Srebrenica Massacre / Rwandan Genocide / Genocide Denial

Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers
By George Monbiot
The Guardian, June 13, 2011
"[...] [G]enocide denial is just as embarrassing to the left as it is to the libertarian right. Last week Edward Herman, an American professor of finance best known for co-authoring Manufacturing Consent with Noam Chomsky, published a new book called The Srebrenica Massacre. It claims that the 8,000 deaths at Srebrenica are 'an unsupportable exaggeration. The true figure may be closer to 800.' Like Karadzic, the book claims that the market massacres in Sarajevo were carried out by Bosnian Muslim provocateurs. It maintains that the Serb forces' reburial of Bosnian corpses is 'implausible and lack[s] any evidential support' (an astonishing statement in view of the ICMP's findings). It insists that the witnesses to the killings are 'not credible' and suggests that the Bosnian Muslim soldiers retreated from Srebrenica to ensure that more Bosnians were killed, in order to provoke US intervention. These are not the first such claims that Herman has made. Last year, with David Peterson, he published a book called The Politics of Genocide. Mis-citing a tribunal judgment, he maintains that the Serb forces 'incontestably had not killed any but "Bosnian Muslim men of military age."' Worse still, he places the Rwandan genocide in inverted commas throughout the text and maintains that 'the great majority of deaths were Hutu, with some estimates as high as two million,' and that the story of 800,000 'largely Tutsi deaths' caused by genocide 'appears to have no basis in any facts.' It's as straightforward an instance of revisionism as I've ever seen, comparable in this case only to the claims of the genocidaires themselves.
But here's where it gets really weird. The cover carries the following endorsement by John Pilger. 'In this brilliant exposé of great power's lethal industry of lies, Edward Herman and David Peterson defend the right of us all to a truthful historical memory.' The foreword was written by Noam Chomsky. He doesn't mention the specific claims the book makes, but the fact that he wrote it surely looks like an endorsement of the contents. The leftwing website Media Lens maintained that Herman and Peterson were 'perfectly entitled' to talk down the numbers killed at Srebrenica. What makes this all the more remarkable is that Media Lens has waged a long and fierce campaign against Iraq Body Count for underestimating the number killed in that country. Why is this happening? Both the LM network and Herman's supporters oppose western intervention in the affairs of other nations. Herman rightly maintains that far more attention is paid to atrocities committed by US enemies than to those committed by the US and its allies. But both groups then take the unwarranted step of belittling the acts of genocide committed by opponents of the western powers. The rest of us should stand up for the victims, whoever they are, and confront those trying to make them disappear."
[n.b. The first mainstream treatment of Herman & Peterson's genocide denial that I have seen. A reminder that I have published a detailed critique of their denialist fabrications.]