I've made a comment on this piece at my blog - http://larvatusprodeo.redrag.net/2005/04/11/moses-v-windschuttle/ - which is where Negri's response to Windschuttle was first published.

More commentary on Negri & Windschuttle can be found here:

http://larvatusprodeo.redrag.net/index.php?s=negri

Moses says in the above piece: "It is obvious that my chapter disapproves of 'wild analogies with Nazi genocide' in general". This is not an honest account of the content of his book's chapter, where Moses writes:
"I am not suggesting that the entirety of Australian history can be reduced to genocide. (No one suggests that studying the Holocaust reduces German history to Nazi genocide.) But neither is it possible to regard the country's genocidal moments in the manner of an industrial accident. They are not contingencies, attributable to misguided or wicked men, but intrinsic to the deep structure of settler society."
This is not so much a wild analogy with Nazism as a sleazy one. Denying it in this forum is even sleazier.

Keith Windschuttle never misses an opportunity to revert to type. In his posting here, he exemplifies, in a beautiful way, the problem I noted about the approach that he and his ilk take to avoid real debate:
"Equally typical in these skirmishes is the history warriors’ avoidance of the actual arguments that historians make. Instead, they fall upon a minor point or footnote they think is vulnerable and rush into print to claim the scalp of a historian, or they ignore the main point altogether. For instance, Windschuttle ends his reply to me by simultaneously raising and avoiding the central issue in my book: “Moses argues the more outlandish claim that genocide was intrinsic to the deep structure of settler society.” Nowhere does he explain the nature of my claim or why it is outlandish although surely that is what readers want to hear from him. It’s easier to try to create a scandal by saying I support Churchill. Frankly, this is risible."

While I think it may be argued that 'genocide' is a term whose meaning has been stretched in its application to mainland Aboriginal dispossesssion, this is not so with reference to Tasmania. I think that Moses' thesis about the structural underliers to Tasmanian settlers' genocidal behaviour is sound, and I find arguments linking colonial genocidal behaviour, eugenics and the Holocaust interesting.

On the other hand, no-one would suggest that Windschuttle is a 'genocide-denier' in the way that, say, David Irving is a Holocaust-denier, would they? That would indeed be a "sleazy" analogy with Nazism.

Great article, Dirk.

Leaving aside Windschuttle for just a moment, it is easy to understand why Churchill's poisonous rant caused such a outcry in the beginning. It makes me ill when men crap on and on about how awful each other's version of hegemony is, native or non-native. What a load of rubbish, in his tiny and unfriendly world there are no innocents nor beneficiaries only western automata who have never done anything good for anyone. How lucky for him and us that he can tap out his sad cant and have it reproduced on the very Internet that, amongst other examples of western technological progress, offers so much educational promise to women across the world and might one day even rescue them from the idealogical brain death imposed on them so frequently by people like him.

I wonder how the historians in the distant future will view our society and us? Perhaps our moral superiors of the future will condemn us all for allowing tyrants to steal from and murder their people whilst we sit around doing nothing about it? Who knows? It doesn’t really matter because none of us will be around to defend ourselves.

I think Keith Windschuttle is wrong when he says that Dirk Moses’ analogy of Australian “genocide” with Nazism was not wild. Have a read of what Dirk says,

"I am not suggesting that the entirety of Australian history can be reduced to genocide. (No one suggests that studying the Holocaust reduces German history to Nazi genocide.)”

If that is not a wild analogy, it is at least a direct one. He then goes further and infers that Nazi genocide can at least be attributed to a small number of “misguided or wicked men”, but describes Australian “genocide” as an intrinsic part of an entire society. What does that mean Dirk? Do you really think that our pioneers were worse than the Nazis? German people aren't judged today on the Holocaust, why do I get the feeling that modern Australia is being judged by these revisionists?

It’s a disgraceful reflection on the state of the study of history in this country when the only way for an historian to gain acceptance from his peers and secure tenure is to jump on the “black armband” bandwagon (to borrow a term from Mr Blainey). The treatment dished out to Keith Windschuttle is proof of what happens when you don’t toe the line. How many school kids have heard of Ludwig Leichhardt, Edmund Kennedy or Thomas Mitchell? I bet they all know what “genocide” means.