David Starkey. He's finished isn't he?

[KaptainKaveman]

At least I hope so.

Well if you can kill 10-15 million people and not have it considered genocide, I don't think we're in any imminent danger of stretching the term to the point where it has no meaning. It's not quite like being devastated over a jumper.

One can also argue that by keeping the term so restricted, by having to prove 'intent', you make it more difficult to hold people accountable for mass atrocities. This was a problem with prosecuting people in the Bosnian war, and an ongoing problem for the ICC.

And as we see, keeping a very narrow definition lets people defend racists and genocide deniers of all sorts.

did you actually hear him saying it, joyfreecake.
i heard on the radio news last night.
they gave a warning beforehand, and even i was shocked by what i heard.
it's not so much about the detailed definition of the word genocide.
i wasn't shocked at that point, when he said it wasn't a genocide.
it's the tone and kind of contempt in his voice when he goes on as if to prove his assertion, by saying if it were, then there wouldn't be so many damn blacks. he kind of spat it out. this was on radio.
perhaps without any visual distraction, it came across stronger to me.
i was shocked. and i was already steeling myself due to the warning.

@dreamingbohemian

Well if you can kill 10-15 million people and not have it considered genocide, I don't think we're in any imminent danger of stretching the term to the point where it has no meaning. It's not quite like being devastated over a jumper.

One can also argue that by keeping the term so restricted, by having to prove 'intent', you make it more difficult to hold people accountable for mass atrocities. This was a problem with prosecuting people in the Bosnian war, and an ongoing problem for the ICC.

And as we see, keeping a very narrow definition lets people defend racists and genocide deniers of all sorts.

You appear to have deliberately misunderstood my meaning and decided to imply that I'm comparing crimes against humanity to laundry mishaps. I can't work out why.

I am saying that you need clear definitions, whatever those definitions might be, otherwise meaning drifts. I'm not saying that, at the moment, "genocide" is used to describe anything that isn't abhorrent. I was just showing via examples that that kind of drift can happen, and I don't believe we want that to happen to "genocide" because it's an important term.

I am not arguing for or against any particular definition; the closest I got to that was pointing out that by the usual formal definitions, technically Starkey was right about it not being genocide, though for the wrong reasons.

People will defend racists no matter what. Accurate definitions let us clearly lay out why they're wrong, without getting ourselves bogged down in misinterpretations of each other's meaning. Sometimes it's useful to have narrow definitions for different types of thing, and that doesn't necessarily imply that something which doesn't meet the narrow definition isn't equally significant. It's just different. Sometimes it's better to have an umbrella term, with specifiers within that.

The point I'm making is that is important to have the discussion about definitions and meanings, rather than insisting that anybody who wants to make sure we're using a common terminology that works for our purposes is choosing a bad hill to die on.

alex — yes, I've heard it. What he said is despicable and it's clear from his tone that he's racist as fuck.

and i do remember that programme with the schoolchildren.
he was so rude and unpleasant. it came across very bad.
to be deliberately unkind to excluded pupils, to try to body shame a boy.
i think he later said something about being bullied as a boy having a club foot. but that doesn't justify being horrid to children now.
i also saw another discussion on bbc2 with him and a woman historian, ?sarah churchill/churchwell.
She is very good, interesting and informative.
he disagreed with something and said words to the effect of, well what would someone from the university of east anglia know.
as if that was so far beneath him, that she had no credibility because she was only at that university. she looked visibly taken aback, as was i.
academics do not say that kind of thing, esp in public, and on tv.
it is mere prejudice anyway. a stupid thing to say, showing how his prejudice trumps his scholarship.
keep to the subject, not ad hominem attacks.

his prejudice trumps his scholarship

Starkey in a nutshell.

In order to be able to not come across as a raging racist, it would probably help if he weren't actually a raging racist

Right? He's been on TV for years and has always very clearly been an angry bigot. I'm surprised it's taken this long for people to do anything about.

Agreed YoTeQuieroInfinito.

(Spanish Bombs? )

Thanks for the posts on genocide meaning. I had to deliver education on genocide, including meeting survivors of both Rwanda and the Holocaust so it was very very strict about the definition and yes leaving out 'intent' changes it hugely. I know that the Irish famine, for example is considered a genocide by many, including some historians.

(Spanish Bombs? wink)

Oh my corazon!

That's true Duvet, the Irish famine is another good example where the term is sometimes used.

Even among scholars of genocide, there is a fierce debate about the best way to define it -- if you look at genocide research, you will see these very robust arguments going all the way back to the 1940s. People have been criticising the legal definition since its inception (for example, it does not include mass killings based on political identity, thus excluding the millions killed by Stalin and Mao).

In recent decades, scholars have suggested typologies of genocide -- basically, that there is not one narrow type of genocide, but different kinds. These often include a category to account for long-term colonialist and economic exploitation, where 'intent' needs to be interpreted somewhat differently.

We should remember that at the time the legal definition was crafted (1948) the major powers of the day had a vested interest in making sure the definition was so restrictive that it could not be applied to their own actions. This legal definition endures but it is by no means the only definition, if we look at what scholars and historians say about it.

My own opinion is that if you have a term that is meant to apply to the most extreme and horrific cases of mass killing, but people don't want to apply it to certain cases that are among the worst atrocities in history, then we should certainly have a debate about definitions. This can be done in a way that doesn't water down the impact of the term.

So… you do think definitions, and discussing them so we all understand exactly what we mean by it when we say the word, are important, dreamingbohemian…? I'm not sure where your disagreement with me is coming from, then.

I don't know what possessed him. Mad old bugger.

He is a nasty person - and that phrase is again the most overtly racist thing I've ever heard (as a pp said).

He has always been nasty though. He was awful to the woman who'd been the driving force behind finding Richard III. He was so horrible to her on live TV.

His books are good but his views have no place in our society.

Joy I disagree that the term is in danger of losing impact if we apply it to colonial atrocities and slavery.

I also think 'he was correct according to the usual definition' glosses over the enormous debate on this. The legal definition is not the only definition and outside of a courtroom we are not obliged to adhere to it. Many scholars and other groups take a more expansive interpretation, within which Starkey would be wrong. I feel all the 'technically he's correct' opinions are overlooking this.

I disagree that the term is in danger of losing impact if we apply it to colonial atrocities and slavery.

I didn't even remotely say that, and am angry that you would accuse me of saying that just because you can't be bothered to read what I actually wrote rather than what you assumed I wrote. I said it's in danger of losing its impact if we fail to define what we mean by it, which may or may not include the requirement for intent. Therefore we need to discuss definitions, and what should be included under the term.

And to say that I'm overlooking the debate over definition when I'm literally advocating for debates over definition is obtuse, to say the least.

According to the "intent" definition, Starkey is technically correct in saying that the transatlantic slave trade was not genocide. However his reasoning was wrong; his argument that it was not genocide is that black people still exist. According to the broader definition, Starkey is wrong to say it's not genocide, because under any definition, you wouldn't need every black person to be murdered for it to be genocide.

It's important to acknowledge that technically his statement is correct according to the common legal definition, because people will use that fact to defend his racism and we need to be able to articulate why the fact that he was technically correct doesn't mean he wasn't wrong and racist in what he said.

Well first of all, you can argue that he is not correct even within the legal definition, depending on how you interpret 'intent' (there are different types of intent legally speaking). So I don't agree we need to emphasise how 'technically correct' he is. That is a matter of debate.

You can look at the debate within the ICC about charging Bashir with genocide to see how even legal experts don't agree about intent.

You keep saying we should debate the term but you don't say what you personally think. I brought up Congo and your next reply was that we need to be careful with definitions because otherwise words lose their meaning. That may be true but you're not actually saying what YOU think.

Do you think what Belgium did in the Congo was genocide?
Do you think the legal definition is the best one?

I've stated pretty clearly that I think colonial atrocities can be considered as genocide, but all your posts keep saying is that that's not the legal definition and we have to be careful with terms and perhaps have a debate about them. So I assume you don't agree with me. But what do you think then?

What do I personally think? Firstly, I don't understand how what I personally think is relevant, unless you're trying to evaluate whether I'm pure of heart. My arguments are my arguments and aren't really related to how I use the word "genocide".

I don't really know what what it is you want me to explain, to be honest — I'm a descriptivist when it comes to language, and will usually use a term to mean what it means in the context in which I'm communicating, rather than what I think it should mean, unless I believe that it's damaging to use the word in that way or that the person is not using it to mean one of the standard meanings.

In practice that means I would personally avoid introducing the term unless I was talking about an event within the narrower definition, to avoid misinterpretations between me and the other person. If they were using the term and were clearly using it in the broader sense, I would use it in that sense since in that context, that's what the word means, probably after first clarifying that that's what they meant.

In a legal sense, I care less about what it's called in the documents than about what we do about these atrocities.

And I don't think we should "perhaps" have a debate about the terms we use. I think we should definitely attempt to be very clear about what we mean when we use terms, and make sure that each person in the discussion knows what it being referred to when someone is using a term.

If I were to want to use "genocide" in s sense that's broader than the legal ones, especially in, say, a piece of writing where there's no two-way discussion, I would explain that that was what I was doing, and why.

I asked what you think because you said I made incorrect assumptions about what you thought, about colonial atrocities.

I don't know what pure of heart means? I asked about Congo because it's a sort of bellwether case, if you don't think that was genocide, you're not likely to think any other colonial case was either.

Not really trying to have a big argument or anything, we're just looking at it differently and that's fine.

Where did I say you made incorrect assumptions about what I thought about colonial atrocities? I'm really confused by this discussion.

Imagine having an inquiry every time an old white man said something racist.

When it's directly related to his job, yes we should.

Starkey's not any old white man though.

He has a platform through his books and TV.

He gave a lecture at my son's school!

He is a racist and I hope he's never paid for his opinions ever again.

Imagine saying there wasn't an Armenian genocide because

Turkey refuses to accept that, and gets very cross with people who do.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide_denial