Media Afraid to Call Ethnic Cleansing by Its Name
-
maybe read the actual convention on genocide instead of relying on a dictionary then?
because the case of abducted children stated above is explicitly stated in the convention...the dictionary definition you found is simply wrong and incomplete.
-
The definition isn't wrong, they just didn't read it correctly. Those things in the UN convention are methods that could be used to "cause the destruction of a people". They're spelled out to avoid people misinterpreting the definition just like they did.
-
yes, true, but not exactly why i used the phrasing "wrong AND incomplete":
i wrote it that way, because without clarifying that "destruction" means many different things apart form the common interpretation of "to kill", it's difficult for a casual reader to know what the convention actually says.
if anyone wants to shorten the definition to fit into a dictionary, they should be more responsible in their phrasing, so that this exact problem is less likely to occur.
so i do fault merriam webster here for providing an incomplete, oversimplified definition.
-
Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass-murder are just words.
And language is extremely important to how we think and form our understanding of the world.
-
There's no such thing as just words.
Language is humanity's superpower. It's what allows us to share ideas, pass down knowledge generationaly, specialize labor, and form communities.
Words have meaning, and intentionally avoiding words that accurately describe events is incredibly harmful. There's a reason that when a school is bombed, they call a bunch of the 13-17yo victims "military-aged males" instead of "children."
-
Words are important because 80% of the population is unable to assert reality and will accept whatever wording is provided to them. Even when provided with evidence in 4K.
-
Pretty much. The Nazis thought of their thing that way, and as Wikipedia points out even used similar language, but fascists don't need more than a paper thin justification for why it's totally different this time to keep their rhetoric going. It's not based on logic, after all, and anyone making the obvious historical comparisons can just be cast as more victimisation of them for their "honesty".
We all are pretty comfortable calling Bosnia a genocide now, though, so they've moved on to new euphemisms like "remigration".
-
Nobody is saying the dictionary is wrong, they're saying that there are international groups that have specific definitions for what qualifies as genocide and those don't necessarily line up with the dictionary. Saying the dictionary is wrong because of the organizations' use or the organizations are wrong because of the dictionary's use are both foolish.
-
It can also mean displacement while genocide means the destruction, in whole or part, of a people. Things like the trail of tears are both: People were displaced, also, the US cared so little about native's lives that a quarter of the displaced straight-out died, which constitutes genocide. But it's in principle possible, and has occasionally happened, that the displacement doesn't go hand-in-hand with murder.
-
I'd argue that the convention on genocide serves as a dictionary in this case. It's the most common and accepted definition, and it includes cultural forms of genocide, not just physical ones.
-
Neither is wrong, they just serve different purposes. Dictionaries track usage of the general populace, not industry experts. It's wrong to use the dictionary as evidence that the convention on genocide is using the term incorrectly though, definitely.
-
America did it to my people and never called it what it was and never made amends, and now Americans moralize to me about events across the planet lol
-
Yeah, because when you do the Israel lobby crawls out and calls them a Jew hating Nazi.
