Category: blog

The legend of Raphael Lemkin is by now well-tread. The Polish Jew witnessed Turkey’s Armenian massacres as a bystanding linguistics student in Lvov, newly-independent Poland, and later experienced the Holocaust from afar, as an American émigré. In the telling of Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Lemkin was taken by Winston Churchill’s description of Nazi violence, a “crime without a name.” Till he coined the term “genocide” in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, a dry, heavy legal tome, Lemkin remembered Armenia’s suffering–and described his contemporary Holocaust–as an uncommon horror, forever nameless.

Whatever the eventual goodness of Lemkin’s innovation, both Churchill and his admiring jurist were wrong. The moral language of Lemkin’s era amply accommodated the war’s profound terror, often at the scale Lemkin’s term implies. Destruction, atrocity–in 1945, Hannah Arendt used both terms to describe the recent annihilation of European Jewry. Whatever her later controversial understanding of Nazi power, Arendt’s early postwar essays made clear that killing at the unforeseen scale of Nazi concentration camps and roving Einsatzgruppen could and did have many names.

Given this moral context, the importance of Lemkin’s term cannot have been its mass, nor its systematic procedure. It is a consequence of our imperfect memory of Nazi power that genocide implies an expansive “order, deliberateness,” as Philip Gourevitch suggests. Nazi, Hutu Power, and Khmer Rouge politics were often as disordered as their murderous counterparts in the Central African Republic, with which they are now contrasted. The political process by which Hitler’s regime successfully achieved Mein Kampf‘s totalitarian goals often failed, though not often enough–in Denmark, where fascism’s collaborative reach collapsed, and in eastern Poland, where a popular resistance welcomed Stalin’s alternative violent rule. American soldiers had no certain power as they marched the Cherokee nation towards an unknown frontier, nor did Khartoum’s janjaweed militias as they scorched Darfuri villages on Sudan’s western margins. For Andrew Jackson, as for Omar al-Bashir, genocide was a power-seeking enterprise–authority was taken, not affirmed. Genocide’s systematic order, the alleged smoking gun of mass killing, only exists in the terror’s successful conclusion. In the thick of it, the mass violence is anarchic, meaningless.

Instead, the power of Lemkin’s genocide comes from an idea now so obvious as to approach cliché: that identity matters. Lemkin was a Polish-American Jew, but he was also a committed globalist in an era of dismal chauvinism. He wrote Axis Rule as the last paltry legacies of the interwar League of Nations crumbled, and before Dumbarton Oaks recast the postwar international consensus. Identity shaped the moral imagination of interwar Europe in the ugliest of ways, and so many innovations of the late Forties–institutional, literary, political–sought to redeem Europe’s collective wrongs. These innovations were often contradictory: the cosmopolitanism of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed humanity’s common dignity as the UN Security Council secured the predominance of great power politics. But they were also complementary. That the Genocide Convention was the UN’s first human rights treaty is no mere trivia–for the UN’s framers, the symbolic protection of the provincial was both the prerequisite for and the partner of the universal. Lemkin’s term codified identity, previously a privilege of particular groups such as the Levant’s persecuted Christians, as a meaningful pillar of an international rights pantheon. In his design, the future’s proverbial European Jews would no longer fear annihilation for who they were or who they saw themselves to be.

That’s a very different thing than a universal right to life. To suggest that identity matters is to suggest that society is part of life’s meaning–that what makes us human is not simply that we exist, but that we interact in common, collectively. Lemkin’s anthropology of violence rebuts the interwar era’s eugenic consensus: it implies that, whatever ethnic, racial, religious, or national group one might belong to, that group and its members deserve an equal opportunity to thrive and, more importantly, to live.

The consequences of Lemkin’s term are profound and, as such, controversial. Being social, human identity cannot exist in a vacuum–it is defined as much by those who oppose it as by those who claim it. In eastern Poland, this means that an Orthodox Jewish congregation in Bialystok who has never associated with a Reform Jewish congregation in Berlin becomes “Jewish.” In the Central African Republic, this means that disparate Christian groups become “Christian,” because the Muslim government and the international community say so, but not because they’ve received the blood, body, and spirit of Christ. These identities are often false, or are insufficiently nuanced; but that they are constructed, either internally or externally, does not make them any less real, politically, morally, and anthropologically.

It’s difficult to tell what has happened over the last week in Juba, South Sudan’s capital city. Early reports suggested a military coup, and President Salva Kiir, donned in a general’s uniform, did his best to convince both South Sudanese citizens and his international patrons as much. The U.S. State Department, among other diplomatic bodies, has issued a travel advisory for U.S. citizens–say what you will about Benghazi, diplomatic security, and threat inflation, but U.S. advisories are often a good indicator that an international crisis is getting bad, quickly. However we describe this week’s events–as a coup, as the early stages of civil conflict, as ethnic infighting–it’s clear that more people continue to die, and that disparate security factions are among the perpetrators. Will South Sudan’s current violence kill more people in the future, and if so, why?

A recent Economist dispatch places the root of the fighting with South Sudan’s tumultuous ethnic politics. This is not to say that “ethnicity” qua identity is responsible, but that there is a particular group of people (in this case, Salva Kiir’s Dinka affiliates) that controversially holds more power than another particular group of people (Riek Machar’s Nuer group), and which often excludes the latter from political decision-making. Inasmuch as South Sudan is a state, it is a state because these groups, as well as tens of others, have decided that this arrangement works–its elites have enough money, and their supporters have enough services to support their livelihoods. That arrangement has crumbled since 8 July 2011, and probably before. It dates to South Sudan’s contested transition from rebel nation, during the Sudanese civil war, to international trustee, in the aftermath of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, to sovereign state. It’s hard to identify the proximate spark, but this context is, as always, important.

The “meaning” of this week’s violence depends in part on your dataset’s timestamp: if you look to 2011, it’s likely a symptom of a decaying proto-state; on the other hand, it may be a longer-term consequence of Kiir’s heavy-handed consolidation. Of course, it may be both: perceiving its own weakness, Kiir’s coterie attempts to seize authority by violently repressing potential insecurity. This is the explanation Jay Ulfelder prefers, and I think he’s right: civilians always suffer as elites scuffle. As I write, UN officials report that multiple hundreds of South Sudanese civilians have died in Juba’s clashes. It appears that South Sudan is well on its way to simultaneous mass atrocities–one in Juba, and one in Jonglei, an eastern region on the capital’s margins. As South Sudan’s crisis deepens, it’s worth thinking about how these crises both overlap and don’t; how the weakness of a corrosive regime and its efforts to shore up authority may cause–both directly and not–greater suffering.

Zack Beauchamp published a very fine essay yesterday, provocatively titled, “5 Reasons Why 2013 Was the Best Year in Human History.” Beauchamp’s human history is not a natural force, as it was for Hegel or, to a lesser extent, Marx–instead, 2013 was humanity’s best year because we made it so, and because the systems, technologies, and societies humans create allow us, collectively, to prosper better than before. Others–Steven Pinker, whose work Beauchamp cites, comes to mind–have written as much before, alternately leaving more and less space for human decisions. Beauchamp’s is a soft, purposeful history, and one which, he acknowledges, is easily reversible.

Beauchamp describes war’s aggregate decline, one widely used proxy for our common prosperity, as “[not] accidental…by design.” This turn-of-phrase is a helpful metaphor, as design implies intent, decision, and agency. As much as the design metaphor suggests human improvement, it also illustrates our prosperity’s present and future fragility. Here’re two reasons why:

1. The human ecosystem is fragile: When we discuss ecology, we usually refer to our natural environment: the atmosphere, oceans, forests, and mountain ranges that human actions often destroy. Indeed, climate change–and, more specifically, its humanitarian consequences–is the greatest data point against Beauchamp’s argument, and one which he anticipates. But our human ecosystem comprises more than the natural environment, though the two forces often intersect and conflict. Humanity is distinguished by our ecological complexity–by the institutions, systems, and structures that shape how our species interacts. The UN, for example, is an ecological mainstay–where it operates, it informs how human societies live, how they prosper, how they die, and how they are remembered. But these systems are fragile, as they have been throughout human history. They may be strong one year, and weak the next, and then strong again the following year. The “life-saving technologies” Beauchamp describes–anti-retrovirals, genetically modified foods–are symptoms of the systems that work: when they don’t, there are fewer technologies, and fewer lives saved. When the Global Fund, among the largest grant pools for disease prevention and treatment, announced massive grant cuts in 2011, anti-HIV/AIDS research took a hit. Funding in the aftermath of the global economic crisis has returned, and anti-retroviral medical innovations continue apace, but the Fund’s momentary shock underscores the ever-present risk of systemic–and, consequently, technological–failure.

2. Whose human history?: Human prosperity is an aggregate measure, which necessarily and perhaps defensibly glazes over its own outliers. Beauchamp’s humanitarianism is cosmopolitan, as all total human histories must be. It views human progress as a global dilemma, and one which rises and falls in totum. But Beauchamp’s is scarcely the only humanitarianism, because this cosmopolitan imagination fails where it succeeds: in representing human prosperity as “positive, on the balance.” The rebuttal, “It probably wasn’t the best year if you’re Syrian,” is cheeky and unhelpful, but there is some validity to it. Human prosperity can only be “positive, on the balance” if all accept cosmopolitanism–that is, common humanity–as a shared identity. Shades of tragedy emerge for those who reject cosmopolitanism, or, as is more often the case, simultaneously accept more proximate identities–an interfaith minister who is also a Jew; a black African nationalist who is also Xhosa. The tragedies these groups experience are morally and politically meaningful, and they define histories equal to humanity’s–of the self, of the family, of the community, of the nation. So no, it probably wasn’t the best year if you’re Syrian, and that is also the human history of 2013.

Over the past week, Atlantic film critic Christopher Orr has waged a noble, yet foolish battle against equally-foolish evangelists of Love Actually, the now-notorious 2003 British Christmas-movie-qua-romantic-comedy. Unintentionally and (perhaps too) whimsically, The Atlantic‘s Great Love Actually Conflict of December 2013 illustrates the evolution of ethnic identity during political conflict:

1. First, a belligerent force asserts an identity, and seeks to impose that identity on others through coercive means.

2. Second, a marginalized group asserts a counter-identity, which exists simultaneously in itself and in opposition to the “original” identity.

3. Third, the belligerent force, placed on the political–and, often, military–defensive by its counter-identity, wages attritional conflict against the marginalized group and its supporters.

4. Civilians are often harmed.

Upon their arrival in the Capitol, the District 12 victors are swiftly ferried to President Snow’s residence, where Panem’s highest-society dandies assemble to toast this year’s Hunger Games–the 75th annual. Newly-appointed Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee approaches Katniss Everdeen, the District’s neighborhood firebrand, for a brief dance. She presses him on his gamemaking responsibilities. “Are you planning the Quarter Quell Games already?” “Arenas aren’t built in a day,” Plutarch responds.

For most, the Hunger Games trilogy is a thin fable about doing what’s right, and finding humanity where you least expect it. But for the Capitol–and, specifically, for President Snow–Katniss’ revolution is a cautionary tale about the politics of control, what happens when you lose it, and the human consequences of political weakness. In this regard, Plutarch’s idiomatic retort is obvious: the Hunger Games arena is Rome, and Plutarch is its Romulus. Or, rather, he’s Plutarch–the storied Greek biographer who paired heroic lives and who, in Panem, destroys them. Plutarch Heavensbee stands in total judgment of the districts’ violent heroes: he determines the former victors’ renewed participation in the Quarter Quell, and once the melee begins, controls their fate. Its spectators gasp and cheer for freethinking humans, but the ugly odds are always in the Head Gamemaker’s favor.

In 1883, America’s railroad barons reset time. The postbellum American timescape contained at least fifty zones, a chronic plague for punctual rail arrivals and departures. When, in the early 1880s, a railroad syndicate inaugurated America’s current standard time zones, Americans gradually turned back their clocks. Panem’s Plutarch fashions his own power in the same gilded image. His Roman arena is clock-shaped, and his destructive algorithm literally moves like clockwork–a hazard every hour, on the hour. The arena’s tributes perceive a Fibonacci-like natural sequence, but Plutarch’s translucent design is synthetic. The midnight lightning strikes against the same tree, and four o’clock’s Hitchcockian hazard is a flock of mimicking jabberjays, the Capitol’s trademark invention. But the arena’s false reality is known to few–the Head Gamemaker, his minions, and the imperiled tributes. Beyond those few, the arena is an obvious popular symbol of the Capitol’s totalitarian strength, over both humans and nature.

Plutarch’s arena is a synecdoche of Panem’s authority–twelve hourly hazards, twelve regulated districts. The Capitol’s power is those districts is often repressive, but infrequently violent. As violent as the annual Hunger Games appear, they are a substitute for regular and consistent mass violence–two children, rather than thousands, die in battle. When the Capitol’s control functions well, it saps Panem’s subjects of their freedom, but it does not kill them. In the early aftermath of Katniss’ inglorious initial Hunger Games victory, she crosses paths with Cray, District 12’s security chief. He chides Katniss for carrying alcohol for Haymitch, her mentor, but still “slaps down a coin for a bottle.” The District’s black market–that informal economy that enables Cray’s alcohol purchases–is paltry and impoverished and subversive, but it exists.

Later, it doesn’t. Panem’s other districts–which, like District 12, subsist on the Capitol’s forgotten margins–begin to revolt. During their “victory tour,” Katniss and Peeta Mellark, her companion, witness impressions of the Capitol’s weakening authority: an old man’s protest, the “crumbling facade” of District 11’s Justice Building. When Katniss and Peeta return home, the Capitol has doubled-down: a new “peacekeeping” command seizes control, and its security forces–larger by an order of magnitude–shutter District 12’s black markets. The resistance of Gale Hawthorne, Katniss’ close friend, prompts a crackdown, a violent one. Gale’s lashes, administered by Cray’s replacement, are a new repression, and a harbinger of the Capitol’s mass violence to come.

The Quarter Quell arena crumbles as the Capitol’s control unwinds. Katniss’ allies discover Plutarch’s algorithm, and use the midnight lightning to dissemble the arena’s electromagnetic forcefield. “The earth,” designed with such precision by the Capitol’s gamemakers, “explodes into showers of dirt and plant matter.” Katniss, rendered unconscious by the arena’s explosion, wakes aboard Plutarch’s hovercraft, now transformed into a rebel quarters. Gale offers, mournfully, that “there is [now] no District Twelve.” The Capitol, reeling from internal collapse, fire-bombed the entire region.