Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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☭ Theory reading group on hiatus, will move to Lemmygrad next year
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The ongoing genocide and some people’s denial of it has taught me that some people are never going to recognize something as a genocide unless 1) they are literally experiencing it themselves or 2) an institution that they trust tells them to believe something is one.
Granted, I was watching firsthand account info come in early, among other things, so that made it easier for me to discern and I guess some have probably not seen that part. But still, the confidence with which some people are in denial about it is enough to stagger me. I think some of it is just good ole western chauvinism liberal arrogance because it’s one thing to be uninformed and skeptical, it’s another thing to confidently believe to the contrary; to be a denier. And I’m not talking about from the sort of person who would tend to be a neo-nazi or the like, but somebody who obviously means well and yet is so stubbornly wrong about something so important.
Another part of it is that most westerners alive today have spent their whole lives saying and being told that all that bad stuff happened in the past and that everyone’s more civilised now. Slavery, colonialism, genocide, these aren’t core aspects of capitalism, they’re things that people used to do before ‘everyone’ suddenly realised that they’re wrong.
So when looking for ‘an institution that they trust’, the list is very short because (a) believing the institution means revaluating everything and (b) they’ve also been told not to trust many institutions or any institution that requires point (a) to happen. It’s easier to take names off the list than add them.
Good points.