NEWS FROM THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY:
A June 2004 Op-Ed Essay
Kurt Jonassohn
June 2004
It may seem premature to report news from the twenty-first century so early in the century and I am not pretending to be a futurologist. That temptation is easily resisted when I remember the many events of the last century that where not predicted by the so-called experts. What gives me even more pause is the strange way in which social events seem to work out over time periods longer than yesterday’s news. Thus, when the Chinese occupied Tibet in 1959 it was not at all obvious that this would quick-start the spread of Buddhism in the West. Even more intriguing are the ways in which very similar events can produce radically different outcomes. Thus, many revolutions were accompanied by terror and genocide. In the French Revolution such means were employed - though they were later considered less important than the establishment of the rights of man. In the Russian Revolution (and in several others) terror and genocide did not result in the realization of the early ideals and instead became ends in themselves. Clearly such distinctions can only be drawn after a lapse of time.
For reasons such as these I am not even tempted to engage in futurology. Instead I am offering some tentative thoughts that are based on a series of quite dramatic changes that inaugurated the new century. These changes occurred in several areas, both domestic and international, and several of them will be briefly examined here.
The reader should be warned that this is not a comprehensive survey. There are changes occurring that will not be mentioned here; they are the good news that unfortunately are often not reported in the media and the bad news that seem unlikely to be precursors of genocide. The changes to be discussed here have been selected because they contribute in one way or another to possible future genocidal massacres and gross human rights violations. For the purpose of this discussion genocides may be divided into two major types. (1) Utilitarian genocides are those whose main purpose is either to eliminate a threat, or to inspire terror, or to acquire wealth. They usually succeed in achieving their ends - which is why they have been so popular for the past 4,000 years. (2) Ideological genocides are intended to implement a theory, a religious belief, or a political consensus. They usually fail to achieve their goals in spite of being performed at great cost to the perpetrator society - which has not discouraged their perpetrators.
In antiquity most states were very small. Often they consisted only of a town and a small area around it with a population of a few thousands. For modern readers this will be easier to visualize by thinking of contemporary principalities like Andorra, Liechtenstein, or Monaco that pose no threat to their neighbours. However, in antiquity such small states often engaged in hostilities in spite of their modest size and their even more modest populations. Such hostilities were reinforced by differences in ethnicity, language and/or religion. They often escalated into genocide because that resolved the problem that caused the conflict in the first place.
Genocide has been practiced throughout history. Its continued popularity seems never to have waned. It is facilitated by the inherent cussedness of human nature and by its hoped-for success in solving problems. Its nature, however, has changed significantly with the size of the perpetrator and victim units. For one thing, genocides started to occur within states. As states became larger and their increasing populations became more heterogeneous the scope for conflicts seems to have increased. As the conflicts escalated to the murderous level the number of victims also increased -- until the end of the twentieth century when a number of social and economic changes were implemented in the hope of reversing these trends.
After this rather lengthy introduction - we finally get to the ‘news from the twenty-first century.’
The approaching twenty-first century was widely heralded by dire predictions about the inability of computers to cope with the change-over from 1999 to 2000 - the so-called Y2K problem. Most experts agreed that computers were not programmed to handle this change and that their inability to do so would have catastrophic results. Businesses and governments were convinced that they had to spend enormous sums for re-programming their equipment to avert the looming fiasco. The few voices throwing doubt on these predictions were discounted as incompetent in matters of high technology. Thus, large sums of money were spent to cope with the change-over - a true bonanza while it lasted. Then, the year 2000 arrived and no crashes were reported from computers ‘unable to cope with the change.’ A few voices were heard suggesting that the whole episode was a carefully orchestrated and very profitable scam. But there was no obvious perpetrator to be blamed and no witnesses came forward. Besides, making money any way you can was becoming increasingly acceptable. The whole episode has already been forgotten while being overshadowed by even larger scams.
These much larger scams seem to have been encouraged by the apparent impunity of the perpetrators. But to everyone’s surprise that impunity disappeared almost over night. The perpetrators, motivated by their limitless greed, overreached themselves when their scams victimized not only the government and the tax payers but also the powerful financial and corporate elites. The beginning of the new century has been characterized by almost weekly exposures of the lengths to which some people and some organizations are willing to go in order to enrich themselves by illegal and/or unethical methods. Because some of these exposures reach into the highest levels of corporations and governments they have had results that go far beyond their purely financial implications. They undermined not only the credibility and integrity of financial institutions, particularly in the United States and Western Europe, but also the reputation and prestige of states that had been unable or unwilling to prevent them. The threat to fiscal probity was so large that some corporations collapsed and some individuals were fired, prosecuted, and convicted.
The relevance of these upheavals in the economic sphere is that they have made it easier to explore and expose the methods used by these perpetrators in their search for wealth. These methods are not limited to financial operations. They include ruthless contempt for the land and the people they are exploiting. The destruction of the land may deprive the population of its means of survival, may force people to flee, and may even endanger their survival. These processes clearly lead to conflicts of varying intensity in which gross human rights violations are common and genocidal massacres not unheard of.
A related issue concerns the dramatic increase in poverty across the world. At the state level rich countries are getting richer as poor countries are getting poorer. At the individual level the income gap between the poorest and the richest has been growing dramatically. Consequently, the opportunities for conflict have also been increasing with a concomitant increase in violence.
Of equally pervasive significance are the concurrent changes in the normative and moral structure of society. These are encouraged and manipulated by professional propagandists who have honed their semantic skills. Universities have supported such efforts by instituting programs and degrees in communications that lend such activities an aura of academic credibility. These quasi-scientific skills are widely applied in advertising and marketing with their well-known effects. They are also applied to the manipulation of public attitudes and the management of news where they are less easily recognized. The uses of disinformation and misinformation and the spreading of deliberate lies have become commonplace. Their effects in cultural, social, and political areas are more far-reaching exactly because they are often not recognized. Large so-called public relations companies (their activities are anything but public) apply these techniques to further the interests of those able to pay for their services. Whatever these interests are, they undermine democracy - which is a major bulwark against genocide.
A related problem inherited by the 21st century is the linguistic confusion created by the introduction of new terms and the changed meanings of old terms. Thus, ‘unlawful combatants’ has come into usage without anyone seeming to know with certainty how to distinguish a lawful from an unlawful combatant.
The term ‘war’ used to refer to open hostilities between states/ countries. But there has not been a declared war since World War II. It was temporarily replaced by a ‘cold war’ which term was invented to label hostilities between states that did not involve direct military action. The term ‘war’ became so popular, mainly in the USA, that it came to denote hostility toward features of contemporary society that were considered undesirable; thus, we saw the war on crime, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on cancer, etc. Such usage changed the meaning of ‘war’ in confusing ways. It is not always clear who are the contestants in such wars? Who are the participants, the bystanders, the victims, etc. Even worse, how do such wars end, who are the victors, and who the losers?
The latest addition is the war on terror. That popular usage is particularly unfortunate because it created much confusion and misdirection. e.g.: who is the enemy? People who commit terrorist acts? People who help them? States that protect them? Further, who are the combatants and which ones are lawful and unlawful? and by what criteria? But even more disconcerting is the question of how a war on terror can be terminated. Presumably, there can be no armistice or peace treaty. Neither does it seem probable that all of the enemies (no matter how defined) can be killed or taken prisoners. Is this an endless campaign that can be terminated only by both parties to the ‘war’ unilaterally declaring victory? While waiting for that unlikely outcome, such a ‘war on terror’ will multiply conflicts over economic, ethnic, and/or religious differences that will escalate and intensify as the casualties increase.
Another feature of the new century is the quite unanticipated increase in the spread and significance of religion. This increase is not concentrated in the main-line denominations, but rather in their fundamentalist and extreme manifestations. This growth seems to be occurring in most of the world’s religions. Its concentration in the most extreme forms is leading to a corresponding decrease in tolerance of and open-mindedness vis-a-vis divergent beliefs. Needless to add that such religious differences lead to confrontations and conflicts that increasingly result in violence.
Finally, it seems important to add a problem that received wide-spread attention in the 1960s but that since then has largely disappeared from the media. It used to be called the ‘population explosion.’ Perhaps this disappearance is the result of declining birth and growth rates in the West. These declines are real enough. But very high growth rates continue to characterize many populations in the rest of the world. The resulting population growth puts increasing pressure on resources, including food, water, energy, and medical and sanitary infrastructures. Most importantly, it also increases population density. The declining amount of space available and the increasing pressures on resources lead to competition, conflict, violence, and can - in extreme cases - lead to massacres and genocides.
The last half of the twentieth century had seen an increase in gross human rights violations and genocides. Efforts to prevent them or to intervene in their execution produced disappointing results. The prospects for greater success in the twenty-first century seem to be overshadowed by campaigns against terror and for free trade. Treaties designed to prevent violations of human rights have proliferated but are mostly honoured in the breach. Prevention and/or intervention are not usually motivated by humanitarian concerns. They are used only when they serve the political and economic interests of the great powers.
