What is meant by

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What is meant by genocide?
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Genocide The Origins of a Word
Rafael Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the term
genocide in 1943 from Greek genos (family,
tribe, race) and Latin cide (killing, murder)
UN General Assembly (1948-1951) Convention on
the Prevention Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide defines genocide as ...any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such (a) Killing members
of the group (b) Causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group (c)
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part (d) Imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the
group (e) Forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group.
Nearly everyone who considers the definition
finds it insufficient for one reason or another.
It manages to be at one and the same time both
too broad and too narrow. A Century of Genocide
Utopias of Race Nation (2003)
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Genocide Establishing Terminology
For genocide to occur, there needs to be
demonstrable intent to destroy in whole or in
part particular population groups. This is a
central point that distinguishes genocides from
the civilian casualties that may occur in
wartime, from pogroms, from massacres, from
forced deportationseven if the number of victims
is massive, and although any one of these actions
may subsequently evolve into a genocide. 9 A
Century of Genocide Utopias of Race Nation
(2003)
Points of Debate Controversy
1) Who are the targeted groups? How are they
defined? By whom?
2) How to establish intent? Implicit or explicit?
3) What is systematic destruction? Sustained or
sporadic? In whole or in part?
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Genocide A Controversial Term
1) Genocide in the generic sense is the mass
killing of substantial numbers of human beings,
when not in the course of military action against
the military forces of an avowed enemy, under
conditions of the essential defenseless and
helplessness of the victims. Israel Charny
2) Genocide is defined through the intent and the
will, whether implicit or explicit, to
systematically destroy (a group of
people). Jennifer Balint
3) Genocide is the deliberate destruction of
physical life of individual human beings by their
membership of any human collectivity as
such. Pieter Drost
4) Genocide is distinguishable from all other
crimes by the motivation behind it. Genocide is
a crime on a different scale to all other crimes
against humanity and implies an intention to
completely exterminate the chosen group. Alain
Destexhe
5) Those who should use the word genocide never
let it slip their mouths. Those who
unfortunately do use it, banalise it into a
validation of every kind of victimhood. Michael
Ignatieff
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War Genocide How are they connected?

• The changing nature of warfare, with a movement
  toward total warfare, and the technological means
  of the annihilation of large populations, creates
  a situation conducive to genocidal conflict.
  This potential was realized in the Second World
  War
• Leo Kuper

2) Nobody has yet shown that our understanding is
enriched by comparing such unlike phenomena as
wartime casualties and genocides. The fact that
both war and genocide produce massive casualties
is a terrible commentary on mans inhumanity to
man, but it does not help to understand either
phenomenon. Kurt Jonassohn
La Guerre Totale (1918) by Leon Daudet ? total
war

• Les Guerres dEnfer (1915) by Alphonse Seché ?
  French Rev (1790s) WWI
• Mass conscription introduced ? large national
  army
• Extensive economic mobilization
• Distinction between combatants non-combatants
  outmoded
• Growth of roles for science industry

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Stalinism Nazism Comparing Genocides
Both Nazi and Marxist ideologies led to
industrial-scale killing, their biological and
psychological theories were opposites. . . Nazism
and Marxism shared a desire to reshape humanity.
The alteration of men on a mass scale is
necessary, wrote Marx the will to create
mankind anew is the core of National Socialism,
wrote Hitler. They also shared revolutionary
idealism and a tyrannical certainty in pursuit of
this dream This alone was a recipe for
disaster. The Blank Slate The Modern Denial of
Human Nature (2002)
1) What are the similarities between Stalins
Soviet Union and Hitlers Third Reich?
2) How are these regimes different from each
other?
3) Why did both ideologies, Communism Nazism,
contribute to the misery death of millions of
people?
4) How were both of these genocidal regimes
influenced by specific historical circumstances?
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Ideology Genocide How are they connected?

1. Nation Race ? purity or impurity of defined
   groups is fundamental (Nazism)

2) Better World or Utopian ? ideal
social-economic arrangements for all humanity
(Communism)
Germany under the Nazis was a nation obsessed
with tracking, diagnosing, registering, grading,
and selecting. The bureaucratic-scientific
process of categorization rested on the principle
of race and marked the first step in the policies
of exclusion that entailed discrimination,
internment, sterilization, deportation, and
ultimately, killing. A Century of Genocide
Utopias of Race Nation (2003)
The future envisaged by the Soviet Union was
radically different from the Nazi utopia. The
Soviet utopia was to be egalitarian and
inclusive. Yet population purges were a central
feature of Soviet life until the mid-1950s.
These purges were entwined with the obsessive
drive to categorize every member of the
population, to determine their class, national,
and political affiliations. A Century of
Genocide Utopias of Race Nation (2003)