*This is based on my own research, and I don't intend for it to be scientific or authoritative, but to prove my point about family resemblance. There are certainly more details to be found that could further flesh out this list, and there is some debate about some of the features. I have, however, opted to include the affirm the features under debate, for the purposes of discussion, here. What we see is that the above examples all share: (1) Classify in-group and out-group; (5) Organise militia and/or special military units for killings; (7) Plans
for deliberate killing of out-group are created; members of out-group
separated, and; (8) Deliberate killing of out-group in mass murder
This demarcation is a qualification for what can be considered to be 'genocide'. Has the MMIWG Final Report shown that it has met the qualifications? Is the MMIGW a competitor? Well, to quote Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction, ‘it ain't the same f**kin' ballpark. It ain't the same league, it ain't even the same f**kin' sport.’ That said, I'll try to be charitable to the proponents of the MMIWG genocide idea.
Event
Common Features Present
Canadian MMIWG
1,2,3,4,6
To obtain the above features, I interpreted: (1) Classify in-group and out-group: to include the category of Indigenous Peoples/Indian as being opposed to Canadian/Colonial, and colonial history that did demarcate these two groups from one another coupled with the notion that Canadian/Colonial is superior to the Indigenous/Indian; (2) Create and impose symbols to identify in-group and out-group: to include government-issued ID cards for 'Status-Indians' under the Indian Act; (3) Exclude out-group from full civil rights: to include the pre and post-Confederate disqualification from the franchise; (4) Dehumanise out-group: to include the various assimilationist processes that were imposed upon Indigenous peoples such that citizenship and enfranchisement were contingent on Indigenous peoples relinquishing their traditions and cultures, such as An Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian tribes in this Province (1857), and Residential Schools (1840-1996) which meant to 'to kill the Indian in the child', and; (6) Polarisation via propaganda: to include (4)
Now, even this is too charitable and was only possible by utilising more radical interpretations of the features that involve concept creep and the historical accrual of past injustices, and going beyond the scope of the MMIWG Investigation.
Family Resemblance, Goldilocks & MMIWG:
Back to Family Resemblance, and the Goldilocks Problem. We see that the MMIWG phenomenon does share some features of genocide: there is an out-group, it is identified, it had been excluded from full civil rights, and it was subject to dehumanisation and polarisation. The problem is that it also lacks key features that all genocides share: the plans for deliberate killing of the out-group, along with the actual deliberate killing of out-group in mass murder. Now, there is the concept of cultural genocide, and Canada's Residential School system has been described as an example of it - but the MMIWG Report states that the Canadian state has been found guilty of committing a 'deliberate, race, identity and gender-based genocide'. Full stop. With such a strong claim, they don't leave much wiggle room - unless they admit to equivocating. Now, there are undeniably problems that Indigenous women and girls suffer: they are five-and-a-half times more likely to be murdered than their non-Indigenous counterparts, and since the 1960s many have gone missing and their cases were never solved. At least 1,181 MMIWG cases exist, and it is certain that there are many more, but even though Indigenous women do disproportionately suffer violence and death, the violence and death isn't existential nor targeted - which is a key component present in the other genocides listed. In fact, the only facets of MMIWG that are close to the 8 Features of Genocide are the assimilationist practices that deprived Indigenous people's of their culture and traditions in (3), (4) & (6). These, however, really collapse into one: the exclusion from full civil rights that was predicated on the belief that Indigenous peoples were not full British subjects by virtue of being Indigenous. This, however, has passed, and has been recognised - and, to my mind is outside of the scope if MMIWG which looks at cases from 1980-2012. So I conclude that it fails the Family Resemblance Principle. What of the Goldilocks Problem? Is it too cold, too hot, or just right? When
assessing the MMIWG phenomenon, we don't see it meeting the criteria for
genocide without having to expand the understanding of genocide by resorting to politically-motivated tactics, such as piggybacking on past injustices
and weaving a seamless tapestry of inter-generational trauma that not only
transmits the suffering of past victims to their descendants, but the genocidal
intent of past perpetrators - whether they be 'individual masterminds' or the 'burgeoning nation-state' with federalist ambitions, as the Final Report states.
What we do see, however, is that poor indigenous peoples are suffering from trauma - inter-generational or otherwise - and dying at disproportionate rates with these deaths being ignored by the law enforcement in large part because of the
impoverishment of the victims that is predicated on past injustices. But when looking closer, we don't see genocidal intent, organisation and activity. Instead, we see apathetic attitudes of law enforcement, maybe even racist law enforcement, and the faulty belief held by past and present governments that the deaths, murders and disappearances were merely a matter of policing, and not linked to the social ills faced by Indigenous women and their communities.
But this is
what is being called 'genocide', and if we're to assent to such a claim,
then what else are we to call 'genocide'? What other cases are we to consider? A reasonable candidate to my mind could be the Opioid Crisis in the US.
The Opioid Crisis has killed over a million Americans since the 90’s when the prescription opiate Oxycontin was first released on the market. The history of the Crisis is one of greed, corruption, and indifference embedded in an alliance of private and governmental interests such as Big Pharma, medicine, public institutions and law enforcement that hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, and that let the opioid makers get away with it.
There is persistent blame and demonisation foisted on the overdose victims, addicts, and their communities - a significant proportion of which are poor working class people, mostly men, and predominately White, though Indigenous Americans face the highest level of addiction.
Michael Schatman, director of research and network development at Boston Pain Care and editor in chief of the Journal of Pain Research, has even called the Crisis a 'genocide of people with chronic pain'. Talk about concept creep!
But why not consider the Crisis a genocide? Because the victims do not make the right kind of protected class? Then why not expand the classes to be more inclusive? Aren't we supposed to be fighting injustice? Why should we lock them out of the struggle for justice? Or perhaps the population isn't targeted in the 'right way'.
I'll extend an olive branch, here.
As noted, the history of Canada and its Indigenous people’s has been called a cultural genocide, exercising intent to assimilate, at times forcibly, Indigenous peoples into Canadian society. But in the context of the MMIWG there is no such policy and no such targeting. The victims are tragic examples of vulnerable people falling through the cracks of our society, our institutions, our laws, and our moral considerations and such apathy may be due to racial, gender, and ethnic stereotypes.
Similar things, however, can be said about the Opioid victims: they’re victims of a system that is empowered by capitalist structures - abetted by governmental and societal indifference - that doesn’t give them the moral consideration they deserve because of their class and cultural status. It is a slow American genocide - spanning generations, and the failure of the system to question what was going on, and the media to cover it appropriately led to even more deaths.
People may deny this and state that the victims and their communities aren’t targeted: they're victims of improper prescriptions, unstable communities, poor family lives, and/or substance abuse. It's a matter for internal housekeeping, not society. Such a response, though, could open one up to Kafka-esque accusation: the fact that you deny that a genocide is going on here shows that you are complicit within it.
Now, this isn't to pick fights between tragedies. Both the MMIWG and the Opioid Crisis are tragedies in their own right, but the MMIWG doesn't pass the Goldilocks
Problem, because the logic that makes it a genocide would also apply to the Opioid Crisis -
which clearly isn't a genocide, even though the number of deaths in the
crisis are 40 times greater than that of the MMIWG. The intent just isn't there, and this is borne out by the fact that reasonable alternative explanations can be given for the deaths. Overall, the MMIWG Final Report's attempt to broaden the conceptual and legal parameters of genocide beyond its internationally recognised limits is unjustified and it does not stand up to scrutiny, and would never hold up as a legal argument in any international institution. There is some sage advice given by the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, which states in the very first paragraph of its Guidance Note:
The question is sometimes asked whether specific events, past of present, can referred to as “genocide”. It is important to adhere to the correct usage of the terms for several reasons; (i) the term is frequently misused in reference to large scale, grave crimes committed against particular populations; (ii) the emotive nature of the term and political sensitivity surrounding its use; and (iii) the potential legal implications associated with a determination of genocide.
The authors of the Final Report would have been wise to follow such advice.
