The Definition of “genocide“
It is at the intersection of American anxieties and bureaucratic jargon that the most pernicious euphemisms come about. These are the words and phrases that not only allow people to lie to themselves but also allow entire societies to turn a blind eye to horrific travesties of justice. There is no greater tool for shaping human perceptions than language, so when language changes, people’s perceptions of the world change too. A clever enough twist or turn of phrasing can completely reshape a concept or idea.
Jacob Repkin, “Euphemisms are powerful — and dangerous”
One of the problems with getting our news from short clips on TikTok or a headline on the app formerly known as Twitter, is that there is usually a lack of space or time for nuance. Complex issues are boiled down to 15 second sound bites lacking any kind of historical context or differing perspectives. On the other hand, some issues have become grossly overcomplicated, and the language used, rather than providing any kind of nuance, is used as an intelligent sounding smokescreen of obfuscation.
During the first Trump presidency, I used clips of Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway as well as Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post to discuss why some sources which are often seen as being credible and reliable (including some peer-reviewed journals), are not always. With a mainstream news media owned by corporations (and therefore run with a for-profit motivation) on a medium built for entertainment1, and with its successor, social media, we see news that is increasingly sensationalized, polarized, and unserious.
Politicians in our times feed their cliches to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying images, but the succession from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
Language is important. It is how we understand the world, communicate our ideas, and warn each other of danger. It can be used to manipulate us to feel fear, to support an unjust war, or to vilify a people in order to justify imprisoning them in concentration camps. The reason the right continues to malign the humanities and social sciences as having a “woke agenda” and to write these disciplines off as useless is because these are the disciplines which teach us to understand ourselves, one another, and humanity in general; to critically think about the world around us, to critique, and ask questions; to communicate our ideas and understand the perspectives of people not like us; to see through the smokescreen to know when we’re being propagandized and evangelized to. These are the subjects we study in order to learn how to be free.
In this series of posts/lessons I’ll be presenting a word/phrase which is important to understanding our current political context. I’ll provide a definition for the word and links to several articles where the word is used or not used, and then some questions for homework/self-reflection.
Click the arrow for resources that are helpful for evaluating sources.
Read through the definition for “genocide“. After you’re finished reading, click on the links to find articles related to the definition, then answer the questions below.
Genocide
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.
Elements of the crime
- A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
- A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
- 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
Click the arrow to find links to articles related to Gaza (these are only a starting point but will help you to answer the questions below).
History says the genocide in Gaza will be recognised – eventually
Israeli tanks kill 59 people in Gaza crowd trying to get food aid, medics say
What we know about the killing of Palestinians at a food point in Gaza
‘Unimaginable horrors’: more than 50,000 children reportedly killed or injured in the Gaza Strip
How displacement impacts mental health in Gaza
Bedwetting, nightmares and shaking. War in Gaza takes a mental health toll, especially on children
Prevention of births in Gaza: Where lies the future?
Edward Said seems like a prophet: 20 years on, ‘there’s hunger for his narrative’
This synagogue calls itself ‘anti-Zionist.’ Here’s what that means in practice
Click the arrow for a list of questions to answer about the definition of “genocide” and the accompanying readings.
- Is genocide wrong? This is a yes/no question (no equivocating or qualifying)2.
- Do you believe that the sources were credible? Why/not? (Do they seem biased? Is the publication reputable? What are the author’s credentials? Are there experts cited in the body?)
- Do any of the headlines use passive voice? What effect does this have on the perception of the events the article is trying to convey?
- Do the articles seem to be obfuscating or equivocating?
- Is Israel committing a genocide against the Palestinian people, based on the definition above?3 This is a yes/no question (no equivocating or qualifying).
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
- I highly recommend reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death to understand the dangers of this. He says, “I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?“. ↩︎
- The reason I have specified that some questions are yes/no is that too often in discussions about difficult topics we have a tendency to say something like, “well yes, genocide is wrong, but . . .” and then we list all of the reasons why this particular case is different. I would like to posit that this is one of those examples of an issue that has become overcomplicated. Either we believe that genocide is wrong or it’s not; it should not matter who is perpetuating the genocide or whether you “like” the community that they are destroying — you either find it to be an acceptable measure or you don’t. ↩︎
- If you answered yes, in what ways have you spoken out or acted in support of the Palestinian people? ↩︎
The Tower is Falling 
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