A number of people have raised the issue of intentionality. As I said in the
original mail, it is a strategy used by Holocaust deniers (and especially
David Irving himself) to demand proof of intent, malicious intent. And to
demand this proof, for every step of huge historical processes and events.
Matthias Zick-Varul asked
> What terms would you then reserve to intended and outrightly planned
> killings, if you use the term "mass murder" for the indirect policy
> effects on mortality?
I do not use the term "mass murder" for indirect policy effects. I use it for
mass murder. I said already...
"it is a historical fact that Margaret Thatcher
and her cabinet had the deliberate intention
to kill large numbers of people. That was related
to their belief in the necessity to subject
large sections of the population to harsh conditions
of life, in a free market-economy. It is also
a historical fact that they implemented that
intention. It is a historical fact that Margaret
Thatcher, the members of her cabinet, and
policy-level civil servants, are individually
and collectively responsible for that mass murder,
in both the historical and criminal-legal sense."
Thatcher and the members of her cabinet clearly committed a crime. In
technical-legal terms, a genocide (subjecting a population group to conditions
calculated to cause its physical destruction). Possibly they could be
prosecuted for that under British law. However, as you may know, I oppose the
use of this term 'genocide', because it constitutes a de facto special status,
for ethnic and national groups. And of course no British court will convict
her for that anyway.
It is not necessarily irrational for a politician to carry out mass murders of
this kind. The Thatcher cabinet was clearly driven by an ideology, with a
strong social-darwinist component. I have no doubt that she personally felt no
sympathy if, for instance, an unemployed person committed suicide. And yes,
she is responsible for that, in exactly the same way that the
National-Socialist regime was responsible for the suicides in the death camps.
Government leaders do kill deliberately. That applies to British government
leaders as well. Matthias Zick-Varul says it is nonsense, to talk like that:
he has a short memory.
Less than a year, ago environment minister Trittin publicly advocated the
assassination of Slobodan Milosevic, saying it was a 'tyrannocide'. And of
course, the NATO tried to kill him, an operation which was almost certainly
jointly authorised by Blair and Clinton. Less than a year ago, Blair's
minister Claire Short publicly defended the bombing of the Belgrade TV
studios. I saw the statement twice, and the second time I looked at her eyes.
She did not blink, or shake, or show any sign that she was not 100% behind the
action. The statement was made, in other words, with absolute ruthlessness:
and I read later, that she is supposed to be the social conscience of the
Blair cabinet.
You have to be tough, very tough, to fight your way into the office of
government leader in a democracy. I have no doubt that Tony Blair, for
instance, is capable of shooting 100 unarmed prisoners, if he found himself in
circumstances where his political survival depended on it. In Thatcher's case,
it is not necessary to imagine this ruthlessness: the Falkland war
demonstrated it anyway.
So when sociological journals refuse to publish any statement, that Thatcher
and her cabinet committed mass murder, that is a political choice - not a
self-evident rejection of nonsense. It is a strategy, with the intent to
conceal or deny. Possibly, the sociological establishment sincerely believes,
that Thatcher was not a mass murderer. Possibly David Irving sincerely
believes that Auschwitz was a fake. In both cases, the belief deserves no respect.
--
Paul Treanor
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/thatcher,html
reserve: http://www.diagonal.demon.nl/thatcher.html
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