Skip to main content

The politics of brutality. 'Them' & 'Us'?

TJS George

The cruellest personification of brutality in recent history is no doubt Pol Pot. Assuming power in Cambodia in 1975, he pronounced it as Year Zero and issued an 8-point edict which abolished all towns, abolished all markets and abolished money. People in towns and cities were force-marched into the countryside. Along the way, those who talked too much or were slow in walking, or cried or protested were executed as they walked. Old people and children who stumbled were shot too. Babies were killed by flinging them against rocks. Marauding soldiers would lynch people and eat their livers in the raw. Some 1.5 million people were butchered in a matter of months.

Okay, so Pol Pot was brutality in human form. Does that make Cambodians a brutal race? That's the kind of generalisation that can make dubious psycho-historians out of otherwise respectable writers. Philip Short is indeed a highly respected researcher/writer. His book Mao: A Life is a classic. He has now written a new biography, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare . It is a definitive treatise on the Cambodian tyrant. But it is marred by the author's derivative theory that brutality is built into the cultural character of the Cambodian people.

Actually that is something that can be said about any people. There is a mass of literature, from the book Rape of Nanking to the film Bridge on the River Kwai , that records the unbelievable brutalities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Does that make the Japanese people a brutal race of humans _ the Japanese with their kabuki theatre, with their Shinto traditions, their exquisite tea ceremony and the unrivalled grace of their aesthetics.

As coincidence would have it, much of the folklore of brutality is built around kings and conquerors of the East _ from Genghiz Khan to Idi Amin. One reason could be that the chroniclers, whether writers or film-makers, are overwhelmingly from the West; Easterners lag behind in the disciplines of research, study and recording.

In reality the West can teach the East quite a few lessons in despotism and brutality. Is there anything more savage in history than the wholesale decimation of the native population of North America? Poisons and epidemic-spreading germs were used to exterminate entire communities, an early employment of weapons of mass destruction. If there is anything more demonic than this, it can only be the wholesale brutalisation of the black slaves shipped from Africa to the New World.

And where in the scale of human brutality shall we place the more recent cases _ the agonising death of 115,000 Japanese when nuclear bombs were dropped on them; the chemical destruction of a country's soil and water, and the genetic deformation of its populace, when the deadly chemical, dioxin, was sprayed over Vietnam.

For argument's sake, we can say that these extreme measures were resorted to in the heat of war. But what about the savaging of helpless prisoners in Abu Ghraib? A young woman smilingly putting up the `V' sign over a heaped mass of naked prisoners, another woman soldier dragging another naked prisoner with a dog belt attached to his neck _ these are barbarities that compete with Pol Pot's for attention. So do we pronounce that Americans as a race are barbarous?

French statesman Clemencean famously described America as the only nation in history which miraculously went direct from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation. Another generalisation, but the point is made, and Amen to that.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Arundhati Roy: The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture

The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney. Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology It's official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck deep in the business of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if that were not enough, this year - of all the people in the world - it goes and chooses me! However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the Foundation to organize a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organize. If this is insufficient notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well. When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to some pretty arch rema

"Global Doubts as Global Solutions"

by Amartya Sen Melbourne Town Hall Tuesday, May 15, 2001, 6pm 1. Misery and Resignation We live in a world of unprecedented prosperity - incomparably richer than ever before. The massive command over resources, knowledge and technology that we now take for granted would be hard for our ancestors to imagine. But ours is also a world of extraordinary deprivation and of staggering inequality. An astonishing number of children are ill nourished and illiterate as well as ill cared and needlessly ill. Millions perish every week from diseases that can be completely eliminated, or at least prevented from killing people with abandon. The world in which we live is both remarkably comfortable and thoroughly miserable. Faced with this dual recognition, we can go in one of several different directions. One line of thinking takes the form of arguing that the combination of processes that has led to the prosperity of some will lead to similar prosperity for all. The advocacy of this perspective c

How not to manufacture patriotism

by TJS George Was anyone patriotically inspired by this year's Republic Day speeches? Or any year's for that matter. Or by any of the Independence Day speeches over the years. These have become mere rituals. Rituals do not inspire. This is not necessarily the fault of our leaders. Speeches that lift the souls of listeners have been heard only rarely in history. The occasion, the mood, the speaker's personality and convictions are all decisive in giving a speech lasting impact. As Macaulay's children know, Edmund Burke made many a memorable speech. But none of them acquired the stamp of greatness that a short speech by Abraham Lincoln did _ the Gettysburg address. Pre-independence India bristled with great scholars, orators and visionaries. None made the impact Vivekananda did at the Parliament of Religions with the opening words, "Sisters and brothers of America .... I thank you in the name of the mother of religions. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan could hold