User:GrapeSkoda
Genocide Is The Extermination Or Decimation Of An Ethnic Group As Long As There Is An Awareness Of Said Decline Via Continued Actions Committed
"The Disappearance Of A Population Is Not Genocide, If Not Performed Through Intentional Actions" is a false claim often made in debates regarding population declines of Indigenous Europeans. Other similar fallacious statements are used, such as: "No-one is being killed, so it isn't a genocide", "It's just demographic movements", "Populations have always changed" -- and other non-sequitur straw-men that ultimately attempt to avoid or justify population decline of certain ethnic groups.
"The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:
- 1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
- 2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- (a) Killing members of the group;
- (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
- (a) Genocide;
- (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
- (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
- (d) Attempt to commit genocide;
- (e) Complicity in genocide."
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation.
It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
- Raphael Lemkin
Ethnic groups can be defined in various ways. The traditional method is through a combination of phenotype and cultural markers, such as: language, dialect, cultural etiquette/behaviours, attire, etc.
Modern interpretations also tend to combine genetic frequency data. The frequency of specific alleles in a person often correlates with their geographic origins. Popular DNA home testing kit services, such as Ancestry and 23&Me attempt to pinpoint someone's ethnicity by their gene frequencies via a saliva sample.
One interpretation of a genocide could be the alteration of these gene frequencies to indistinguishable levels. This would be done through large demographic movements and interbreeding between populations that are largely genetically distant.
Another method is the redistribution and allocation of resources to competing genetic-groups. Much how invasive species affect indigenous species, other ethnic-groups can outbreed indigenous groups and occupy more resources in a given location.
In a "wilder" and less controlled environment, this would self-correct as the indigenous populations would likely be better adapted to the ecology and conditions of their environment, due to years of selection-pressure. However, with human-rights laws, poverty laws and other humanitarian interventions that prevent immediate harm, this creates an environment where those that breed faster continue to proliferate, due to the lack of environmental selection-pressures that would otherwise select for K-Strategic breeding due to a less stable environment.
Without demographic controls, Indigenous populations would continue to diminish in the presence of a surviving group that breeds faster, until differing attributes of the r-Strategic populations would cause a societal/infrastructural collapse.
Many argue that by the definition of genocide, the acts must be initially intentional -- or the intended goal of the actions causing it. However, once a government body is made aware of its actions and their consequences, but still refuses to alter their policies or address the situation,it then falls under the category of being complicit (Article III: The following acts shall be punishable: (e)).
Whether the actions of said governing body were intended to bring about the genocide of a population is essentially irrelevant when the results are the same.
Some have proposed that this line of reasoning be dubbed a fallacy: The continued refusal to change an action, occurrence, event, procedure, law (etc.), when the negative consequences of said occurrence (et al.) do not come about via malicious intent to ensure said consequences -- even after the knowledge of said consequences is made apparent to the committer.
| Statement of the claim: | Genocide Is The Extermination Or Decimation Of An Ethnic Group As Long As There Is An Awareness Of Said Decline Via Continued Actions Committed |
| Level Of Certainty: | True |
| Nature: | Semantic |
| Counterclaim: | The Disappearance Of A Population Is Not Genocide, If Not Performed Through Intentional Actions |
| Dependent on: | Etymology and Original Usage Of The Word "Genocide", Semantic Arguments Regarding International Legality |
| Dependency of: | One Race: The Human Race, Cline and Continuum Fallacy (The Existence Of Race and Ethnicity) |