Why Genocide? (Genocide and Circumcision)

Circumcision is a push towards genocide.

Sigmund Freud, 1923 (Courtesy: Sigmund Freud Museum)

(PARIS) - Reporting the strong correlation between circumcision and genocide allows one to answer the question of the title.

Indeed, of the thirteen genocides of modern times: Congolese (1870), Hereros (1904), Armenians (1905), Jews (1942-45), Tziganes (1942-45), Biafrans (1966-68), Hutus (1972), Kurds (1988), Tutsis (1990), Bosnians (1991-95), Bengalis (1990-2000), inhabitants of Darfur (2003), Rohinghyas (2012), twelve involved circumcised peoples on at least one side and three on both sides.

Six genocides have been perpetrated by "un"-circumcised (intacts) upon circumcised and six by circumcised, three of which were against intacts and three upon other circumcised. Only the Tziganes event was been perpetrated between intacts. Then, the Tzigane exception is not quite an exception since a minority of Tziganes are circumcised. We are forced to report the great narrowness of the link between circumcision and genocide.

Among human sciences, psychiatry will speak of collective madness without explaining anything but psychoanalysis can enlighten us. Indeed, Freud stated a theory of the racism generated by circumcision, a theory which, pushing it up at its end, enables to understand the madness of genocide:

"The hypothesis that a root of those hatreds of the Jews which occur in such primary ways and lead to such irrational behaviour among the nations of the West, must be sought here too, seems inescapable to me. Circumcision is unconsciously equated with castration."^[1]

This conclusion can be pushed further because the unconscious, according to Freud, likens the part to the whole. Therefore, a threat of castration is also a threat of death. Now, exerted on a whole ethnic group, an individual threat of death becomes, through addition, a threat of extermination of the whole group, immediately projected upon the adverse group by the unconscious. So, circumcision is a push towards genocide.

^[1] Freud S. Moses and monotheism. 1936. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1964. S.E., XXIII, p. 91.

Sigismond (Michel Hervé Navoiseau-Bertaux)

Michel Hervé Navoiseau-Bertaux (Sigismond) is the author of "Sexual mutilation: excision, circumcision, the victims' point of view", for free at circabolition.multiply.com; he is an Independent psychoanalysis researcher (Chercheur indépendant en psychanalyse) based in Paris, France, who works with Salem-News.com to help raise awareness of the massive societal problems connected to the blindly accepted, mutilating practice of circumcision. He says, "Non violence is as fundamental as violence, love and hatred, justice and injustice. But power is at the tip of the tongue and the sweet violence of speech, if one takes hold of it, can silence weapons."

(La non violence est aussi fondamentale que la violence, l'amour et la haine, le juste et l'injuste. Mais le pouvoir est au bout de la langue et la douce violence de la parole, si l'on s'en empare, peut faire taire les armes.)