Anonymous #1 6d

Almost like the issue is with giving autocrats too much unchecked power as opposed to whatever religion someone follows

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Anonymous #2 6d

For the sake of morality, what does it matter? Are human rights only dependent on the race/religion of the victims? For the sake of understanding history, Jewish people, Roma people (gypsies), Slavic peoples, LGBTQ people, etc

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Anonymous OP 6d

Uh huh, all those people equally, or one more than the others?

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Anonymous #2 6d

I answered your question, you answer mine first

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Anonymous OP 6d

If I’m reading it right, your question is essentially why is it less evil to kill a lot of people than it is to kill a lot of people and also specifically go out of your way to kill a group of people that you’ve spent hundreds of years oppressing and committing genocide against, scapegoated as the singular cause of your loss of a war that you largely inserted yourself into to pursue a colonialist agenda, spent massive amounts of time and focus on the isolation and extermination of this group at

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Anonymous #2 6d

the expense of not only your less focused genocide of other people, but also directly at the expense of your war effort against… *checks notes* … the world, to such a degree that even when it became clear that you were losing the war you actually accelerate your efforts to exterminate these people? Idk man can you maybe just throw a dart and hit a reason why it matters?

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Anonymous #2 6d

holy run on sentence, I’m ngl I’m having a very difficult time deciphering your response. I’m not asking the difference between mass murder and genocide. I’m asking what makes one genocide worse than another. Why was the persecution of the Jews worse than the persecution of the Roma? There were more Jewish victims yeah, because there were more Jews than Roma. But the world mostly forgets their victimization, and why?

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Anonymous OP 6d

Do you think all genocides are equal, or is it possible for one to be worse than another?

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Anonymous #2 6d

Like there were so many genocides in the past few hundred years, and yet people want to be like “yeah well that genocide wasn’t/isn’t as bad as THIS one was!!” (Without disclosing the reason why that one was worse). I don’t think that’s ok. Our sympathies shouldn’t be dependent on the number of victims or their identity. Our sympathies should be with the persecuted. Period.

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Anonymous #2 6d

You can have a worse genocide than another while acknowledging genocide is bad in its entirety yeah…

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Anonymous OP 6d

Then if you could think of one genocide that’s “the worst” which one would that be, and what makes it worse than the others?

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Anonymous #2 6d

I don’t think any are morally worse or better than another, no. I acknowledge number of victims (per capita or total) is a way to rank them, but that way is kind of taking the humanity out of the victims and defining them as statistics. The Jews weren’t statistics in the holocaust. They were people. So were the Roma. So were the Armenians. So are the Palestinians. Etc, etc.

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Anonymous OP 6d

So all genocides are equally bad to you, death count is slightly dehumanizing to the victims (I actually agree with this point), ok. Where do you draw the line between different genocides against the same people? Do you think one can end and resume, or would you call it an ongoing genocide?

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Anonymous #2 6d

I mean that probably depends on a lot of factors. I’d lean towards continual, but it’d depend on 1) time between persecution events 2) the group in power doing the persecuting maintaining continual hateful rhetoric towards the persecuted, even between physical events 3) the spread of the genocide (I’ll elaborate on specifics in a reply)

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Anonymous OP 6d

1) if there are multiple generations between persecution events, i think it’d be fair to consider the first set and second set two different genocides 2) if the group in power has a transition where they encourage acceptance of the persecuted group, it shows that there is a transition in feelings towards that group. probably a difference in motivations between the first and second genocides

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Anonymous OP 6d

3) if the a specific group is persecuted by multiple different power structures (such as Jewish people in African and Arab nations in the early Muslim conquests), I’d consider them different genocides. Now those under ottoman rule, when the ottomans had control over Anatolia, the levant, and Africa, I’d consider the same since they can all trace back to a single group in power

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Anonymous OP 6d

Ok, I’ll just use a hypothetical so we don’t have to deal with the messiness of real world examples, because I’m actually curious about your take on this. Let’s say that humans colonize space and encounter an alien civilization less technologically advanced than our own. Like Avatar, you know. Imagine that these humans, God forbid, kidnap a few of the alien children, raise and educate them, teach them to speak English so that they can be diplomats for us. No one dies on either side.

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Anonymous #2 6d

My question for you is: is the genocide I described above as bad, worse, or better than the Holocaust?

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Anonymous #2 6d

Without any civilian deaths and no lethal action taken specifically against that group for the purpose of “removing an obstacle”, I’d have trouble defining your hypothetical as a genocide at all. Not that the kidnapping is good, but I wouldn’t say it’s genocide

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Anonymous OP 6d

I actually agree with you, but probably not for the same reason. Attached is the definition of genocide (it’s an AI summary but just trust it’s the same one the UN uses). There are two key points here. 1) The defining characteristic of genocide is a specific intent to destroy an ethnic group.

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Anonymous #2 6d

2) If that specific intent to destroy a group exists, then any one of the acts below that intent line (killing, transferring children, etc.) is enough to meet the criteria, it does not require all five or any specific one. So in my example, if the humans kidnapped the aliens with the intent of eliminating their culture and humanizing them, then it would be genocide, but with the motives I gave the exact same action is not.

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Anonymous #2 6d

So, same question again. If the intent was different and the same actions were taken, is that genocide, and if so is it better, worse, or the same as the Holocaust?

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Anonymous #2 6d

I mean when we’re talking legal wording I think we have to be willing to accept there is some leniency between what is specifically defined and what is commonly accepted. I think the specific intent part is a very clear indicator, probably the clearest there is, but I don’t think it is necessary to conclude something is genocide. Like I totally believe that “accidental” genocide is a real thing. A group not specifically intending to wipe out another group, but doing so anyway

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Anonymous #2 6d

For example, if that same space colony group could hypothetically add an entire planets worth of ocean water to that planet to make it be more earth like, what would happen? If they flooded the planet to make it “more habitable” but by doing so killing a bunch of living beings out of negligence and prioritizing their needs over the other groups. Even if they didn’t mean to kill those beings, I’d still call that a genocide. An accidental one, but a genocide

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Anonymous OP 6d

I don’t accept that at all. If you’re going to use a legal term, you need to use the legal definition. If you use the term only to fall back on “I’m using the word’s commonly accepted meaning of [vague, nonspecific, varies from person to person]” then you might as well say that you’re using the word because it’s persuasive, it gets an emotional reaction out of people, and whether or not the claim you’re making is true is a secondary or tertiary concern.

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Anonymous #2 6d

That’s fine if you disagree about the specific intent criteria or think that accidental genocide is possible. The UN disagrees with you, their definition is what everyone uses, so you’re just wrong here.

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Anonymous #2 6d

If legal wording was an absolute irrefutable fact I’d agree with you, but it’s not. It’s a term made arbitrarily by a small group of people. If you really want to sit on the hill of “use the right definition” I’d argue that the definition is incomplete. Like what else would you call these hypothetical “accidental genocides” with our current system? A tragedy? Something we say “thoughts and prayers” to?

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Anonymous #2 6d

Like in the hypothetical I brought up, if we were to ask the victims of that flood they might say “they targeted our cities and towns indiscriminately, without any regard for the people who lived there peacefully”. Just because the flooders didn’t intend to kill those people specifically, doesn’t mean that the victims werent victimized, and that a more informed “targeting” decision could have saved the lives of thousands if not more people.

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Anonymous OP 6d

I don’t know if we have a term for that scenario, but if we were going to use one we probably would not use the same word that we specifically defined to mean the deliberate, emphasis, deliberate and intentional eradication of a group of people, a term created in fact by a Polish Jew to describe what was happening to his people and not meant to be diluted by applying it to lesser evils.

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Anonymous #2 6d

In much the same way we don’t call it murder when you get into a fight and accidentally kill someone, we call it manslaughter and recognize that it’s still bad, but less bad than the other thing.

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Anonymous #2 6d

Look if you want to push for the UN to accept an “accidental genocide” term and legal definition, I’ll happily join your cause so we can actually use more precise language in our discussions of current events. Until that happens though, respectfully I’m going to continue using the most accurate term we have, even if it is slightly inaccurate

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Anonymous OP 6d

That’s fine, I’m just going to keep accusing you and others who do this of using the word for emotional effect despite knowing it’s incorrect.

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Anonymous #2 6d

Why are you upset that the words illicit an emotional response? When it’s the most accurate way to describe something, then maybe the events themselves are what’s causing that emotional response. To which I’d say get upset at the actions, not the way people describe them

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Anonymous OP 6d

Because appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy? Idk I’ve been a Jewish Zionist for a long time, it’s only in the past three years that everyone who disagrees with me have become like apoplectic children, many incapable of even having a conversation. I feel like your rhetoric is a major reason. I have actually found a few terms for you though, since genocide means something altogether different and isn’t actually the most accurate way to describe things that aren’t genocide.

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Anonymous #2 6d

Some to choose from: crimes against humanity, democide (any mass killing by a government), mass atrocity crimes, to name a few.

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Anonymous #2 6d

So if we can get people to start saying Israel is committing democide and crimes humanity against Palestine you’d be appeased?

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Anonymous #2 6d

You’re also acting like zionists don’t do the same thing though. Calling them barbarians, orcs, “the enemy”. Training the youth to view them as rodents to exterminate.

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Anonymous #2 6d

Like have you seen the innumerable videos of Israeli children screaming how they want to murder Palestinians the moment they find out they’re talking to one? It’s horrific. A clear sign that at least a sizable proportion of the population holds legitimately genocidal views of Palestinians

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Anonymous OP 6d

“Calling them barbarians, orcs, the enemy, training youth” I actually haven’t seen this, but my media diet wouldn’t show it to me, but even granting that it occurs, which I’m fine with granting, you could easily also be describing UN funded children’s television programs in the Palestinian Territories here. Would you agree it’s fair to say that you can pick insane, racist, genocidal people out of any large group, and that it’s important to form policy that doesn’t cater to extremism?

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Anonymous #2 6d

Barbarians was literally here a few hours ago, orcs is from a podcast that went viral a while ago. The enemy is from Netanyahu himself. Training youth is coming from seeing all the videos of Israeli kids spewing that hateful conduct, they had to learn it somewhere

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Anonymous #2 6d

No I don’t think it’s fair to say we shouldn’t base policy around extremism. We wouldn’t have counterterrorism if we didn’t. It’s fair to not call everyone in a group the same as the extremists, yeah. But when the leading power is actively trying to appease the extemists of their own group, then i think it’s fair to associate the group in power with the extremists

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Anonymous OP 6d

What I mean is that we shouldn’t allow extremists to determine what our policy is, not that we shouldn’t combat it. Israelis by and large did not think those things in the early 2000s. They still don’t, but I’m sure that number is growing. Do you know what changed?

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Anonymous #2 6d

The far right group in Israel started taking over their parliament

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Anonymous #2 6d

Although I’m sure the 2006 election in Palestine had some stuff to do with things yeah

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Anonymous OP 6d

Likud was in power in the 70s and 80s as well, that’s not it, although Netanyahu’s coalition building with the actual far-right and Kahanist groups is new and concerning. What changed is an entire generation of Israelis grew up after the Second Intifada, watching suicide bombings and rocket attacks on the news every day, followed by 20 years of daily rocket attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas. Normie Israelis used to think Palestinians would accept a just peace. They don’t think that anymore.

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Anonymous #2 6d

Back in the 1920s (maybe 40s but pretty sure it was pre partition) Zionist leaders were calling for an “iron wall” against Palestine claiming they’d only accept a Jewish state if they were forced to

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Anonymous OP 6d

Eh, kinda, the full context of that term/quote is an essay written after the British banned Jews from settling east of the Jordan River. It makes the argument that Palestinians would never accept a Jewish majority, so either all Jewish migration had to stop (the Palestinian desire) or it had to continue without regard for their desire, protected by a great power (the iron wall, the British).

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Anonymous #2 6d

The argument was that after a Jewish state was established Arab leaders would be forced to moderate their absolutist positions and eventually accept the Jewish state in the region. This has kind of been true in the cases of Egypt and Jordan.

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