ichael . benson on Sat, 19 Jun 1999 18:56:51 +0000 |
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Re: Syndicate: moral responsibility |
Of course there's such a thing as collective responsibility, and of course it's not the same as collective guilt (i.e., something that you could be tried for). When Reagan Amerika floated a huge fleet off each coast of tiny, dirt-poor Nicaragua, and what's more blasted a daily supersonic boom over Managua, scaring the shit out of everybody, scattering chickens and breaking windows, just because that country had opted for a socialist system, I felt disgusted and angry. And I wrote about it and talked about it, you know, in disgust and with anger, and even showed up at some rallies downtown (although I felt quite impotent to really do much). So why did I do that? Well, apart from visceral revulsion over these kinds of intimidation tactics -- the same feeling I would have if any country was engaged in them, without a pretty damn good reason -- I also felt like this was *my* country behaving in a reprehensible way. And what's more, using ships and planes that I, and everyone I knew who paid taxes, had actually paid for, out of our labor. Which is not a small thing. Further, the people who were using those Stuka tactics were literally from my community, they had been educated in the same educational system I grew up in, they were from my extended neighborhood, I suppose you could say, and therefore I felt a right and a duty to speak up about what I perceived as (yet another) misuse of the immense power of the United States. Just as, during the Vietnam war, millions protested, because they felt like their country was behaving in an unacceptable way. Same with the civil rights movement, when it was made very clear that not thousands, but millions, of citizens of the US believed that black Americans should have equal rights. That is what taking collective responsibility means. Like McKenzie Wark says, "Accepting responsibility is not about guilt, and hence is not about punishment." Slobodan, you're not *guilty* for the crimes that were committed by Yugoslav/Serbian forces in Kosovo. And I can understand why you wouldn't want to be linked to them in any way. But you are, on the other hand, responsible for your own opinions and actions, within the system in which you live. And for your own tacit or overt acceptance or rejection of the actions of that system. Not to mention your own responsibility to try to get as much objective information as possible, from sources outside the state-controlled media apparatus. Sally Jane Norman asked, "How many responsible individuals form a collective responsibility?" It's a good question. I'm fully aware that it's very scary and dangerous to actually go out and protest against state power in Serbia. Especially now. (And b.t.w., there has been some interesting reporting the last few days about the efficient methods being used to keep the Serbs pouring Kosovo from pouring *into* Belgrade or other urban areas -- exactly so they don't flood the streets and, you know, demand Slobo's head. They literally have nothing left to lose.) And I can get a glimpse at how frustrated and dispirited the Serbian opposition must have been, several years ago, when its leadership fragmented and then in same cases directly collaborated with the same system it had been protesting against -- and very soon after those marches. This is something that can only fuel an already pervasive cynicism. But one of the most striking features of those protests years ago was that they didn't really seem to concern themselves very much with the war crimes that had been committed in the name of Serbia, both in Croatia and Bosnia. In fact they weren't protests against that at all. They were apparently more directed against Milosevic going a bit too far -- too far even for Serbia --when it came to stealing an election. And (if I can believe what I've read, from various sources, about it -- though I'm curious to hear any comments on the truth of this), they had real overtones of anger that the greater Serbia project had suffered some defeats. In other words, these were also protests about those tactics not working -- not protests at the horrifying tactics themselves! And it was widely reported that, when the cops showed up to break heads, some people were chanting that they should go to Kosovo, and break Albanian heads instead... Well, guess what? They did, they did... They followed the will of a percentage of the collective. And very, very efficiently. This is not, repeat NOT, to say that *everyone* felt that way. Obviously not, and thank god for that! But, as I've written before in this forum, I personally feel despair over Serbia when I consider the percentage of the Serbian electorate that voted, in democratic elections, for either Milosevic or Seselj. (And yes, I'm aware of the power of state-controlled mass media in brainwashing an entire population. But still...) So, I agree with McKenzie Wark when he writes: > accepting responsibility > is part of growing up. Its a mark of the struggle for the > maturity of the culture, to accept responsibility. To stop saying, > like Bart Simpson, "I didn't do it." Without the voluntary > acceptance of responsibility, how can a culture learn? How can > identity have an honest premise? How can we expect others to respect > us? A year ago, I received a real harangue from Andrej Tisma, to the effect that, since the US is a country built on the bones of dead Native Americans, i.e., founded on genocide, I had no right to have an opinion about Serbia's treatment of the Kosovar Albanians. But he didn't stop to ask me about my opinion about that genocide. And in fact about my acceptance of some responsibility for that genocide, given that I am one of many who has a relatively good deal in life due, in one way or another, to the success of that project known as the United States. (In other words, I wasn't born into a Calcutta slum, or Cambodian hell.) While I wouldn't go too far with this, I would say that this assumption of some level of responsibility enables having an opinion about, and being able to recognize, a similar kind of injustice when it's staring you in the face. Apart from the fact that I believe that we, as human beings, are allowed to have a say about how the human race is behaving. The fact that there are no doubt people in Serbia, and on this list, who would probably be pretty annoyed at being asked to consider the moral views of some American who didn't have to endure three months of bombing, and who in fact is from the country that did that bombing, and furthermore who feels free to comment about the Serbian situation -- I mean, the presumption of it! -- already shows that there is an acceptance of the idea of collective responsibility. I'm an individual, and I have some kind of obscure, hard-to-define, and sometimes infuriating, ties with that immense collective that calls itself the US. But I'll say it anyway (and you can hit "Ctrl-F4" right now): my personal opinion is that the mayhem being uncovered in Kosovo is unforgivable. Just as shelling the life out of Sarajevo for year after year was unforgivable. And Srebrenica was unforgivable. It seems to me that the only thing that would, or could, save the Serbian collective -- a collective comprised of millions of individuals, each capable of making autonomous decisions -- would be in fact to take responsibility for those actions, and to exhibit a collective wave of revulsion and a collective demand to know who is responsible for this kind of reign of terror. If you want to look at it in a self-interested and yes, *collective* way, those responsible for almost completely destroying the good name of Serbia should be held accountable. There is *nothing* that justifies this kind of behavior; nothing at all (though as I guess I've made pretty clear in previous posts, in my opinion there *was* ample justification for a military response to this carnage. Events show that it was the only way to stop it, since the only other people who could have stopped it -- the Serbian people -- *didn't do so*. Sad but true). But, but: I find it heartening that tiny, elderly, white-bearded Patriarch Pavle has called on Milosevic and his entire government to resign, and has even acknowledged and condemned the torture of the Kosovar Albanians. After all, when Christ said "love thy neighbor", he didn't mean just that neighbor who you already find most acceptable, or ethnically OK; and he didn't specify that this neighbor had to be of your own religious views, either. He didn't say, "love that neighbor which you already find easiest to love." I guess -- it's just a theory -- that he meant entirely the opposite thing. (No, I'm not a Christian.) It would be nice, for example, if the Moslems in Sandjak could be left in peace. Rather than dreading that they might be next. And if the Hungarians in Vojvodina wouldn't have to worry about being kicked out of their apartments now. And if Montenegro could be left to continue deciding on its government for itself. And important stuff like that. So that's my long-winded take. No offense, please, no offense. Let's hope that everything manages to get better now. It would be about fucking time. Michael Benson <michael.benson@pristop.si> <http://www.ljudmila.org/kinetikon/> ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress