Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
One of the key achievements of our Congress was precisely to single out in debates and resolutions the central threat to the unity and programme of our Alliance. In particular, our Congress singled out what we called “Kebble-ism” – namely, a dangerous axis between unscrupulous business people (black and white) on the one hand, and a bullying, chauvinistic populist tendency in parts of our movement on the other. Behind the headline stories of high-life parties and the flaunting of ill-gained wealth, lies the sordid reality of manipulative sponsorships, wheeling and dealing, organisational factionalism, arm-twisting and the general subversion of our democratic order. – South African Communist Party Statement issued after the first meeting of its Political Bureau for 2010.
