Category Archives: violence of language

A Muslim Militia in the East of Sri Lanka Sponsored by the State

Rajan Hoole, being Chapter 3 of his book “Sri Lanka”s Easter Tragedy: When the Deep State Gets Out of Its Depth”

  1. A State-sponsored Muslim Militia in the East

Mohamed Zahran Cassim, whose fate made headlines in Wahabi terror, was born in Kattankudy in 1986. In understanding his rise and death in a suicide blast of Easter, 21st April 2019, it is useful to keep in mind Velupillai Prabhakaran and how his terror machine subdued an entire people. Zahran’s zeal and ire were initially directed towards subduing the Sufi population of Kattankudy. We shall see that the patronage and protection afforded to him by a section of the Sri Lankan security establishment, changed course because of unexpected mishaps after he led an attack on Sufis on 10th March 2017. Despite efforts by his handlers, an independent magistrate issued an arrest warrant for him, making him a wanted person. Forced to leave Kattankudy, he was manoeuvred, as circumstances suggest, into becoming an instrument of suicide terror.

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The Work of Anthropologists from Sri Lanka: Reviewing the World Scenario in 1987

Presenting an academic article published in Contributions to  Indian Sociology , n.s, Vol 21, 1-25 also reproduced subsequently in Sri Lanka in 1989 as No, 10 within the SSC Pamphlet Series marshalled by the late Ana Chittambalam, Willa Wickremasinghe , Hari hulugalle and Michael Roberts

Elizabeth Nissan: “The work of Sri Lankan anthropologists: A bibliographic survey”

 Introduction: Although many of the studies included in this essay are concerned with Sri Lanka, this is not a bibliographic essay on the anthropology of that country. It is, instead, a survey of the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists, wherever they may have carried out their research.

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A Lifetime Addressing Nationalist Political Currents & Zealotry

Michael Roberts

As I attend a friend’s funeral every now and then in Adelaide or receive mail conveying sad tidings re good friends and other acquaintances, I am reminded that I will disappear into the dust in due course relatively soon. So be it.

However there has been a lifetime of endeavour in various fields. One range of activity has been in the academic realm investigating socio-political events and processes in the world …. with particular attention directed towards my home-country Sri Lanka’s affairs.

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Totalitarianism Defined …. With Hitler as the Epitome of the Phenomenon

Richard Koenigsberg and the LSS, aka Library of Social Science, located in New York

Totalitarianism: the psychopathology is the identification, refusal or inability to conceive of a self in separation from society; of a self that does not exist in a symbiotic tie to the nation. “Symbiosis” is not an “infantile phase of development,” rather It’s the ground of our being the fantasy we are connected to something “out there” (and cell phones represent the apotheosis of merger of self with society).

HITLER 22

 

 

GERMANY – MAY: Adolf Hitler, winner of the Prussian and Bavarian elections, giving a speech, in May 1928, in Germany…Photo by Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images.

Listen to Hitler: “Our Nation is not just an idea in which you have no part; you yourself support the nation; to it you belong; you cannot separate yourself from it; your life is bound up with the life of your whole people; the nation is not merely the root of your strength, it is the root of your very life.”

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SSC: The Studies in Society & Culture Project, 1992 et seq

SSC PAMPHLET PROJECT

Some of you may remember this project in Sri Lanka in the 1990s directed towards making selected academic articles on the history & politics of Sri Lanka available to the English-reading public at affordable rates. My unreliable memory indicates that the personnel behind this enterprise were myself, Ananda Chittampalam, Willa Wickramasinghe and our engine, so to speak, was the press operated by Haris Hulugalla.

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The Goals of the Axis Powers during World War Two

Kumar Kirinde & his Studious Aides in the RAFOA

Dear RAFOA member,

I am sure as a military officer, you are knowledgeable or have been exposed to the subject of WWII under military studies, especially if a staff college graduate. But our country being a British colony during the war and then a member of the Commonwealth after independence generally knows about this war from the perspective of the victorious Allies. Therefore if time permits I feel that it will be interesting to take a look at this war from the Axis perspective i.e. from the perspective of the people who started the war.

Accordingly attached is the first part of a brief on the German attack on Poland in September 1939, the beginning of Hiltler’s quest to make his country great and then convert it into an empire.

 

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Trump Following Hitler’s Playbook

Howard Bloom, Richard Koenigsberg & Chad Dougatz, at …. https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/audio/HBloom_Universe_022_Trump_as_Hitler

Just before the 2016 election, Richard Koenigsberg, Howard Bloom and Chad Dougatz presented this prophetic broadcast, which predicted everything occurring today.

Journalists, innocent Americans, having never experienced a phenomenon like Trump, could hardly have imagined what they were about to encounter.

 

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Reviewing Chatterjee’s Book on Anti-Muslim Riots in Gujarat in 2002

Nishkula Suntharalingam, presenting a book review in Asian Affairs 2023  …..  https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raaf20 …. of the book by Moyukh Chatterjee. Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities. Duke University Press, Durham, 2023. pp. 166. Notes. Bibliog. Index. Ackmts. Hb. $94.95. ISBN 9781478017028. Sb. ………….$24.95. ISBN 9781478019664

Moyukh Chatterjee was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the 2002 riots in the west Indian state of Gujarat; three days of communal violence during which Hindu mobs attacked Muslims, their businesses and homes, leaving over a thousand people dead. This book focuses on how and why, in multi-ethnic, democratic states like India, targeted violence and anti-minority politics persist. In doing so, the author suggests an alternate approach to understanding violence against minorities while raising disquieting questions about the formation of modern states and the ways that ideas of “minorities” and “majorities” are produced and reproduced.

401733 08: Indian state police patrol the streets of Ahmadabad, India after rioting between Muslims and Hindus March 1, 2002 in Ahmadabad, India, two days after a Muslim mob attacked a train, killing 58 people in the Indian state of Gujarat. Indian troops arrived in the riot-torn western state of Gujarat but were unable to quell the Hindu-Muslim violence that has claimed the lives of 251 people. (Photo by Ami Vitale/Getty Images)

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Empowering the Body and ‘Noble Death’

Michael Roberts and Arthur Saniotis, reproducing the editorial introduction to a collection of essays devoted to the topic identified in the title pesented  within Social Analysis, Volume 50, Issue 1, Spring 2006, 7–24 © Berghahn Journals  ... with highlighting emphasis imposed in this version by Michael Roberts

Facing death with equanimity and with a honed, trained body is an expression of sheer power.[1] When a group of like-minded individuals confronts an opposi- tional force with equal mental and bodily capacities, whether on a sports field or in a warring conflict, the result is power compounded. Each article in this special section ‘confronts’ such powers. Together they explore several regionally specific projects in Asia in which dying for a cause is seen as a virtue.

There are several parts of Asia where social practices and cultural traditions have consciously nourished bodily empowerment. In these select yet dynamic traditions, mind and body are conceived as a unity. Attentiveness to cosmic powers is an integral aspect of disciplined ascetic practices that seek to har- ness bodily energy in maximal ways. These practices confront death. They are directed toward transcending the fear of death—and death itself. When they are inserted into a moment of violent conflict involving interpersonal combat, they encourage a steely, terrifying fearlessness as well as deadly striking power.

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Hitler’s Embodiment of Nazism and Its Ideology of Nationalism

Richard Koenigsberg of the Library of Social Science: …. presenting a Synopsis of “Nationalism, Nazism and Genocide”

Contents

  1. The Hypothesis
  2. Nazism and the Ideology of Nationalism
  3. Hitler’s Ideology
  4. Nazi Ideology
  5. The Dream of Nazism as the Dream of Nationalism
  6. Conclusion
  7. The Hypothesis

The Nazi movement grew out of an ideology embraced and shared by millions of people. The actions of the Nazis grew out of their ideology: they enacted propositions or theorems contained within it. Here, I delineate the structure of Nazi ideology: a coherent fantasy that shaped the ideology and was the source of the energy invested in it.

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