24 Comments

I'm not sure which is more shocking: your use of the term "paperboy" which is contributing to the genocide of LGBTQIA+ pyple; or, the fact that you still have a paperboy.

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Ooh. Here’s a list of other terms worth doing:

-colonialism

-racism

-fascism

-science

-dog whistle

-gaslighting

Most of which have somehow become synonyms.

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I'm no expert on kerfuffles or whoopsies, but I'm pretty sure that the main reason the Nazis weren't tried specifically for genocide was that the legal concept didn't yet exist, not because their crimes didn't rise to that level. At that time "crimes against humanity" included genocide; there wasn't a separate term for it until after the Nazis showed how it's done.

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Nov 3, 2023·edited Nov 3, 2023

Gee, I thought *literally* every human interaction in America today was merely racist or transphobic--this post has shown me that I need to go bigger. Genocide it is!

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all of the young dipshits throwing around the word genocide are now asking, okay got it, but what in the hell is a paperboy?

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Thanks, Jeff, for clearing that up. Still, I’m convinced you meant convicted. Did you?

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“The Great Cambodian Whoopsie” 🤣. You are really keeping that “Pol Pot was Framed” theme going here...

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It's difficult to say "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." is genocide and say it's too much to call Hamas actions genocide.

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New to the newsletter, as I am sure many are after your brilliant recent entry on Israel and Palestine. But I have a quibble here.

You say:

“Crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing are all very bad, but they’re conceptually distinct from genocide.”

I’m not sure I would necessarily say they are “conceptually distinct,” as the concepts can overlap.

“The United Nations first defined genocide in 1948 in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The treaty outlines five acts that can constitute genocide if they are done ’with the intent to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group’:

“1. Killing members of the group

“2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm

“3. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part

“4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births

“5. Forcibly transferring children.

“To qualify as genocide, the actions must be done with intent to eliminate an entire group of people. Without provable intent, a group or individual can still be guilty of "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing" but not genocide.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/whats-the-difference-between-genocide-and-ethnic-cleansing

Under this definition, ethnic cleansing and war crimes *can be* genocide. Just not necessarily so. There must be the required intent.

My worry with your “conceptually distinct” phrasing is that people watching ethnic cleansing (or war crimes), who are told that ethnic cleansing (or war crime) is a concept “conceptually distinct” from genocide, may conclude that the ethnic cleansing (or war crime) therefore must not be genocide. But of course it can be, *if* the intent is to eliminate an entire group of people.

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I suppose we should have a corollary to Goodwin‘s Law, about how all actions will inevitably be described as genocide.

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I can't tell you how much I love this piece! I'm frustrated (to say the least) by this term being thrown around with no knowledge of, well, anything to support it. It's"literally" as embarrassing as throwing the word genocide at your double-charging waiter.

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That “literally” aside had me literally burst out laughing as a man who truly does not know how to use the word “literally” in a world where histrionic people use all words figuratively.

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I don't believe that anybody who suffered a waiter double billing him would actually label it genocide. Even if they didn't fully know what the definition of genocide included.

I do agree that many don't know what the word genocide means and they use it carelessly, sometimes even as a joke.

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