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Written on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 7:28am by Alan Bedenko | 10 Comments

No big deal

I’m genuinely surprised that I have to explain why this outrages me.

Fearless Leader writes:

So, if Spitzer is committing genocide and since Jews, like Native Americans, were the victims of genocide, this is being ironic. Not in the best taste but nothing to hyperventilate about.

Except Spitzer isn’t committing genocide, unless there’s a concentration camp or mass grave filled with the bodies of certain ethnic or religious groups whom Eliot Spitzer has ordered killed. So, it’s not irony. It’s at best hyperbole, and extraordinarily distasteful and disrespectful of genuine genocide.

Every time some asshole draws a parallel between some contemporary political beef and actual, genuine genocide, it cheapens what is so tragic and horrific about genocide. Rwanda was genocide. Bosnia. Nazi Germany. Spitzer’s sales tax collection policies are not genocide.

Terry writes:

I thought the sign showed some creativity and it obviously got people going…which is the point of a sign……I read this blog and the comments and I am drawn to Napoleon Dynamite wherein the school principal lectures Pedro about how it is wrong to use the head of a political opponent as a piñata, ha ha…who needs to go to the movies???????

I think that a poster of a Hitleresque figure alleged to be committing genocide reminds one of Napoleon Dynamite makes my point for me. The cheapening of the word genocide will mean few will care when the next one comes down the pike. After all, it’s just like Pedro in that movie, or like a cigarette sales tax imposition. No one really gets hurt. It’s just fun!

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10 Comments

  1. Terry says:
    March 14, 2007 at 7:32 am

    Ya left out the last part of my Reply………

  2. hank kaczmarek says:
    March 14, 2007 at 8:56 am

    So it goes Alan—Joe American is at the breakfast table reading his paper, and sees that 40,000 Americans died last year in Auto Accidents—he reaches for the toast.

    Regardless of percieved biases, I think this is why 24 hour a day media blasting doesn’t really inform or educate the public–it just inures them to the horrors of the world.

  3. Adam K. says:
    March 14, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Terry-

    It got my attention…and now my opinion is outrage toward those Senecas – however few or many – that agree with the sign. Previously, as a non-smoker, I was rather indifferent.

    I hope you don’t get your Casino, I hope you are forced to charge taxes on gas, and I hope you have to make people pay up for their Marlboros. If you can’t afford to keep your gas station open, just do something else with your life. That’s what everyone does when things change.

    Holocaust? Just because you might have to look for a new job? C’mon. In this area we call that “Thursday”.

  4. Mike Hudson says:
    March 14, 2007 at 9:59 am

    alan….it is ironic that anyone concerned with what went on in europe during the 1930s and 40s would seemingly be so willing to condemn an entire nation of people based on the misguided actions of one mixed-up 15-year-old kid. clearly, while the holocaust did claim 9 million lives in a relatively short period of time within the memory of many people living today, the european/american ethnic cleansing of what is now the united states was responsible for far more deaths. this is about one thing and one thing only — attempting to use force to coerce the seneca nation to collect new york state taxes. to try and make it into anything else is missing the point.

  5. BuffaloPundit says:
    March 14, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Mike – I didn’t condemn the entire nation of Senecas for this.

    I condemned that kid and his sign. I said it was an utter disgrace, and it is. It’s disgraceful for that kid and his family, and frankly for anyone who thought it was just a swell ol’ sign.

    The rally was not an anti-genocide rally. It was at best a sovereignty rally or an anti-tax rally. And that’s fine. I didn’t have a problem with any of the signs showing Senecas standing on top of Troopers’ cars, or the signs saying “save our jobs” or anything that was said at the rally. I had a big problem with this sign and any other sentiment that equates genocide with a sales tax / sovereignty issue.

    Ultimately, Spitzer hasn’t killed anyone, so I don’t quite see the point of that kid’s sign, or the point of defending it.

  6. James says:
    March 14, 2007 at 11:21 am

    Go Adam K!!!

  7. joe schmidbauer says:
    March 14, 2007 at 11:07 pm

    If New York State uses its power (State Police, National Guard) to enforce its will on the Seven Nations regarding taxation, this is an attack on the historic rights of sovereignty. The loss of their sovereignty as a people is a loss of their cultural identity and that is a form of cultural genocide.

    The Native peoples in the all of the Americans have struggled to maintain this form of resistance through cultural identity since the (illegal) immigration and conquest by the Europeans. This resistance is now the political driving force in South and Central America. Eva Morales’ election was the awakening of the indigenous people of Bolivia. The same political forces are arising in Ecuador, Guatemala, and in Mexico. The Senecas are very aware of this struggle and their history.

    Columbus, Cortez, the Pizzaro brothers, Lord Amherst, President Andrew Jackson are the same to the indigenous people of the Americas as Mussolini, Hitler, and Joe Stalin are to Europeans.

    Murder, torture, disappearance, the stealing of community land by multi-nationals are not historical past events, they are happening now. Genocide for indigenous people is still a reality.

    The sign that is being commented on is just a very poor cross-cultural reference about that very blood historic reality.

    Alan, you seem think you have some claim in defining what is an appropriate statement regarding genocide.

    What is the tipping point for defining genocide; 300,000 indigenous people dead in Guatemala, 650,000 plus killed in Iraq, two million Africans dead in the present Congo. 250,000 people killed in East Timor, 2-3 million Armenians dead, 3-8 million Africans lost in the slave trade, 30 million plus indigenous North Americans lost in ethnic cleansing and colonial expansion of Manifest Destiny.

    What is genocide? And who gets to make the claim? Surely not the dead.

  8. BuffaloPundit says:
    March 15, 2007 at 4:39 am

    Joe S.:

    gen·o·cide (jÄ•n’É™-sÄ«d’) n.

    The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

    That’s the definition of genocide in the dictionary, and as far as the law is concerned.

    Eliot. Spitzer. Isn’t. Committing. Genocide.

    Incidentally, I never, ever expressed opposition or support for the underlying sales tax issue. In fact, I think that the Senecas should be left alone.

    But that one sign can certainly do a lot to ruin a greater point, and I think showing it and discussing it is a good thing.

  9. Tatonka says:
    March 15, 2007 at 7:35 am

    What a strange discussion. I would have thought that the fact that there have been real genocides and probable genocides, as cited by Joe Schmidbauer, would make the slur at Spitzer more objectionable, not less.

  10. joe schmidbauer says:
    March 16, 2007 at 8:52 am

    Alan

    A dictionary definition of a political-economic social policy is a bit of a cop-out. What law? Are you referring to The International Court in The Hague? (A Very, Very, very political institution.)

    I agree with you on the Seneca. The sign was a bit of overkill in the context of the Seneca’s struggle with NY State, but in the context of the present struggle of the indigenous people in the Americas it is the truth.

    Alan, the fact is the B.I.A. does not leave any Tribal people alone in the U.S. They are responsible for one of the greatness continuous ripe off in United States History to the tune of 500-800 billion dollars.

    Cultural Genocide, Racism, Neo-colonialism, and arm occupation remain the rule of the day in all of the Americas. This is a state of reality most Euro-Americans are not willing to admit.

    I wish people would be as aware and sensitive about the African & Indigenous people Holocaust as they are of the European Holocaust. The European Holocaust has become a false political yardstick for defining genocide.

    We will not forget, is really about us (Euro-Americans) refusing to remember or refusing to look, just look at Israeli policy in West Bank and Palestine or US policy in Iraq. The great tragedy of the 21st century is one people’s genocide is another nation foreign or social policy.