History Main / WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide

* According to Azerbaijan's {{propaganda|Machine}}, Armenia is an evil nation at least in part because the Armenian army deliberately killed civilians during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.[[note]]Nagorno-Karabakh is a part of the Caucasus that is majority Armenian but lies within the current borders of Azerbaijan (at one point, the distance between N-K and the Armenian border is only a few miles). Because of the linguistic and religious differences between Azeris and Armenians, and the fact that it had been a semi-autonomous oblast in the Soviet days, this became a problem very quickly after the Soviet Union collapsed.[[/note]] In particular, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_Massacre Khojaly Massacre]] was the most infamous one, which was seen as completely uncalled for in the international community. The Armenian government continues to deny responsibility for the massacres committed by the Armenian army on Azerbaijan's citizens, contending that they gave the citizens advance warning and an escape corridor before invading the town, but the Azeri army prevented anyone from evacuating. There were pogroms on both sides of the conflict too, such as the massacres of Armenians in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom_of_Armenians_in_Baku Baku]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumgait_pogrom Sumgait]] which Azerbaijan denies took place, though Khojaly was still worse in terms of casualties. So it's more like two countries doing this to each other. Hence the Azeris' demand for Turkey not to recognize the Armenian genocide, in retaliation.

** This also extends to many of Turkey's allies. The US President, for example, must avoid using the "G" word when addressing Armenian-Americans on the Day of Remembrance for the genocide, using instead the Armenian term ''Medz Yeghern'' (The Great Calamity), which predates the creation of the word 'genocide' and has since gained UnfortunateImplications due to its use as a way to dance around having to say it was a genocide. For the record, although both UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and UsefulNotes/BarackObama stated that if they became President, they would issue a formal recognition of the genocide, UsefulNotes/JoeBiden [[https://www.npr.org/2021/04/24/990292454/biden-calls-slaughter-of-armenians-a-genocide-posing-test-for-u-s-ties-with-turkis the first U.S. President to do]] so since UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan [[http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Affirmation.63/current_category.4/affirmation_detail.html did in 1981]].

** This also extends to many of Turkey's allies. The US President, for example, must avoid using the "G" word when addressing Armenian-Americans on the Day of Remembrance for the genocide, using instead the Armenian term ''Medz Yeghern'' (The Great Calamity), which predates the creation of the word 'genocide' and has since gained UnfortunateImplications due to its use as a way to dance around having to say it was a genocide. For the record, although both UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and UsefulNotes/BarackObama stated that if they became President, they would issue a formal recognition of the genocide, UsefulNotes/JoeBiden is the first U.S. President to do so since UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan. [[http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Affirmation.63/current_category.4/affirmation_detail.html]]

** This also extends to many of Turkey's allies. The US President, for example, must avoid using the "G" word when addressing Armenian-Americans on the Day of Remembrance for the genocide, using instead the Armenian term ''Medz Yeghern'' (The Great Calamity), which predates the creation of the word 'genocide' and has since gained UnfortunateImplications due to its use as a way to dance around having to say it was a genocide. For the record, although both UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and UsefulNotes/BarackObama stated that if they became President, they would issue a formal recognition of the genocide, UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan is currently the last U.S. President to do so. [[http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Affirmation.63/current_category.4/affirmation_detail.html]]

** For some Jews, it's a case of "Would be rude to say 'Holocaust'". They prefer the word Shoah (Hebrew for "catastrophe"). Jews often see their mass destruction as something unique in scale. The "uniqueness" of the Holocaust is also advocated by German historians such as Hans Mommsen and Hans Ulrich-Wehler, citing the high-level of pre-meditation and infrastructure dedicated to killing programs, and the fact that it was achieved by an advanced European nation that had undergone modernisation. These subtle critiques get lost when used in political footballs, however, where mass famines (the Irish potato famine, the Holodomor, the Great Bengal Famine of 1943) and population displacement (the Partition of India, the ''Nakba''[[note]]The Palestinian word for their displacement from their homes at the end of the first Arab Israeli War, it means "the catastrophe" in Arabic, much the same as "Shoah" in Hebrew[[/note]]) are promoted by activists and advocates to be on the same scale as the Holocaust, which leads to a messy and bitter feud among victims groups.

* ''Fanfic/ToukenDanshiAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'': Hizamaru apparently has "Muggle's Bane" as an extra name. He isn't disturbed by this, and the Potters seem more surprised that he and his brother were owned by Slytherin and Gryffindor than appalled that somebody named a sword after genocide of non-magical humans.

* In ''Series/BabylonFive'', many characters go out of their way to not call what the Centauri are doing to the Narn genocide. The Hyach also removed the Hyach-Do from their history.

[[folder:Real Life]].

** In chapter 52 of the sequel, [[spoiler: Doctor Strange enacts the genocide of the [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Red Court of Vampires]] by ''[[KillTheGod murdering]]'' [[KillTheGod Camazotz, the Mayan God that spawned them]]]]. While they were a genuinely AlwaysChaoticEvil species of magical monsters, some of the collateral damage discussed when the same event takes place (with different means and participants) in the relevant canon - for instance, partly infected heroic members of a resistance organisation not only lose their superpowers, but if they're past a certain age, suffer from NoImmortalInertia. This is again presented somewhat ambiguously; in this case, as something dark, though perhaps necessary, and something that emphasises just how terrifying [[spoiler: Strange]] is capable of being.

* In ''LightNovel/DateALive'' Sir Isaac Ray Peram Westcott uses a manner of speaking very different from what he really wants. He uses the word "rewrite" when he really meant "cataclysm", "destruction", "death", "annihilation", "genocide", "war" and other depraved things that humanity can invoke on the world. He often says that in order to make a mind game with people who are listening to this.
* In Creator/HarryHarrison's ''Literature/{{Deathworld}}'', their world has gotten really too death-y, so they decide to emigrate. There is a nice planet with a nice plateau BUT the plateau is inhabited. The Deathworlders suggest simply eliminating this population. 'Oh no' says the hero, 'that would be wrong'. Instead, they lead this war-like race off the plateau to rich farmlands where they can cut a swathe through the native population, enjoy their luxuries, get seduced by the lifestyle and never return to the plateau. This wholesale slaughter is 'oh well you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs'.

* In ''Literature/MoDaoZuShi'', the cultivation world fights back against the tyranny of the Wen Clan. Later it is revealed that the sects had hunted down the non-cultivator members of the clan, even the elderly and children. Wei Wuxian had attempted to save a few Wen members that were left, but was vilified and killed, and all the remaining Wen members were killed. Thirteen years later, the Wen Sect, which had previously been the largest sect, had all been killed. [[spoiler:Except 4 year old Wen Yuan, who had been found, hidden, and eventually revealed to be Lan Shizui.]]
* Likely the largest genocide ever imagined is at the conclusion of the ''Literature/SkylarkSeries''. The protagonists have previously tangled with the "ameboid" Chlorans, who attack, enslave and exploit humans (but do not exterminate them). In the earlier encounter, there was just one Chloran planet; the option of genocide (called explicitly by that name) was considered, but due to pleadings of "soft-hearted" women the milder option of sending the planet far away was taken. But when discovering a faraway galaxy with ''millions'' of Chloran planets, the protagonist Seaton decides that the Chlorans are "a cancer" and a danger to the entire universe and that nothing would do but to kill every single one of them -- emphatically rejecting any other option. He and his arch-enemy turned ally [=DuQuesne=] proceed to do just that, causing all the Chloran suns to go nova. "The Chlorans died in their uncounted trillions. The greeny-yellow soup that served them for air boiled away. Their halogenous flesh was charred, baked and desiccated in the split-second of the passing of the front wave from each exploding double star, moments before their planets themselves started to seethe and boil. Many died unaware. Most died fighting. Most died in terrible, frantic effort to escape... But they all died." Immediately afterwards, [=DuQuesne=], feeling not the slightest remorse at having just killed ''uncounted trillions'' of sentient beings and destroyed an entire galaxy, proposes to his long-cherished lady love and is thrilled to hear that she truly loves him. ([=DuQuesne=], however, is a [[CardCarryingVillain self-admitted villain]].)

* In the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series, the extermination of the vast majority of the quarian species during the Geth War (which admittedly was initiated by the quarian government under the same logic humanity used in regards to [[{{Franchise/Terminator}} Skynet]], with a Skynet-esque response by the geth) is successively downplayed from one title to the next. With dialogue in the first game stating directly that "the geth killed billions and drove [them] from [their] homeworld," the tie-in novels written by the lead writer of the the first game and part of the second having the third-person narrator directly describe the geth's actions as "genocide in which less than a single percent of the [quarian] population survived", the second game limiting its description to "the Geth drove [them] from [their] homeworld," and the third presenting it as the conflict in which the Geth "won their freedom."

** Meta-example, the game is still plagued with ''horrendous'' lag late game, due to the amount of renders and background calculation which only gets worse as more of the galaxy gets colonized. Obviously, the lag can be alleviated by, shall we say, 'reducing the number of renders', especially those of other empires. This is one of the reasons why [[OmnicidalManiac Fanatical Purifiers]] is quite a popular play style.

** The Black Dragons are a genocidal breed of dragons that have been corrupted by the Old Gods, and now serve their insane master on his quest to ''kill everything.'' In the face of this threat, the Red Dragons, after many years of conflict, decide the only thing to do is to ''declare every single Black Dragon corrupted and beyond redemption and to exterminate every last one of them.'' That's every Black Dragon, Drake, Whelp, and Egg. And the player helps them do this, even personally dispatching the last fertile Black Dragon female and smashing her eggs. The irony of the Red Dragons, the Protectors of Life, being forced to declare indiscriminate oblivion on an entire species is not lost. [[spoiler:However, in a far distant and unrelated quest, there are signs that the Red Dragons have taken steps to purify a Black Dragon egg and to restart the flight anew. With one member: Wrathion, who ended up killing off the entirety of the Black Dragon species, barring himself.]]

* ''VideoGame/YggdraUnion'' has lots of genocide as "justice" when you get to the part where [[spoiler:Yggdra has finally forced the Empire out of her country, then decides to invade Bronquia and destroy it]]. [[spoiler:Even after Kylier tries to get her to realize that she's going to become the new 'evil invader', Yggdra tells her "This is Justice." Then the game forces you to mow through the 'Bronquian Militia', which is a basically a bunch of level 1 units trying to defend their homeland, and makes you feel very bad about it.]] "What is Justice?" is a question that a lot of people are asking throughout the game.

* The Armenian Genocide was a TropeMaker for 20th century genocides to come, and indeed Raphael Lemkin coined the word to describe Turkey's actions against Armenia after attending the trial in Berlin of the Assassin of Talaat Pasha [[note]](one, if not THE key culprit of the Armenian Genocide; his aforementioned killer, a Genocide survivor called Soghomon Tehlirian, killed Talaat before either Russians or Brits could get to him, and ultimately was acquitted on grounds of temporary insanity)[[/note]]. The Republic of Turkey passionately denies it was a genocide to this day, mainly to protect their reputation and avoid paying reparations. There are citizens in Turkey who [[OldShame want the government to acknowledge the genocide]], though they may not be the majority since the country is very nationalistic, and in fact, people have been prosecuted saying genocide occurred under a law criminalizing "insulting Turkishness". This gets tied into international politics because Azerbaijan, an avowed enemy of Armenia and close ally of Turkey, ''[[YankTheDogsChain demands]]'' that Turkey [[InvokedTrope refuse to acknowledge the genocide]]. Not that Turkey's government is in a particular rush to do so anyway, Azerbaijan just gives them another excuse.

* The situation is similar with what happened to the Pontic Greeks, considered a Genocide in Greece and of course not in Turkey. The Assyrians suffered a similar fate as well at around the same time. Unsurprisingly, many Assyrians and Greeks on the net supported Armenians in regards to ''The Promise''.

* The disappearance of Muslims from Greece (and, later, the rest of the Balkans excluding Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Albania) is sometimes incorrectly identified as this. In 1923, after the long and bloody affair that was the Turkish War of Independence (in which the Turks soundly defeated the British, French, Italians, and Greeks ''put together''), the Greeks and the Turks jointly negotiated a treaty providing for the exchange of populations: Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey for Muslims in Greece. As a result, approximately 1.5 million (surviving; the Turks had already perpetrated the Pontic Greek genocide, which claimed between 750 and 900,000) Christians for about 500,000 (surviving; there had been reprisals, pogroms and other atrocities perpetrated against Turks and Jews in Greek Macedonia since the Ottomans had ceded it) Muslims. The incredible, full-circle irony of this is that the population transfers were based on religion, not ethnic or cultural identity. The result was that many Greek (and Greek-speaking) Muslims were deported to Turkey and Orthodox Turks were expelled to Greece. The whole affair remains a source of much bad blood between Greece and Turkey (though they've both grown closer recently), and many people from both countries feel they were more the victim, and it's one reason why the Armenian genocide is a BerserkButton issue in Turkey, being seen by many as a DoubleStandard. Still, as it stands today, Turkey is about 99.8% Muslim (some sources put the Christian population of the country at about 1,000), while there remain large Muslim populations in the Balkans (majority populations in Albania and Kosovo, minority in Bulgaria, and plurality in Bosnia).

** Academic historians who regarded reports after the opening of the Soviet Archives note the difficulty of seeing the famine, or any famine, as legally falling under the 1948 definition of genocide, since if the famine was deliberately engineered to starve Ukrainians, it did not explain how it affected regions outside Soviet Ukraine, in Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus where millions starved in conditions and situations similar to the Ukraine. The causes of the famine and its links to Stalin's policies of collectivization are also contentious, since famine had been common in Russia since the Russian Empire, and the harvest at the start of 1933 was lower than projected and there was a drought that led to the start of the crisis, which at the very least seems to question intent and co-ordination. Supporters note that unlike Lenin, who allowed foreign aid and backed off war communism in favour of NEP in response to a similar famine in the early 20s (caused largely by the Russian Civil War deprivations), Stalin's USSR did no such thing and intensified persecution of the kulaks during collectivization and refused to allow international observers to visit the famine-stricken Kuban area in Ukraine where the majority of people died in the famine.

--->The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. ''I made the visit'' [to Gotha] ''deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”'' [Italics made by a TV Tropes editor.]

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': [[KnightOfCerebus Yhwach]] has a history of targeting the Quincies whenever he wants to redistribute Quincy power, or simply power himself up. Six years before the story began, he enacted ThePurge on all "impure" Quincies, killing entire generations of men, women, and children. He doesn't refer to this as "genocide"; he refers to it as Auswahlen, or "Holy Selection". When he uses a minor version on pure Quincies he no longer deems useful just to power up his "useful" Quincy, he tells the victims they should be happy because they're "supporting" their comrades. [[spoiler:The only Quincy in history known to be immune to Auswahlen is Uryuu, who has been KickedUpstairs by Yhwach in an attempt to find out why.]]

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'': Operation British in the series' BackStory provided the [[TropeNamer trope-naming]] ColonyDrop, which first involved completely annihilating a space colony's population with chemical weapons. The manga series ''Manga/MobileSuitGundamTheOrigin'', which covers the events leading up to the original anime, includes this operation. Admiral Dozle Zabi invokes this trope when, while briefing Lieutenant Ranba Ral on Zeon's plans, Ranba reacts incredulously to the outright murder of an entire colony's citizens. Specifically, Dozle tries to convince Ranba to command the operation by downplaying the genocidal aspect--not only countering that Ranba [[NotSoDifferent was already responsible for the deaths of a hundred million colonists]] but that the colony group was a defeated enemy nation. Using one of their colonies as a weapon, Dozle tried to argue, would make their deaths "count for something." Ranba disagrees, considers this operation the work of the devil, [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight and refuses to take part any further]].

* In the ''Comicbook/StrontiumDog'' arc "The FinalSolution", [[ANaziByAnyOtherName The New Church]] publicly claims that they're moving the mutant population in New Britain to new homes in another dimension where they can live in peace away from normal human beings. What they're really doing, however, is rounding up mutants from their ghettos and dumping them in a dimensional wasteland to be stranded and killed by an EldritchAbomination, but they know that nobody would make much fuss if they make it sound like a peaceful relocation program.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}'', Xavin's attempt to bring an end to the war between their homeworld and Majesdane resulted in both worlds being wiped out. While Xavin's homeworld was just one colony of the larger Skrull Empire, so far as we know, the Majesdanians had only their planet and maybe a colony or two elsewhere, and thus it can be assumed that the Majesdanians are nearly extinct (to say nothing of any other lifeforms that lived on their planet...)

* ''Film/NeverLetMeGo'': People "are completed" on an industrial scale. [[spoiler:And "completed" actually equals harvested for their organs. The main characters are clones who have been created specifically for this task.]]

* Played straight to the very end of the ''Film/{{Critters}}'' quadrilogy. Even in the last movie, where they hint at this trope being in place, when the crites have almost completely been annihilated but cannot be completely made extinct because galactic law prevents doing this, those trying to protect the last of the critters assume the role of the 'bad' guys, even though one of them, the shapeshifter 'Ug', was a returning 'good guy' from all the previous movies. [[spoiler:In the end, the 'bad guys' are defeated and the last of the crites are destroyed and that evil bastard Ug who was trying to save them from extinction is killed as well, and there is much rejoicing. Ug had the upper hand in the situation, but the 'good guys' took him down by pointing their guns at the last of the crite eggs, and he had to make a fatal mistake trying to protect them. Isn't it nice when the 'good guys' use sleazy bad guy tactics to kill the virtuous bad guy?]]
* In the Holocaust drama ''Film/Conspiracy2001'', the word "extermination" is almost never used, and is not written down as such by the secretary. Instead, everything is couched in euphemisms. Interestingly, this was before the specific word "genocide" to denote such mass slaughters was coined. Coupled with the TranslationConvention, Kritzinger and Lange struggle to come up with something that would encapsulate it, as "war" is thoroughly insufficient, and settle on ''"chaos"''.
* ''Film/{{Denial}}'' is about "historian" David Irving's RealLife Holocaust denial and his attempt to silence real historian Deborah Lipstadt from calling him a Holocaust denier via [[FrivolousLawsuit a frivolous libel lawsuit]].
* ''Film/TheSubstitute4FailureIsNotAnOption'': Karl Thomasson has a discussion about the Holocaust with Buckner, a student who is part of a Neo-Nazi cult at the MilitaryAcademy Thomasson is teaching at. Thomasson dismantles Buckner's rather pathetic attempt to downplay the figure from six million to five hundred thousand by pointing out that the violation of ThouShaltNotKill in itself is the issue, not the raw number.
-->'''Thomasson:''' Let's say it was a thousand. A thousand innocent people murdered, not for something they did, but for who they were. If that's not a holocaust, what the hell would you call it?
-->'''Buckner:''' [[KickTheDog I call it bad luck.]]

* In Charlie Jane Anders' The City In The Middle Of The Night, every member of a nomadic civilization is killed [[spoiler: except two people. Aliens killed the nomads because they stole natural resources and hurt their babies. The author makes the aliens sympathetic and [[UnfortunateImplications justifies the genocide.]]]]
* In ''LightNovel/DateALive'' Sir Isaac Ray Peram Westcott uses a manner of speaking very different from what he really wants. He uses the word "rewrite" when he really meant "cataclysm", "destruction", "death", "annihilation", "genocide", "war" and other depraved things that humanity can invoke on the world. He often says that in order to make a mind game with people who are listening to this.
* R. A. Salvatore's novels about [[Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt Drizzt]] feature the massacre of entire groups as a social institution for the dark elves of Menzoberranzan, although usually conducted on a smaller scale then genocidal: Killing a group of people is a crime, but only members of that group can make the official complaint. Thus: If you successfully kill everyone, so no one is left to protest, no crime can be said to have been committed. Ironically, this institution is also a part of how they maintain social order: If one of the royal houses falls out of favor with their evil Goddess, then other houses will use this system to gang up on them.
* The Literature/{{Illuminatus}} Trilogy: In one of the many versions of the backstory, Gruad has just destroyed Atlantis, wiping out its entire population: "But deep inside, he knows that what he has done isn't nice".

* ''Literature/EndersGame''. Throughout the book ChildSoldiers are being trained to fight in case an alien race known as the Buggers invade like they'd done twice before, the last time being 70 years prior. [[spoiler: It turns out in the end that the ChildSoldiers were actually being trained to launch an invasion against the ''Buggers'', resulting in the extermination of their species via EarthShatteringKaboom while tricking the children into thinking they were only playing a game. The Buggers themselves, thought to be AlwaysChaoticEvil by most Earthlings and portrayed as such in propaganda, were actually peaceful, having ended their hostilities against mankind generations ago. And the initial hostilities were an honest misunderstanding. They didn't mean to start a war, they were just saying "hello" by introducing their drone-soldiers to our territory and having them fight a bit. Drone-soldiers killing each other is roughly analogous to a hand-shake because each individual drone has no mind of its own. They had no idea that ALL of our drone-soldiers were actually individual Queens. How insane is that, an entire race of Queens and nothing but Queens? Who could possibly have predicted such a form of intelligent life existed? They became passive when they realized this, in the sense of only now fighting a defensive war. They made no further attacks and merely tried their best to not be wiped out by the vengeful hand of humans, who they were trying desperately to communicate their apology to. (It nearly worked.)]]
* In the children's book ''The Inventors'', the two main characters Nate and Cat have won a scholarship with the world's greatest inventor Ebenezer Saint, [[spoiler: who they discover is planning to destroy humanity and start rebuilding society from scratch.]] At one point, [[spoiler: Saint begins rolling out a list of euphemisms for what he's about to do, before asking for suggestions for more. He accepts Nate's suggestion of "Begin the genocide", but calls him a drama queen for it.]]
* In Creator/HarryHarrison's ''Literature/{{Deathworld}}'', their world has gotten really too death-y, so they decide to emigrate. There is a nice planet with a nice plateau BUT the plateau is inhabited. The Deathworlders suggest simply eliminating this population. 'Oh no' says the hero, 'that would be wrong'. Instead, they lead this war-like race off the plateau to rich farmlands where they can cut a swathe through the native population, enjoy their luxuries, get seduced by the lifestyle and never return to the plateau. This wholesale slaughter is 'oh well you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs'.
* Likely the largest genocide ever imagined is at the conclusion of the Literature/SkylarkSeries. The protagonists have previously tangled with the "ameboid" Chlorans, who attack, enslave and exploit humans (but do not exterminate them). In the earlier encounter, there was just one Chloran planet; the option of genocide (called explicitly by that name) was considered, but due to pleadings of "soft-hearted" women the milder option of sending the planet far away was taken. But when discovering a faraway galaxy with ''millions'' of Chloran planets, the protagonist Seaton decides that the Chlorans are "a cancer" and a danger to the entire universe and that nothing would do but to kill every single one of them -- emphatically rejecting any other option. He and his arch-enemy turned ally [=DuQuesne=] proceed to do just that, causing all the Chloran suns to go nova. "The Chlorans died in their uncounted trillions. The greeny-yellow soup that served them for air boiled away. Their halogenous flesh was charred, baked and desiccated in the split-second of the passing of the front wave from each exploding double star, moments before their planets themselves started to seethe and boil. Many died unaware. Most died fighting. Most died in terrible, frantic effort to escape... But they all died." Immediately afterwards, [=DuQuesne=], feeling not the slightest remorse at having just killed ''uncounted trillions'' of sentient beings and destroyed an entire galaxy, proposes to his long-cherished lady love and is thrilled to hear that she truly loves him. ([=DuQuesne=], however, is a [[CardCarryingVillain self-admitted villain]].)
* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': During the assault on a Peacekeeper mountain fortress in District 2, Gale comes up with the idea of causing a landslide to trap them inside; he even wanted to bomb the railway leading out of it to ensure there are no survivors (they decide to leave the railway open). When told that there were District 2 civilians inside, he said that he felt they deserved to die as well. The rebels go through with the plan, and hundreds (if not thousands) die as a result of Gale's actions.
* ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' has the far-right, misogynist regime of the [[KnightTemplar Confederation]] carrying out a "soft" genocide on the LadyLand Azania. While not physically exterminating the Amazons after conquering their country, they systematically destroy their culture and re-educate or enslave the survivors, and they also deprive them of the advanced technology they need to reproduce in the absence of men, thereby ensuring their extinction as a people. This is presented as freeing them from horrible oppression, as they are returned from their wayward, Godless way of life to woman's proper place in the world as wife and mother.

** The White witch is revealed to have killed EVERYONE on her (original) world (with a single word no less) [[ValuesDissonance but it's ok, it was in self-defense, she had just lost all of her soldiers]]

** One tactic involved [[spoiler:mass cloning another individual, [[SdrawkcabName Allitnil]], who is irresistible to the Lintillas. Each Allitnil and Lintilla pair would be tricked into signing a death warrant under the guise of a marriage license, and the two of them would be vapourised]]. If later series are to be believed, the plan was quite unsuccessful.

* TheOtherWiki has more information on this [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_justification here]].

[[folder:Real Life]]

* In the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series, the extermination of the vast majority of the quarian species during the Geth War (which admittedly was initiated by the quarian government under the same logic humanity used in regards to [[{{Franchise/Terminator}} Skynet]], with a Skynet-esque response by the geth) is successively downplayed from one title to the next. With dialogue in the first game stating directly that "the geth killed billions and drove [them] from [their] homeworld," the tie-in novels written by the lead writer of the the first game and part of the second having the third-person narrator directly describe the geth's actions as "genocide in which less than a single percent of the [quarian] population survived", the second game limiting its description to "the Geth drove [them] from [their] homeworld," and the third presenting it as the conflict in which the Geth "won their freedom." It goes the other way, too; in the first game, Shepard can directly point out that the first strike against the Geth was an attempt at genocide, in the second there's a major Quarian faction who think it should be acknowledged as such, but by the third, the comparison is avoided even though we see recordings of Quarian kill teams massacring surrendering unarmed Geth. The Quarians actively trying to wipe out the Geth race during the game is also never called out.
** Another example from the series is the krogan genophage. With only 1 of 1000 infants surviving birth, the species is slowly, but surely dying out. While some people, like Maelon, regret it and see it as what it really was, most people, especially salarians and turians, try to downplay and justify it. This is a (potential) major point of conflict with Mordin, who goes ''out of his way'' to beat about it. As of the third game, he too realizes it was a mistake.

* Whether the UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny period of the US counted as one towards the Native-Americans varies ''hugely'' on who you ask, with generational gaps accounting for a large portion of it. Aside from the numerous broken treaties with tribes, there were also [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools boarding schools]] whose primary purpose was to [[WhiteMansBurden "properly" educate native children]], barring them from speaking their native tongue and otherwise [[AssimilationAcademy ensuring they would be assimilated]] into the European-dominant culture in the US. The now-infamous American (former) professor Ward Churchill invoked this in his book ''A Little Matter of Genocide.'' He naturally argues that it ''was''.

->''"Who now remembers the Armenians?"''

** During the genocide in Darfur, European authorities were very reluctant to call it a genocide, instead repeating the cop-out from Rwanda and calling it "Genocide-like acts". In this particular case, intervening would make them look bad as "intervention" has become a very dirty word in light of {{the War on Terror}}. Thus it was not a genocide. This didn't prevent the International Criminal Court from issuing a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir specifically indicting him for three counts of genocide (as well as five counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes). The arrest warrant has not been served, as al-Bashir has made a point of not visiting any country that might arrest him.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': [[TheEmperor Yhwach]] has a history of targeting the Quincies whenever he wants to redistribute Quincy power, or simply power himself up. Six years before the story began, he enacted ThePurge on all "impure" Quincies, killing entire generations of men, women, and children. He doesn't refer to this as "genocide"; he refers to it as Auswahlen, or "Holy Selection". When he uses a minor version on pure Quincies he no longer deems useful just to power up his "useful" Quincy, he tells the victims they should be happy because they're "supporting" their comrades. [[spoiler:The only Quincy in history known to be immune to Auswahlen is Uryuu, who has been KickedUpstairs by Yhwach in an attempt to find out why.]]

* ''WebVideo/{{Macintyre}}'' has a theory video that the Hyrulean Civil War described in ''Ocarina of Time'' was essentially a Sheikah genocide that left Impa the sole survivor of her race. The royal family promptly washed away all evidence of the war and pretended that it didn't happen.

* This trope and UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower are the reasons why we have so much footage of then-recently liberated concentration camps: as the head of the American armed forces in Europe, when he saw one of the concentration camps, he ordered that footage of life in them be taken so that, by their sheer awfulness, [[GenreSavvy no one could credibly deny the crimes of the Nazis]].

** ''Film/ANewHope'': The EvilEmpire regime removes the Galactic Senate just before they destroy the populated planet Alderaan. Thus, there is no Senate that can protest against this atrocity. While they don't say outright that the upcoming demonstration of the Death Star's firepower is the reason why they removed the Senate, it sure is convenient timing.

** The Bible chronicles the extermination of many peoples, in some cases directly commanded by God. In one of the more famous examples, Numbers 31 states all male Midianites were killed by Israel, down to newborn infants, as were all women who were not virgins. The virgins were [[FateWorseThanDeath taken as slaves]]. The tone of the book does not indicate that this act should be condemned as genocide. The theological implications are not a [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement good topic for discussion]], but the tone does hint at how societies of the era viewed such horrors.

** In chapter 52 of the sequel, [[spoiler: Doctor Strange somehow enacts the genocide of the [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Red Court of Vampires]]]]. While they were a genuinely AlwaysChaoticEvil species of magical monsters, some of the collateral damage discussed when the same event takes place (with different means and participants) in the relevant canon - for instance, partly infected heroic members of a resistance organisation not only lose their superpowers, but if they're past a certain age, suffer from NoImmortalInertia. This is again presented somewhat ambiguously; in this case, as something dark, though perhaps necessary, and something that emphasises just how terrifying [[spoiler: Strange]] is capable of being.

* In ''WebVideo/RWBYButBetter'', it's mentioned that Pyrrha's father is the leader of a movement that wants the "mass removal" of the [[LittleBitBeastly Faunus]] from his country. This also involves eradicating them.

-->'''Buckner:''' I call it bad luck.

* ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'' ends with the [[EnergyBeings energy-based]] Drej being annihilated and recycled as fuel for a great world-building project. The film starts with the Drej themselves committing genocide against humans by [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroying Earth]]. Only a few thousand humans are left, scattered among the stars and treated as scum. Bitterly ironic as well, as the Drej's prophecy wound up becoming self-fulfilling due to their paranoia. If the Drej hadn't chased the humans to Titan, then it would have been just a very large derelict within an asteroid field, as there wouldn't be nearly enough power to activate it.