I just discovered that Radical Reviewer believes the western account of the 1932 Ukranian famine, and I could not be more disappointed.
I just discovered that Radical Reviewer believes the western account of the 1932 Ukranian famine, and I could not be more disappointed.
Using a false definition of genocide is genocide denial. I don't know what else to say.
There are fascists who think there's an ongoing "white genocide." Their definition denies the reality of genocide. It is a form of genocide denial.
The same is true for people trying to claim the killing of political dissidents is genocide. It is not.
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Insofar as you are denying the agreed upon definition of genocide, yes.
Genocide denial needs to be called on the Left. That's what this entire thread is about.
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Neither of these are genocide.
Was the systematic killing of American soldiers in the Vietnam War a genocide? What about the systematic killing of Nazi & Japanese soldiers in WWII?
I'm not saying you are making the same argument. I'm saying you are both engaging in genocide denial. You are taking a "bad faith" interpretation of my words.
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There is no moral equivalence here. I've made no moral statement.
White supremacist genocide denial ("white genocide") is used to further genocide against black people in the US.
Your genocide denial is used to accuse the USSR of committing a genocide.
The former is a much more pressing and dangerous use of genocide denial.
However, we can still recognize that you are engaging in genocide denial, even if genocide denial is weaponized in more dangerous ways.
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Okay, let's fix that.
Genocide studies is a serious historical and scientific endeavor. There is an agreed upon definition of genocide, which outlines the process, including its method and characteristics.
Genocide denial is the denial of the process of genocide. This manifests in two ways:
This is a very important to understand. The US has used both methods of genocide denial to carry out genocide. The accusation of a Kuwati genocide by Iraqis led to the US genocide against Iraqis, for example.
Killing political dissidents is not genocide. Calling it genocide is genocide denial. That is where I'm coming from.
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That's a fair way to put it. Here's an example which involves my political tendency:
The US mass killing of communists is not a genocide. The US mass killing of black communists has been a part of the genocide the US is carrying out against black people.
Mischaracterizing genocides is a very very touchy subject to me, both for personal reasons & the shit the US has done under the guise of "preventing genocide." I do consider it genocide denial. I don't mean to call you a bad person.
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You are not denying a specific genocide. You were denying genocide as an agreed upon process, which is a form of genocide denial.
This form of genocide denial is incredibly common in genocidal cultures, which we both live in. We have all been guilty of this form of genocide denial.
It is often used to further genuinely genocidal aims, so I think we need to be more willing to name it and combat it.
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No. Genocide is a historical process by which one faction of a population exterminates another. It is a specific social phenomenon which has objective characteristics that are necessary to function [1]
Also, genocide produces an imperative for other countries to intervene. As a result, warping the definition of genocide is a tool that imperialist nations use for invasion. In most cases, when the definition of genocide is warped in imperialist society, it is used to further imperialism and actual genocide.
There are obvious exceptions, e.g. the US denial of the early Holocaust. However, if the scientific method for identifying a genocide was used in the US given the evidence at the time, then one would correctly identified it as a genocide. The problem was that the US capital was heavily invested in Nazi Germany.
A strict adherence to the scientific method for identifying a genocide is the only way to prevent genocide denialism.
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The mass killing of Indonesian communists is often characterized as genocide, and that was carried out targeting political ideology above all else.
When people use the term "genocide" they generally mean "mass, systematic extermination of an identifiable group." I don't see a good argument for limiting that to racial groups, especially when you start digging into how race is socially constructed in a manner similar to political identity. And I don't think this sort of good-faith disagreement over the definition of genocide can be appropriately called "genocide denial," because that's a term loaded with moral condemnation.
Have you read the research into the Indonesian genocide? I'll need to find it. It does a good job highlighting how the political suppression of communists developed into a genocide. I don't mean to say that political killings cannot be a component of genocide. My comment here is meant to demonstrate thst.
When there's a scientific definition for genocide with observable characteristics, it's important to call out accusations of genocide which are not genocide. False accusations of genocide need to be seriously condemned, since they are often used to justify genocide.
"The Jakarta Method" is on my reading list, so I haven't done anything close to a deep dive. Good sources are always welcome.
I'm 100% with you on the dangers of playing fast and loose with the definition of "genocide." I don't think that can be quite extended to this argument, though:
The way I see it, the most authoritative definition of "genocide" is a legal definition, analogous to the legal definition of "murder." There's at least some level of popular input into this definition, formally applying it requires significant fact finding and extensive debate over whether the facts fit the stated criteria, and there are (in theory) consequences if the definition is applied. Still, this isn't a scientific definition -- I'm not aware of any legal scholars who'd make that argument, just as I'm not aware of any legal scholars who'd argue that "murder" is a scientific definition. And because it's a legal definition instead of a scientific one, it can't be treated as some immutable truth, because legal definitions can and do change.
The next most authoritative definition of "genocide" can be found in academia, and although this would fall under the realm of social sciences, I don't think it's very common for academics to argue that their work is so conclusive and unchangeable that it should carry the weight of scientific certainty. The academic consensus around how events are best classified can and does change, too. Even in "hard" sciences you see definitions change over time.
I don't think it makes sense to imply that what constitutes a genocide is clear and forever-unchangeable, because all of the above schools at some point deal with definitions with some wiggle room, and at some point amend or revise their definitions. This is especially true of legal definitions, where the idea that genocide has fixed criteria is most entrenched. So I don't see how it makes sense to call someone asking "isn't this mass killing deserving of the label 'genocide'"? a genocide denialist, at least as long as they're asking that in good faith (and I see no indication otherwise here). That's analogous to calling someone a "murder denialist" over a question like "isn't walking away from a drowning person when you could have easily thrown them a life jacket deserving of the label 'murder'"?
You are saying that though. "One group of people sytematically eliminating another" is the entire idea of warfare, and why we have other words for it. To define that as genocide is to remove all meaning from the word.
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Genocide is when one ethnic or national group sets out to exterminate another ethnic or national group, for ethnic or national reasons. You are describing a massacre of political dissidents, but not a genocide.
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