"Fools' Crusade" part xv

HUMANITARIAN MISSIONARIES

The penultimate section argues that the left was so depleted intellectually and politically by the 1990s that it no longer had a credible economic alternative to neoliberal capitalism, so leftists settled for softening the edges of the new globalization.

"The adversary was no longer social injustice caused by unchecked economic power, but evil caused by bad people who adopted wrong ideas. The catch was that this approach, applied to foreign countries, can all too easily be used to justify intervention, leading back to imperialism at its most aggressive."

Lots of broad generalization there, but notice how she shifts the arguement from being about actions to 'ideas'. Lord knows there were plenty of 'bad ideas' floating around Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but NATO didn't bomb Belgrade because of a Dobrica Cosic speech.

I'll need to quote at length here:

"The exclusive focus on moral and humanitarian issues, with an emphasis on victims, was fostered by a certain privitization of progressive activism during the last quarter of the twentieth century. As political parties and mass movements declined, single-issue movements grew. These in turn engendered non-governmental organizations (NGOs) taking the form of small (or in some cases large) businesses using advertising to "sell" their good works to donors, whether private or public. The requirements of fund-raising favor consensual causes with immediate emotional appeal. Moreover, while NGOs may benefit from the aura of relative innocence related to being "non-governmental", all of them are by no means strictly "non-governmental". Many depend on contracts from governments. Some ostensible "NGOs" are set up by governments to intervene in the political affairs of other countries."

I felt the need to quote at length because I hope you can see the context in which Johnstone articulates a theme she frequently refers to--call it the 'cult of victimization'. She often speaks (as she does in the Borojevic interview I was reviewing before I acquired a copy of "Fools' Crusade") about what I will paraphrase as a 'cult of the victim,' where the media use emotionally laden images and narratives to shape public demand for governmental action.

After touching on this theme, she moves briskly on to the admittedly provocative point about the privitization of progressive activism. While I suspect she's switched cause for affect here, I don't want to dismiss this particular insight offhand.

The above quotes both display the same bland indifference to concerns of individual justice that permeate Johnstone's work on the former Yugoslavia. What concerns Johnstone is how the situation in Bosnia and Kosovo might have been used, manipulated, exploited, or influenced by the U.S. and its allies. What actually happened in Bosnia and Kosovo is of little concern.