The Politics of Genocide

Author: Edward S. Herman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583672133
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
In this impressive book, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson examine the uses and abuses of the word “genocide.” They argue persuasively that the label is highly politicized and that in the United States it is used by the government, journalists, and academics to brand as evil those nations and political movements that in one way or another interfere with the imperial interests of U.S. capitalism. Thus the word “genocide” is seldom applied when the perpetrators are U.S. allies (or even the United States itself), while it is used almost indiscriminately when murders are committed or are alleged to have been committed by enemies of the United States and U.S. business interests. One set of rules applies to cases such as U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Israeli oppression of Palestinians, Indonesian slaughter of so-called communists and the people of East Timor, U.S. bombings in Serbia and Kosovo, the U.S. war of “liberation” in Iraq, and mass murders committed by U.S. allies in Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. Another set applies to cases such as Serbian aggression in Kosovo and Bosnia, killings carried out by U.S. enemies in Rwanda and Darfur, Saddam Hussein, any and all actions by Iran, and a host of others. With its careful and voluminous documentation, close reading of the U.S. media and political and scholarly writing on the subject, and clear and incisive charts, The Politics of Genocide is both a damning condemnation and stunning exposé of a deeply rooted and effective system of propaganda aimed at deceiving the population while promoting the expansion of a cruel and heartless imperial system.

The Politics of Annihilation

Author: Benjamin Meiches
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452959676
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Book Description
How did a powerful concept in international justice evolve into an inequitable response to mass suffering? For a term coined just seventy-five years ago, genocide has become a remarkably potent idea. But has it transformed from a truly novel vision for international justice into a conservative, even inaccessible term? The Politics of Annihilation traces how the concept of genocide came to acquire such significance on the global political stage. In doing so, it reveals how the concept has been politically contested and refashioned over time. It explores how these shifts implicitly impact what forms of mass violence are considered genocide and what forms are not. Benjamin Meiches argues that the limited conception of genocide, often rigidly understood as mass killing rooted in ethno-religious identity, has created legal and political institutions that do not adequately respond to the diversity of mass violence. In his insistence on the concept’s complexity, he does not undermine the need for clear condemnations of such violence. But neither does he allow genocide to become a static or timeless notion. Meiches argues that the discourse on genocide has implicitly excluded many forms of violence from popular attention including cases ranging from contemporary Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the legacies of colonial politics in Haiti, Canada, and elsewhere, to the effects of climate change on small island nations. By mapping the multiplicity of forces that entangle the concept in larger assemblages of power, The Politics of Annihilation gives us a new understanding of how the language of genocide impacts contemporary political life, especially as a means of protesting the social conditions that produce mass violence.

The Politics of Genocide

Author: Randolph L. Braham
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814326916
Category : Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, Condensed Edition is an abbreviated version of the classic work first published in 1981 and revised and expanded in 1994. It includes a new historical overview, and retains and sharpens its focus on the persecution of the Jews. Through a meticulous use of Hungarian and many other sources, the book explains in a rational and empirical context the historical, political, communal, and socioeconomic factors that contributed to the unfolding of this tragedy at a time when the leaders of the world, including the national and Jewish leaders of Hungary, were already familiar with the secrets of Auschwitz. The Politics of Genocide is the most eloquent and comprehensive study ever produced of the Holocaust in Hungary. In this condensed edition, Randolph L. Braham includes the most important revisions of the 1994 second edition as well as new material published since then. Scholars of Holocaust, Slavic, and East-Central European studies will find this volume indispensable.

The Politics of Genocide

Author: Jeffrey S. Bachman
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978821506
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
Since the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948 and through the present day, the United Nations' P-5 have ensured that holding any of them accountable for genocide would be practically impossible. The Politics of Genocide is the first book to explicitly demonstrate how the permanent member nations have exploited the Genocide Convention to isolate themselves from the reach of the law, marking them as "outlaw states."

Genocide and the Politics of Memory

Author: Herbert Hirsch
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807845059
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
More than sixty million people have been victims of genocide in the twentieth century alone, including recent casualties in Bosnia and Rwanda. Herbert Hirsch studies repetitions of large-scale human violence in order to ascertain why people in every histo

Rwanda's Genocide

Author: K. Moghalu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403978387
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Book Description
In Rwanda's Genocide , Kingsley Moghalu provides an engrossing account and analysis of the international political brinkmanship embedded in the quest for international justice for Rwanda's genocide. He takes us behind the scenes to the political and strategic factors that shaped a path-breaking war crimes tribunal and demonstrates why the trials at Arusha, like Nuremberg, Tokyo, and the Hague, are more than just prosecutions of culprits, but also politics by other means. This is the first serious book on the politics of justice for Rwanda's genocide. Moghalu tells this gripping story with the authority of an insider, elegant and engaging writing, and intellectual mastery of the subject matter.

Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape

Author: Debra B. Bergoffen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136596941
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Book Description
Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women’s right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women’s vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of the trial, guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women’s epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors.

Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Author: Filip Reyntjens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107043557
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
Analyses political governance in post-genocide Rwanda, focusing on the rise of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the RPF has employed various means - rigged elections, elimination of opposition parties and civil society, legislation outlawing dissenting opinions, and terrorism - to consolidate its position as the nation's ruling party. Although Rwanda is considered successful for its technocratic governance, societal reforms, and economic development, shows the regime's darker side of human rights abuses, social engineering projects, information management schemes, and retributive justice system.

Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide

Author: David B. MacDonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134085729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
David B. MacDonald is Senior Lecturer in Political Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Lethal Politics

Author: R. J. Rummel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351508873
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
While there are estimates of the number of people killed by Soviet authorities during particular episodes or campaigns, until now, no one has tried to calculate the complete human toll of Soviet genocides and mass murders since the revolution of 1917. Here, R. J. Rummel lists and analyzes hundreds of published estimates, presenting them in the historical context in which they occurred. His shocking conclusion is that, conservatively calculated, 61,911,000 people were systematically killed by the Communist regime from 1917 to 1987.Rummel divides the published estimates on which he bases his conclusions into eight historical periods, such as the Civil War, collectivization, and World War II. The estimates are further divided into agents of death, such as terrorism, deportations, and famine. Using statistical principles developed from more than 25 years of quantitative research on nations, he analyzes the estimates. In the collectivization period, for example, about 11,440,000 people were murdered. During World War II, while the Soviet Union had lost almost 20,000,000 in the war, the Party was killing even more of its citizens and foreigners-probably an additional 13,053,000. For each period, he defines, counts, and totals the sources of death. He shows that Soviet forced labor camps were the major engine of death, probably killing 39,464,000 prisoners overall.To give meaning and depth to these figures, Rummel compares them to the death toll from'major wars, world disasters, global genocide, deaths from cancer and other diseases, and the like. In these and other ways, Rummel goes well beyond the bare bones of statistical analysis and tries to provide understanding of this incredible toll of human lives. Why were these people killed? What was the political and social context? How can we understand it? These and other questions are addressed in a compelling historical narrative.This definitive book will be of interest to Soviet experts, those inte