Media Afraid to Call Ethnic Cleansing by Its Name
(fair.org)
from technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to world@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 2025 15:54
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38570163
from technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to world@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 2025 15:54
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38570163
Recent coverage of Gaza and the West Bank illustrates that, while corporate media occasionally outright call for expelling Palestinians from their land, more often the way these outlets support ethnic cleansing is by declining to call it ethnic cleansing.
#world
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Isn’t “ethnic cleansing” itself a euphemism for genocide?
I think “ethnic cleansing” is a subset of genocide.
You are correct. Genocide encompasses ethnic, national, racial, or religious groups.
treaties.un.org/…/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf
Other way round. Genocide is a type of ethnic cleansing.
This. Simply removing people of s certain ethnicity from a region without otherwise hurting them is ethnic cleansing but not genocide. It’s still a crime against humanity, mostly, IMHO, because the “without otherwise hurting them” part rarely if ever happens.
No, ethnic cleansing does not necessarily imply killing. It is the forced depopulation of an area, which can be by means of deportation, economic pressure, threat of violence, etc. Genocide is the most extreme form of ethnic cleansing.
Genocide also doesn’t imply killing.
I feel like in common use it does. Some formal definitions don’t require it, but then there’s contradicting formal definitions.
No, genocide is explicitly defined as:
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide
-Cide is to kill or killing, and is derived from Middle French, from Latin -cida, from caedere to cut, kill
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-cide
Yes, and you can destroy a group by means other than killing its members, such as forced sterilization, systematic abuse, or the transfer of children away from the community. It’s the demo that’s being killed, not necessarily its individual members.
You’re incorrect on this one. Abducting “enemy” children and brainwashing them is genocide. Erasing local language from books and signage is genocide. Part of the definition. You can kill an ethnicity by erasing it and not have to kill a single person.
If you want to argue a dictionary then be my guest.
maybe read the actual convention on genocide instead of relying on a dictionary then?
because the case of abducted children stated above is explicitly stated in the convention…the dictionary definition you found is simply wrong and incomplete.
The definition isn’t wrong, they just didn’t read it correctly. Those things in the UN convention are methods that could be used to “cause the destruction of a people”. They’re spelled out to avoid people misinterpreting the definition just like they did.
yes, true, but not exactly why i used the phrasing “wrong AND incomplete”:
i wrote it that way, because without clarifying that “destruction” means many different things apart form the common interpretation of “to kill”, it’s difficult for a casual reader to know what the convention actually says.
if anyone wants to shorten the definition to fit into a dictionary, they should be more responsible in their phrasing, so that this exact problem is less likely to occur.
so i do fault merriam webster here for providing an incomplete, oversimplified definition.
Nobody is saying the dictionary is wrong, they’re saying that there are international groups that have specific definitions for what qualifies as genocide and those don’t necessarily line up with the dictionary. Saying the dictionary is wrong because of the organizations’ use or the organizations are wrong because of the dictionary’s use are both foolish.
I’d argue that the convention on genocide serves as a dictionary in this case. It’s the most common and accepted definition, and it includes cultural forms of genocide, not just physical ones.
Neither is wrong, they just serve different purposes. Dictionaries track usage of the general populace, not industry experts. It’s wrong to use the dictionary as evidence that the convention on genocide is using the term incorrectly though, definitely.
Originally it was. Now, in the aftermath of said ethnic cleansing, it’s like a byword for genocide-lite.
The term kind of has the implication that things will be less dirty and more organised when it’s done.
Pretty much. The Nazis thought of their thing that way, and as Wikipedia points out even used similar language, but fascists don’t need more than a paper thin justification for why it’s totally different this time to keep their rhetoric going. It’s not based on logic, after all, and anyone making the obvious historical comparisons can just be cast as more victimisation of them for their “honesty”.
We all are pretty comfortable calling Bosnia a genocide now, though, so they’ve moved on to new euphemisms like “remigration”.
It can also mean displacement while genocide means the destruction, in whole or part, of a people. Things like the trail of tears are both: People were displaced, also, the US cared so little about native’s lives that a quarter of the displaced straight-out died, which constitutes genocide. But it’s in principle possible, and has occasionally happened, that the displacement doesn’t go hand-in-hand with murder.
Can we all just agree there is no “good” media? Journalism died for profits
No, there are some great independent outlets that are still doing exceptional journalism. Many of the new outlets were founded by reporters who came from mainstream or traditional media but were either laid off or quit because of the profit-above-all-else mindset. As citizens and news consumers this means we have to be pickier and more discerning when it comes to what we read, because we can’t trust that we’ll get everything we need from just a single newspaper anymore. But if you look around you’ll still find some very high quality journalism, it’s just a bit more diffuse than we’re used to.
The article itself claims that 87% of news outlets are avoiding the phrase “ethnic cleansing”. There are those that are calling it for what it is.
If you want an example: theguardian.com/…/un-chief-warns-against-ethnic-c…
“Journalist” is not an ethnicity but they can be cleansed too.
Can someone AI a concise list of all the papers which refused to tell the truth from the article?
You could just read it and make your own list instead of asking someone else to get AI to do it for them so they can collate a list for you.
Cut the bullshit
“Israel’s genocide in Gaza, launched in October 2023”
fair.org/…/coverage-of-israeli-and-palestinian-ca…
7th of October, when Israel decided for no reason to start a war. s/
When that shit is published on your site, I can’t bother reading anything else. Wonder who runs this propoganda site.
Real, the genocide started on 1947.
1929, Arab Muslims exterminate the Jewish community of Gaza that lived there to hundreds of years:
1947, Arab Muslims demand to own all the land, even Jewish owned land:
1948, still refusing to share, start a war to kill all Jews in the area and lose: How could the Jewzzzzzz be so Genocidal!!!1!1!1!
1948-60: Arab countries take ownership of all Jewish belonging and kick them out (with some mass murders in between):
1967: six days war Israel takes over Gaza and the West Bank
Peace agreements between Israel and Egypt and Jurden, they refuse to take back over the management of Gaza/West Bank cus shity population.
2000: Camp David, Israel offers Arafat a Palestinian country. He refuses cus he doesn’t get all Israel.
Shit goes south from here.
2024: Hamas opens war on Israel, breaking a long ceasefire. Send militants into Israeli cities to murder civilans in their homes. Israel retaliate. Retards - “how could Israel dooooo that?!?!?!?!”
The “Palestinan leadership” missed every opertinity, and refused everything that doesn’t include full ownership of the region. Including Jewish cities with communities that lived there from before Islam even existed.
Meanwhile Arabs inside Israel get equal rights and the younger generation gets into higher education and makes good money. Retards on lemmy: so genocide.
Y’all ever notice that arguments about how to call something steal oxygen away from what to do about it?
Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass-murder are just words. Calling it a pumpkin pie won’t bring back one dead child.
Reality is independent from language. Words borrow meaning, they’re not the source of it.
Yeah but by turning people away from the media we also isolate them from groups with similar ideals, forcing them into bubbles/echo-chambers which are easily radicalized to promote violence and insurgency.
And language is extremely important to how we think and form our understanding of the world.
There’s no such thing as just words.
Language is humanity’s superpower. It’s what allows us to share ideas, pass down knowledge generationaly, specialize labor, and form communities.
Words have meaning, and intentionally avoiding words that accurately describe events is incredibly harmful. There’s a reason that when a school is bombed, they call a bunch of the 13-17yo victims “military-aged males” instead of “children.”
Words are important because 80% of the population is unable to assert reality and will accept whatever wording is provided to them. Even when provided with evidence in 4K.
America did it to my people and never called it what it was and never made amends, and now Americans moralize to me about events across the planet lol
Yeah, because when you do the Israel lobby crawls out and calls them a Jew hating Nazi.