Those who know me, and have discussed politics with me, likely know that I have been influenced greatly by the (now) Portland-based, aggressively pluralist law professor, David Schraub and his blog.
I was drawn in on a recent article asking the question "How Many Genocides Are Occurring in the World Right Now?"
This article does a great job of exploring the topic I expected it to be on and for the reason it was written. However, with due respect to an academic I highly respect, it stopped just short of what I had hoped for. I read the title and was hoping for an analysis of how many met which different criteria, legal and comparative, exploring the dynamics of those genocides so it would serve as a reference in future discussions. Instead, he covers the ways the word is used comparatively, but stops short of actually determining how common each is.
The title I would give to describe the article to a potential reader would instead be "What do we mean when we discuss Palestinian genocide?" and I highly recommend it for anybody who reads about, or is concerned by, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Schraub explores two different common uses of the term "genocide" through comparative analysis which (for this article) I will term "Big" genocide and "Small" genocide. Consider them proper nouns rather than adjectives, as they are poor descriptors.
He articulates his preference for using the word "genocide" to describe a Big genocide over a Small genocide thus:
For my part, one reason I tend to prefer the "folk" [Big] understanding is that I think it preserves a more fine-grained taxonomy for speaking about human rights abuses and atrocities. We don't lack for language to describe incidents of mass atrocity, war crimes, indiscriminate bombings, occupation, wars of aggression, and so on. Hence, it makes sense to me to reserve "genocide" for the class of cases that are incidents of full-scale, widespread, intentional targeted extermination qua extermination, which are a tiny subset of even incidents of substantial civilian suffering and death. The Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Cambodian genocide -- events such as these strike me as sufficiently different in kind from other incidents of even mass atrocity and widespread death and destruction that it's better to retain a unique term to describe them. This is particularly so given that we don't lack for a rich vocabulary to describe other forms of mass violence and atrocity such that we need to press genocide into more expansive service.
While Schraub acknowledges one type of ill intent that certainly happens (getting a specific Small Genocide to be treated as a Big genocide), we know that the alternative form of ill intentioned conflation does happen as well.
And these reasons don't get into the possibility of linguistic exploitation: relying on popular understandings of genocide [Big] predicated on the folk view (of generational rarity) to direct attention and resources to an incident whose viability as a "genocide" is only plausible under a more expansive, revisionist account.
The (perhaps intentionally unspoken) alternative explanation for this divergence is as a means of erasing the difference between a Big genocide and a Small genocide. This phenomenon, done with ill intent, is fairly well explored and has significant support. Those who do so with ill intent at least believe that the more common people perceive Big genocides to be, the less serious others will consider it to be and the easier it will be to commit them in the future.
After all, those who openly support Big genocides have long attempted to have them re-contextualized in history as more common events given undue importance and selectively, manipulatively highlighted. While the word "normalize" might have objectionable connotations for those who prefer the Small definition, if "genocide" happens as often and regularly as Small genocides do, that would make it into a "normal" thing that occurs (Schraub estimates hundreds of current Small genocides, which seems perhaps even an undercount) as genocide deniers insist.
I am not trying to imply that those who prefer the Small definition do so out of bigotry. It does not necessitate bad faith or ill intent on their behalf. For example:
I was inspired to return to this question based in part on an online conversation I had with a Palestinian friend a few days ago, after she characterized Israel's current campaign in the Gaza Strip as "genocide". Knowing she was a fierce opponent of Hamas, I was curious if she also thought that Hamas' 10/7 attacks were acts of "genocide" as well. She responded that in her view, they clearly were -- indeed, given what Hamas did combined with how Hamas leaders characterized their ambitions, she thought the case for calling it genocidal was almost beyond argument.
I doubt his friend is trying to make things like the Holocaust or Rwandan Genocide or other Big genocides more common. Quite the opposite; in fact, having a good guess about who this is, I would suspect they are concerned precisely about the ease with which a Small genocide can turn into a Big genocide. Nevertheless, it is difficult to discuss the conflation of Big and Small genocides without recognizing how often they tie in with more open forms of genocide apologism (in much the same way it is difficult to discuss their differentiation without recognizing how often it ties in with Small genocide apologists, almost certainly more plentiful).
Normalization in this way does not require either bigotry, or a desire for genocide. As with any word, we use if how we learn it. So it only requires having learned about the term genocide from people who (either from intent to inflict or prevent) would prefer people think of Big genocides as a normal thing that societies do, good or bad.
For those with ill intent, they want it treated as you would a mugging. You would obviously never do it, and believe people who try should be stopped, while also understanding this is the real world and muggings do happen and you can't stop everything to for each and every one you hear about. Perhaps, given enough understanding of the life of the mugger, you could even understand how he could be driven to this bad, yet ordinary occurrence. For those with good intent, they mean the world is full of unacceptably bad things that are severe breaks from the standards of human decency. That the ubiquity of this has no bearing on the conclusion that it is deserving of universal rebuke from those who value human life and human dignity, a high priority for any person with a functioning moral compass.
Genocide deniers, at least, believe people who hear the latter will conclude and behave according to the former. In the end, every person is different and the intent of the speaker is no measure of how it will be regarded. Just as one can hear the genocide apologism and decide the bombing of Dresden was a (Small) genocide in the same manner as the Holocaust (Never Again), another can hear the Small genocide argument and decide the bombing of Dresden was a (Small) genocide in the same manner as the Holocaust (War is Hell).
That is the risk inherent in making genocide a normal, even if horrific and condemned, facet of human society.
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