We do not need a concept that simplifies political struggles beyond recognition or gives preferential attention to those calamities where leaders of one side happen to claim that their enemy is a specific ethnic, racial or religious group. Lemkin and the UN were not to blame; none of this was likely to have been foreseen in 1948. The notion of genocide emerged from an understandable sense that Nazi crimes were somehow unlike the crimes of the past and must never be repeated. But it remains too closely tied to those crimes, and to a particular explanation of them, to be of any use in today's world. There is no such thing as genocide. There are cruelty, oppression, murder, and torture. Those are real, and they need to be stopped. Genocide is imaginary. It is time we did away with it.
Michael Steinberg
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Then, Jim Farmelant, ``TThe term "genocide" is not like the term "H2O," so it's not possible to firm it up. It's one of those essentially contested terms -- like racism -- whose varied usage necessarily reflects contradictory class and other social interests.''
And Yoshie writes:
``I asked Michael Steinberg to write a piece on this (as he commented on my first Darfur piece), and he came up with exactly what I had in mind.''
Yoshie, could you forward the long essay I posted on lbo to Michael Steinberg and see what he says about it---or if he is interested at all?
I have an agenda on this topic and the reason is that I think we are in the middle of several cross currents of history over mass identity movements, which have tended to find genocide as their natural end point.
I don't think it is time to get rid of the term or its international legal framework, because like the US special prosecutor, we might need that framework. There are afterall very few state crimes and the term crimes against humanity focuses on the state itself---its policies, institutions and officials. Remember that most state officials do not directly commit murder and are technically innocent as individuals...
More lunch thoughts...got to go.
CG