Since the word genocide is used to describe pretty much every conflict now, the word has lost all meaning now. When people hear the word genocide, how can they know if it’s actual genocide or a “genocide”?
When you accuse everyone of genocide constantly, the perpetrators of actual genocide can get away with it.
War is a horrible thing, it should be enough to use the word war when expressing anger over a conflict. But propagandists have weaponized the word genocide thinking that will add a sense of urgency and trigger action. Or maybe create more violence. Of course those that enjoy repeating propaganda love the opportunity to be holier than thou because only they are against genocide, everyone else is a genocide denier, genocide enabler, etc.
But we can see when an actual genocide occurs, there is no urgency since the power the word genocide used to have is gone now. The real genocide enablers are those that weaponized the word genocide for the sake of their propaganda. All of social media is constantly flooded with the word with outrage over “genocide”, so there’s isn’t any space left on our screens left for when an actual genocide happens.
The problem isn’t that genocide is thrown around everywhere. The problem is that it happens everywhere. They’re all real actual genocides. They are all terrible.
But normal people have never cared about it as long as it doesn’t happen in their proximity. If even then… as long as it doesn’t happen to them.
After WW2 the UN was formed and they swore they would make sure genocide never happened again. And then they just stood by and watched as Rwanda happened. They literally stood on the ground, inside Rwanda. And didn’t do anything.
The UN defined genocide back in 1946 and was codified in 1948. It’s very clearly laid out.
#Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
I had this discussion on here the other day. Think about the UN in 1948, and who was responsible then. We had Stalin still in power and if you take a closer look at this genocide definition, you will notice that it’s carefully crafted to exclude all the Soviet crimes. Killing “political groups” or “kulaks” or “counterrevolutionaries” is excluded.
And then we have people here on Lemmy going around and telling other people that Lenin and Stalin didn’t commit a genocide because Stalin has meddled with the definition.
Wars involve more discriminate killing and usually combatants doing killing. there’s usually military leadership and objectives. There’s a special word for when an unorganized group of people starts killing another unorganized group of people for using a different dialect. I think for me it’s a genocide when it’s the civilian population doing most of the killing. Versus a civil war where civilians are fighting a military apparatus with leadership. fine line between a civil war and a genocide, much more defined line between a real war and genocide.
Your definition excludes a lot of genocides, including the Holocaust, unless the SS are to be considered an unorganized group of civilians. Bosnia, Armania, Cambodia, most except Rwanda.
Of course, that would exclude Gaza as well.
I’d say who is targeted and for what purpose is more important. Targeting military installation vs purely civilian targets like refugee camps for instance.
so as far as holocaust goes, before there was infrastructure in place, the public had been riled up by the government and was happily handing people over and attacking the out groups. We can’t just examine the holocaust as its end product (which was still operated partially by civilians and captives under SS leadership). There were was plenty of indiscriminate violence leading up to the systematic destruction. The germans just added layers of bureaucracy to their genocide, but it start with a good old fashioned witch hunt and evolved into something similar.
Idk but my understanding of Bosnia/Armina was it was almost exactly that, civilians attacking civilians with the aid of the military. To me those people come from the same damn mountain but to them they were inferior ethnic groups. Any time you start ethnic cleansing someone who looks just like you I’d say we’re happily at genocide. Cambodia was more of a civil war id say because there was an internal power that conquered. Pol Pot was a weird dude, he kinda stands out in his own league with hitler.
idk id debate semantics all day, its all unnecessary death and hopefully we can all agree on that.
it may be defined but applying all the elements to real situations is not at all trivial and I don’t think most people are painstakingly going through all the elements of the legal definition when they decide to use the word.
Since the word genocide is used to describe pretty much every conflict now, the word has lost all meaning now. When people hear the word genocide, how can they know if it’s actual genocide or a “genocide”?
When you accuse everyone of genocide constantly, the perpetrators of actual genocide can get away with it.
War is a horrible thing, it should be enough to use the word war when expressing anger over a conflict. But propagandists have weaponized the word genocide thinking that will add a sense of urgency and trigger action. Or maybe create more violence. Of course those that enjoy repeating propaganda love the opportunity to be holier than thou because only they are against genocide, everyone else is a genocide denier, genocide enabler, etc.
But we can see when an actual genocide occurs, there is no urgency since the power the word genocide used to have is gone now. The real genocide enablers are those that weaponized the word genocide for the sake of their propaganda. All of social media is constantly flooded with the word with outrage over “genocide”, so there’s isn’t any space left on our screens left for when an actual genocide happens.
The problem isn’t that genocide is thrown around everywhere. The problem is that it happens everywhere. They’re all real actual genocides. They are all terrible.
But normal people have never cared about it as long as it doesn’t happen in their proximity. If even then… as long as it doesn’t happen to them.
After WW2 the UN was formed and they swore they would make sure genocide never happened again. And then they just stood by and watched as Rwanda happened. They literally stood on the ground, inside Rwanda. And didn’t do anything.
The UN defined genocide back in 1946 and was codified in 1948. It’s very clearly laid out.
#Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
I had this discussion on here the other day. Think about the UN in 1948, and who was responsible then. We had Stalin still in power and if you take a closer look at this genocide definition, you will notice that it’s carefully crafted to exclude all the Soviet crimes. Killing “political groups” or “kulaks” or “counterrevolutionaries” is excluded.
And then we have people here on Lemmy going around and telling other people that Lenin and Stalin didn’t commit a genocide because Stalin has meddled with the definition.
This definition means every war is genocide; 1, 2, and 3 are all a given in any war
So, anyone can use the term accurately when describing war (according to UN)
Wars involve more discriminate killing and usually combatants doing killing. there’s usually military leadership and objectives. There’s a special word for when an unorganized group of people starts killing another unorganized group of people for using a different dialect. I think for me it’s a genocide when it’s the civilian population doing most of the killing. Versus a civil war where civilians are fighting a military apparatus with leadership. fine line between a civil war and a genocide, much more defined line between a real war and genocide.
Your definition excludes a lot of genocides, including the Holocaust, unless the SS are to be considered an unorganized group of civilians. Bosnia, Armania, Cambodia, most except Rwanda.
Of course, that would exclude Gaza as well.
I’d say who is targeted and for what purpose is more important. Targeting military installation vs purely civilian targets like refugee camps for instance.
so as far as holocaust goes, before there was infrastructure in place, the public had been riled up by the government and was happily handing people over and attacking the out groups. We can’t just examine the holocaust as its end product (which was still operated partially by civilians and captives under SS leadership). There were was plenty of indiscriminate violence leading up to the systematic destruction. The germans just added layers of bureaucracy to their genocide, but it start with a good old fashioned witch hunt and evolved into something similar.
Idk but my understanding of Bosnia/Armina was it was almost exactly that, civilians attacking civilians with the aid of the military. To me those people come from the same damn mountain but to them they were inferior ethnic groups. Any time you start ethnic cleansing someone who looks just like you I’d say we’re happily at genocide. Cambodia was more of a civil war id say because there was an internal power that conquered. Pol Pot was a weird dude, he kinda stands out in his own league with hitler.
idk id debate semantics all day, its all unnecessary death and hopefully we can all agree on that.
it may be defined but applying all the elements to real situations is not at all trivial and I don’t think most people are painstakingly going through all the elements of the legal definition when they decide to use the word.
Can you give examples of things that were called genocide but actually weren’t and just watered the word down?
He is talking about Gaza. Spacecowboy has colorful views that were probably instilled into him at a young age.
You could never know since there isn’t an agreed upon or clear definition of genocide.