The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

REMEMBERING IN VAIN
human actions and motions can take place, it became the expression of the motion
itself.” 24
For Mr. Vergès, the north/south conflict being the law of history, France in
Algeria and the United States in Vietnam showed their true face as predators,
torturers, antihumanitarians. And if it is true that internal public opinion against
the war carried weight in these two countries, this did not spring from the
contradiction between the values of the West and its crimes—it only means
that the West at that moment revealed its criminal essence to a significant number
of Westerners.
And in the same way that the truth about the West comes down to its
imperialistic violence, so crimes committed by non-western nations do not exist
by virtue of their positive evolutionary role. Armed with this line of argument,
Barbie’s lawyers achieved the marvel of relentlessly demanding the broadening
of crimes against humanity by systematically pushing aside all the recognized
cases of “criminal public service,” and even by reintroducing in the courtroom
the kind of logic that could lead to their emergence.
The extermination of three million Cambodians was not, in fact, the result of
a passing fury or an outburst of bestiality. The youthful cadres of Angkar (this
genocide was carried out by adolescents) had the same gaze as Doctor Panwitz;
with an implacable calm they executed the sentence pronounced by history
against those who carried the mark of Western influence, and they thus pushed
Ideology to its ultimate consequences. It was in the name of the law that they
overcame the moral imperative “Thou shalt not kill.” It was the “science” in
them, and not nature, that smothered the voice of conscience. It was idea that
dominated instinct, and not, as in the pogroms, instinct that unleashed all its
force. As Hannah Arendt has written, “Terror is the realization of the law of
movement; its chief aim is to make it possible for the force of nature or of history
to race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous human
action.” 25
Thus, in this trial, which became for the defense the trial of all genocides,
and in which the deputy director of public prosecution himself descried a
deepening of judicial thought, the Khmer Rouge revolution was scarcely
considered. Analysis of that event, however, could not have failed to bring to
light the true deficiencies of Nuremberg. With its methodical elimination of the
bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia (recognizable by the fact that they wore glasses
and spoke several languages) and of all the enemies of the New Man, the Pol
Pot regime directly inscribed itself in the murderous lineage of the Hitler regime.
Whereas formerly crimes took place “counter to a moral law, which was
simultaneously in effect,” in this case, as in the case of the Nazis, “it was the
crime that was transformed into doctrine and moral law.” 26 But since that crime
was not perpetrated within the framework or advancement of a war, the judgment
at Nuremberg does not allow for its punishment. In fact, after some hesitation,
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