Thursday, October 01, 2015
The culture of genocide posted by Richard Seymour
Jeremy Corbyn is opposed, under any circumstances, to the use of weapons of mass destruction. He is opposed to weapons whose use is inherently genocidal. There is no circumstance under which it is conceivable that the military use of nuclear weapons would be anything short of insane, and Corbyn is opposed to that. He would not push the button. And our political and media class finds this to be outrageous.The pundits are noisy and truculent. But behind their noisy rationalisations, there is this symptomatic aporia. They will not say it. Not a single one of them can or will say under what circumstances they would consider the use of nuclear weapons. Instead, we get mysteriously complacent bluster along the lines that "it would be lovely to live in Corbyn's world of magical elves and fairies, faw faw faw, where no one is ever unkind, faw faw faw, but this is the real world, faw faw faw, what would he do if the Islamic State threatened Britain with a dirty bomb, faw faw faw...".
The Westminster consensus is monstrous. It couldn't be clearer that for its adherents, Britain's role in the world, and all of the immense material gains that businesses and investors derive from this dominance, depends upon the continued implied threat of nuclear genocide - and they're ultimately very comfortable with that.
It is better that we know this than that we don't. We have endured years of histrionics over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The 'Iran deal', about which there is some misplaced triumphalism, followed years of belligerent falsehoods and tub-thumping for war, because someone might break Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region. And the very same state elites and a media claques that would not hesitate to 'push the button', and for whom the idea of not ever doing that is something absurd and drippy, to be scoffed at, are the ones who raised the alarm. It is, as I say, good to know.