Campaigning in the Age of Genocide
I was asked to do this article for the new ScottishPSC website, but it wasn’t published. So here it is (slightly re-edited).
Genocide isn’t a new phenomenon. It part and parcel of human history, as this article from the Conversation outlines. It has been part of the human experience since the dawn of civilisation.
The key drivers that push towards genocide revolve around race identity, racism, and the creation of the other, as well as expansionism, seizing territory and killing the inhabitants.
The characteristics of genocide has changed over the ages, but what would be regarded as modern genocide was defined by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in the 1930s and 1940s, who first coined the term in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, influenced by the holocaust. His definition was then subsequently incorporated into the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (1948). The main definition that was agreed on in the Convention was: "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
The Lemkin Institute was launched in 2017, stemming from the Iraq Project for Genocide Prevention and Accountability ‘to address the need for long-term capacity building in genocide prevention in Iraq’. It now has a global remit.
The genocide being committed by Israel in the Gaza strip follows the settler colonial patterns that we saw in the ‘New World’, as European settlers wiped out much of the native populations there. But the key questions here are, does international law work, or was it a post war ideal? And how can ordinary people react to what’s been happening?
We’ve heard a lot lately about the ‘international rules based order’. But in the light of a real time live streamed genocide, many are now questioning as to whether such a ‘order’ actually now exists. There is no doubt that the genocide in Gaza has been fuelled by the US and its allies, with the UK playing a major role. The complicity of these nations is now well documented. Yet historically no western leader or representatives have ever been held to account for crimes committed under international law. This makes a mockery of the system that was set up after the war under the sentiment of ‘never again’. We have seen how the system has broken down in the face of Israel’s actions. This was underpinned by the devastating resignation of Mark Smith, a former diplomat and policy adviser at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). As he wrote in the Guardian:
My time at the FCDO exposed how ministers can manipulate legal frameworks to shield “friendly” nations from accountability. They stall, distort and obscure official processes to create a facade of legitimacy, while allowing the most egregious crimes against humanity to take place.
A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade exposed how the system works in the UK. It exposes the revolving door between government and the arms industry and the exceptional access the arms industry has to the highest levels of power. As Smith concludes in his article:
I call on my former colleagues – those who still believe in the values of integrity and justice – to refuse to be complicit. Do not rubber-stamp reports that whitewash crimes against humanity. This is not self-defence – it is collective punishment. It is genocide. The time for silence is over. Do not allow ministers to trade human lives for political expediency. The time for accountability is now.
Since October 7, civil society has answered the call for accountability, with mass protests around the world that have been largely ignored by our so-called leaders. Instead there has been a purposefully engineered campaign of obfuscation, lies, mis/disinformation, using corporate media as a vehicle. Emphasis has been given to Israeli propaganda. The importance of the media in this process was underlined by the deliberate reneging of an agreement between the London Met Police force and the pro Palestine campaign that prevented a mass protest outside the BBC. Similar protests in Scotland however have not been hampered to the same extent by police.
So, what is the answer then? What can civil society do? The basic framework is the BDS campaign. This followed a call from Palestinian civil society for the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights’ on 9 July 2005. BDS itself is modelled on the South African anti Apartheid campaign. What made this campaign stand out was the mobilisation of a global civil society focused on a single objective, to end the Apartheid regime in South Africa. These were both local and international that resulted in the transnational solidarity network that underpinned the campaign. It took 30 years for the desired outcome to finally reach fruition. Can BDS achieve the same as it approaches the 20 year mark? There’s no doubt that BDS faces many more challenges and obstacles. But what is emerging is a strong indication that Israel has failed to meet its objectives.
But another question needs to be asked, why did civil society fail to stop the genocide during the 20 months it has raged? Clearly the protests failed, at least in the short term. Although the indications are that public awareness has been raised and that the real face of Israel has been exposed. One answer to the question has been the controlling of the narrative by the corporate media. Yes, the legacy media is loosing ground, but it still largely controls the narrative. There’s no doubt that the emergence of independent media is making some inroads. But perhaps the greatest transformation in the 21st century has been the use of social media. But even here, social media has become dominated by corporate power, although it still remains a vital resource for civil society. But have we become too dependent on modern technology?
‘Big Tech’ has effectively facilitated the genocide in Gaza. Microsoft has been supporting the Israeli military with the provision of Microsoft Azure cloud computing and AI software. Facebook has been collaborating with Israel in suppressing content detrimental to the apartheid state. Meanwhile Google and Amazon have been following in Microsoft’s footsteps. And lets not forget Elon Musk’s Nazi salute.
Since he took over Twitter, the platform’s value has dropped by 75% and has lost millions of active users.
But we have become dependent on social media and cyberspace for our activism. Is there an alternative?
The SHUTDOWN315 Movement has been drawing some attention in the US, with its emphasis on people extricating themselves from the corporate ecosystem. Whether it will catch on remains to be seen. But its proposals are worthy of attention. But perhaps Chris Hedges summed up the rot that is eating into our society. As he put it:
The more extreme life becomes, the more extreme ideologies become. Huge segments of the population, unable to absorb the despair and bleakness, severs itself from a reality-based universe. It takes comfort in magical thinking, a bizarre millennialism — one embodied for us in a Christianized fascism — which turns con artists, morons, criminals, charlatans, gangsters and grifters into prophets while branding those who decry the pillage and corruption into traitors. The rush towards self-immolation accelerates intellectual and moral paralysis.
And he suggests a solution:
We must organize to break our chains, one-by-one, to use the power of the strike to cripple the state machinery. We must embrace a radical militancy, one that offers a new vision and a new social structure. We must hold fast to moral imperatives. We must forgive mortgage and student debt, institute universal health care and break up monopolies. We must raise the minimum wage and end the squandering of resources and funds to sustain the empire and the war industry. We must establish a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s collapsing infrastructure. We must nationalize the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, military contractors and transportation and embrace environmentally sustainable energy sources.
None of this will happen until we resist.
If we don’t resist we may well be sleepwalking into an age of genocide, although it can be argued that we have always lived in an age of genocide. As Declassified reported, Gaza is the UK’s seventh genocide it has had some involvement with. Two parallels with Gaza was the Nigerian blockade on Biafra between 1967-70, aided and abetted by Britain, which caused a major starvation and humanitarian crisis. Another was Britain’s support with Iraq during a terror campaign against the Kurds in 1963. In each case Britain supplied weapons, resulting in mass deaths. The difference today is that the Gaza genocide has been much more visible due to our online connectivity
Today we see the manifestation of neocolonialism. Modern colonialism, mainly US based, is driven by corporate power. It’s what drives the genocide in Gaza. It drives all conflicts and destruction. The power of corporate lobbying cannot be underestimated (an issue I’ll be investigating in a future article). Politicians are bought and paid for and there’s always the revolving door between government and corporations. But corporate involvement in genocide goes way back. It facilitated one of the greatest atrocities in history, namely the holocaust. During the 1930s, IBM helped the Nazis carry out the genocide of millions using innovative punched-card technology. It was the modern equivalent of what tech companies are doing today. The machines enabled the Nazi’s to track Jewish decent using identity records. When the holocaust was at its full extent, concentration camp prisoners were tattooed with identification numbers so that administrators could track a prisoner’s punch card throughout the system. It was the beginning of clinical industrial mass murder on a massive scale.
The nine-mile border between Egypt and Gaza has become the dividing line between the Global South and the Global North, the demarcation between a world of savage industrial violence and the desperate struggle by those cast aside by the wealthiest nations. It marks the end of a world where humanitarian law, conventions that protect civilians or the most basic and fundamental rights matter. It ushers in a Hobbesian nightmare where the strong crucify the weak, where no atrocity, including genocide, is precluded, where the white race in the Global North reverts to the unrestrained, atavistic savagery and domination that defines colonialism and our centuries long history of pillage and exploitation. We are tumbling backwards in time to our origins, origins that never left us, but origins that were masked by empty promises of democracy, justice and human rights.
Commenting on how the Nazi’s became convenient scapegoats to obfuscate colonial atrocities:
Between 1490 and 1890, European colonization, including acts of genocide, was responsible for killing as many as 100 million indigenous people, according to the historian David E. Stannard. Since 1950 there have been nearly two dozen genocides, including those in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Rwanda.
It seems that genocide is encoded in our DNA, we have changed little since the stone age. Progress is an illusion. It is therefore vital that the campaign against, not just Israel, but the collective systemic rot that has infested the global neoliberal order, continues. The political lunatic fringe has become the core. These morally bankrupt individuals have their hands on the reigns of power. Civil society needs to come together and act collectively. Our economic system is in a state of terminal decay. The age of genocide is fuelled by the climate crisis. Everything is interconnected. Lets all come together before it’s too late.