But in the case of Rwanda, after a
> number of political actors have spoken of their roles, doubts are relatively
> limited and they concern more the 'how' than the 'who.' The same names crop
> up again and again, whether in the reports of human rights groups or in the
> testimony of independent observers of various political persuasions.
Nonetheless, there wasn't the sort of census and careful classification that was involved in the Judeaocide. At least by the Germans. The Lithuanians and The Romanians just went after the Jews, not carefully defined, with iron bars. The Germans weren't real precise in Russia either. The Einsatzgruppen would just round up anyone in a shtetl or Jewish quarter, march them into the forest, have them dig a mass grave, and mow them down.
> I really cannot see what is gained by narrowing the definition of genocide
as you have done. Now the chickens come home to roost: you end up having to
come up with this humungous red herring that genocides need to be centrally
controlled. That's rubbish, as a casual review of the history of pogroms
indicates pretty clearly.
My understanding is that Russian and Polish pogroms in the 19th century were officially authorized and encouraged.
> You might say that those were not genocides...
well, but what do you call it when the people's crusade casually wipes out
almost the entire Jewish population of France? I don't like Norman Cohn's
writing on millenarian movements all that much,
Why not?
> but he definitely has a
point in showing that the kind of totalizing violence the Nazis perfected
has very ancient roots. And the history of the Americas is full of tribes
and whole culture groups that were wiped out without anyone signing off on
them, without a masterplan. Call it "criminally negligent genocide" if you
like, but not calling it genocide is like saying that someone who
accidentally (half-deliberately) mixes arsenic in milk because he could not
care less is not a homicide.
My crim law prof wrote a paper on "could not care less" as a "missing mental state" of criminal culpability . . . .
> On the other hand, I would strongly object to Callinico's argument, which to
my ears sounds like a leftwing version of Goldhagen, but that's another
matter entirely.
Say more.
jks
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