History Main / WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide

* In ''Series/TheEvent'', when the only possible refuge left for the aliens is Earth and its resources clearly won't suffice for both them and the humans, [[NecessarilyEvil Sophia]] concludes that "we need to make room". One of her henchmen, who had until recently acted as TheMole inside the U.S. government and [[BecomingTheMask gradually grew to sympathize with the humans]], immediately calls her out on it: "You mean GENOCIDE!"

* ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'': Once the player's Inkling or Octoling arrives at Alterna's rocket with Agents 1 and 2, they all meet [[spoiler:Mr. Grizz, CEO of Grizzco Industries, who plots to cover the world with Fuzzy Ooze to restore the age of mammals. Owing to Mr. Grizz's attitude of being a professional businessman (or business ''bear'' in this case), he advices the team to not call his plot "Hairmaggedon" because HR "doesn't like it".]]

* In ''Videogame/Halo2'', after the changing of the guard, the remaining Prophets initiate an Order 66-style genocide of the Elites, disguised as a Brute uprising.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' gives us the kett, a race of ScaryDogmaticAliens that invaded the Heleus Cluster and almost immediately started a war of extinction against the native angara roughly eighty years before the Andromeda Initiative arrived. It takes about a third of the game to uncover that the kett [[spoiler:are actually perpetuating an AssimilationPlot that can be summed up as "convert any compatible specimen of every species we can get our paws on into more kett, kill the rest, then move on". It's literally the only way they can procreate because they ''intentionally'' removed their reproductive organs via genetic engineering, which means they willingly chose to become [[TheVirus a plague]] on the galaxy that has genocide of everything non-kett hard-coded into their life cycle. They call this insanity "exaltation", have built their entire society around it, treat it with religious zeal, and [[BlueAndOrangeMorality honestly think they're doing their victims a great favor]].

The option to be offended is an interesting one.

->- How dare you accuse me, my country, or my Lord of genocide?\\
- But it's true!\\
- That's not the point. The point is that I get offended when you say such horrible things!

* Avoid admitting it, and down-scale the figures. [[DirtyBusiness Maybe it was not 'right']], [[IDidWhatIHadToDo but it was necessary]]. The demographic/species you dealt with [[WrittenByTheWinners were quite definitely]] AlwaysChaoticEvil, and [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming it was all their fault anyway]] -- [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar it was you or them]]! Your own lot suffered so much more than they did that you can't even imagine how offensive it would be to suggest that ''they'' came off worse just because you dealt with them all! This trope is also how we got the term "ethnic cleansing", which was an euphemism by perpetrators to avoid saying "genocide".

* Avoid admitting it, and down-scale the figures. [[DirtyBusiness Maybe it was not 'right']], [[IDidWhatIHadToDo but it was necessary]]. The demographic/species you dealt with [[WrittenByTheWinners were quite definitely]] AlwaysChaoticEvil, and [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming it was all their fault anyway]] -- [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar it was you or them]]! Your own lot suffered so much more than they did that you can't even imagine how offensive it would be to suggest that ''they'' came off worse just because you dealt with them all! This tropes is also where we got the term "ethnic cleansing", which was an euphemism by perpetrators to avoid saying "genocide".

* Avoid admitting it, and down-scale the figures. [[DirtyBusiness Maybe it was not 'right']], [[IDidWhatIHadToDo but it was necessary]]. The demographic/species you dealt with [[WrittenByTheWinners were quite definitely]] AlwaysChaoticEvil, and [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming it was all their fault anyway]] -- [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar it was you or them]]! Your own lot suffered so much more than they did that you can't even imagine how offensive it would be to suggest that ''they'' came off worse just because you dealt with them all!

* Avoid admitting it, and down-scale the figures. [[DirtyBusiness Maybe it was not 'right',]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo but it was necessary.]] The demographic/species you dealt with [[FanonDiscontinuity were quite definitely]] AlwaysChaoticEvil, and [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming it was all their fault anyway]] -- [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar it was you or them]]! Your own lot suffered so much more than they did that you can't even imagine how offensive it would be to suggest that ''they'' came off worse just because you dealt with them all!

* ''VideoGame''/{{Xenogears}} : The Solarian approach to ''anything on the planet below,'' both mentioned by its soldiers and commmand, and so codified in the culture that a child's toy shouting "Purge the Lambs" is something casually mentioned in the Solaris capital Etrenank/Etamananki. Also what happened at their hands to the TeamPet Chu-chu's [[LastOfTheirKind species]], which was reduced to just her and a few left in Shevat.

* ''VideoGame''/{{Xenogears}}: The Solarian approach to ''anything on the planet below,'' both mentioned by its soldiers and commmand, and so codified in the culture that a child's toy shouting "Purge the Lambs" is something casually mentioned in the Solaris capital Etrenank/Etamananki. Also what happened at their hands to the TeamPet Chu-chu's [[LastOfTheirKind species]], which was reduced to just her and a few left in Shevat.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Wiki/TheOtherWiki has more information on this [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_justification here]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_denial here]].
* The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide compels all nations that have signed it to act with full force to stop and prevent any acts of genocide in the world. Most modern versions of this trope are usually countries trying to cop out of this agreement since they have neither the resources nor the desire to get involved in a long, drawn-out conflict with little apparent gain to the intervening countries ("It's a civil war, not a genocide!"):
** The massacres in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) by the Pakistani government in 1971 provide a particularly grisly example. UsefulNotes/RichardNixon viewed Pakistan as a Cold War ally and used its leader, Yahya Khan, to negotiate America's "opening" with Maoist China. Therefore the US not only refused to condemn Pakistan but actually supported them. The Bangladeshis did resist Pakistani military action, and India ultimately intervened in the conflict, so the violence wasn't entirely one-sided. But the mass killings of Bengalis predated any concerted resistance, let alone India's involvement.
** During the genocide in Rwanda and the slaughter of a large chunk of the population for being the Tutsi and not Hutu, the UN and major nations insisted on calling the events genocide-like acts as a way of {{loophol|eAbuse}}ing out of doing anything. The USA was a particular abuser of this –- since the Somalian intervention in 1993 blew up in their face, they didn't want to risk another failure. Probably the best account of this is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barnett Michael Barnett]]'s ''Eyewitness to a Genocide'', which documents it from the perspective of someone who actually worked at the UN at the time (it isn't pretty).
** 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 UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. 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.
*** They are in essence {{Guilt Free Extermination War}}s by this "civil war" definition, which is saying something.
* [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Imperial Japanese Army Chinese Expeditionary force policies on the treatment of POW, subjugation of partisans, and establishment and maintenance of 'Comfort Houses']] during [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar the eight-year]] [[InsistentTerminology China Incident]] [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil don't make for pleasant or socially-acceptable small talk]].
* During World War II, [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust most Germans]] and a lot of people in the allied nations as well refused to acknowledge that the concentration camps were really death camps -– even if they knew the truth for certain, it was so much easier to pretend it wasn't happening. To this day, there are still people who cling to the fantasy that the Holocaust didn't happen at all, or that it "only" happened to the Jews -– thus retconning away the ''other'' victims: the Slavs, the gays, the intellectuals, the Romani, the mentally disabled, and so on.[[note]]Most of the dozen million killed in the various camp systems (concentration, starvation-to-death, slave labour, work-to-death, and extermination) weren't Jews, although Jews were still the single largest group. Interestingly, the number of Soviet civilians indirectly killed under the ''Hunger Plan'' (mass-requisition of food to feed Germany) seems to have been about a dozen-plus million as well (not accounting for 'anti-partisan' actions, starvation behind allied lines, and civilian deaths in combat).[[/note]]
** 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[[labelnote:*]]Nevermind that said Holodomor was documented as an intentional solution to the "Problem of the Ukraine", and involved the intentional starvation of the Ukrainian people by locking them in the area while confiscating all grain supplies[[/labelnote]], 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.
** There is also the fact that the term 'holocaust' is a Greek term meaning sacrifice (as in a sacrifice to God, normally burnt), thus the usage of that particular word so as to imply they were being sacrificed as opposed to brutally murdered may have something to do with it.
* 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.
** This particular one has repercussions elsewhere. A major controversy ensued when Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, urged the U.S. Congress not to recognize the Armenian Genocide; unsurprisingly, this [[WhatTheHellHero was not considered becoming]] of one of America's most respected civil rights organizations. The internal conflict proved to be too much and the ADL has since downplayed the issue, though they're still against recognition.
** 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. In 2021, 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 became 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]].
** Turkey's denial wouldn't quite be such a problem to Armenians if not for its constant foreign meddling whenever the subject comes up in other countries. Not only has it been successful in getting recognition of the genocide blocked in the US, but whenever the subject of making a movie about it comes up in Hollywood, Turkey does its best to find some way to get the project shut down or bring it down after its release. For instance, when the movie ''[[Film/ThePromise2016 The Promise]]'' was released, there was an all-out internet war between Armenians and Turks, with many Turkish trolls bombarding the film's IMDB page with one-star reviews long before the film premiered in theaters and they could possibly have seen it, and purchasing advance tickets to theater screenings only to ask for a refund at the last minute.
** The topic received a significant bump in publicity in June 2016 when the German parliament, the Bundestag, passed a pro-Armenian resolution that explicitly included the term "genocide" in its very name. To say that Turkey was upset would be the understatement of the year. The German motion led to major political turmoil between the two countries that still hasn't been fully settled as of January 2018. German politicians were forbidden from visiting Bundeswehr soldiers stationed at the Turkish air force base Incirlik, and both sides pulled no rhetorical punches for over a year until the situation finally began to relax a bit.
* The situation is similar to 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''.
* OlderThanTheyThink: The Roman destruction of Carthage and its entire population -- and the enslavement of its survivors -- was widely lauded by Romans of its time as both just and necessary, with the worst aspects of Punic culture used as added justification for their annihilation. For years before it actually happened, Cato the Elder, a famous Senator, ended each speech he made with the demand "Carthago delenda est," Latin for "Carthage must be destroyed."
** Of course, in the case of the Ancient World, boasting of destruction of whole tribes and places was common in records, and while it is true that the Romans destroyed the Carthaginian Empire in the Third Punic War, that did not necessarily mean extermination of all Carthaginians. The Romans also converted Carthage into a new colony and encouraged settlement there and made it into a Roman province. Carthage was a merchant oligarchical state and most of its clients simply traded one conqueror for another.
** For Raphael Lemkin, [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades the Albigensian Crusade]] was an outstanding example of a pre-modern genocide. It targeted a religion, Catharism (seen by the Catholic Church as a heresy) and involved mass murder of some 200,000 people who were denied quarter and involved the specific intent for targeting and eradicating an entire belief system and all its practitioners.
* 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 incident in turn was used to justify Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of much of UsefulNotes/RepublicOfArtsakh in 2020.
* The other TropeCodifier of things to come from the C20th: the German treatment of the Herero and Nama peoples of what is now Namibia. [[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide Read of it]], and you can't help seeing the template for the Holocaust. Although they ''had'' taken notes from the Boer Wars of the previous century, they took them to new extremes.
* 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).
* The systematic extermination and/or relocation of indigenous people in the United States was generally depicted by contemporary writers (even Creator/LFrankBaum of all people) as justifiable, necessary, and inevitable, with few exceptions, and they were mythologized as a DyingRace to more or less cover up the fact that it was largely being done on purpose. This kind of myth was also used in Argentina and Australia, countries where European settler-immigrants also wanted the locals to make space for them (but not New Zealand or South Africa, where it was pretty clear that the locals were there to stay). Also used in The Raj (of 1848-1947), wherein the British consistently favoured static/agricultural nations and peoples over nomadic tribes -- most famously in Burma, where they managed to piss off the mountain tribes [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII enough that they sided with]] [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan the Japanese]].
* The famine in the Soviet Union during the 30s, especially in Ukraine described as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor Holodomor]], is sometimes considered a genocide. Even Raphael Lemkin supported recognizing it as such in the early 50s.
** 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.
** Nicolas Werth, an anti-communist demographer, had initially opposed seeing the famine of 1933-1934 as genocide in the wake of the publication of the "Black Book of Communism". Recently, he has lent some support noting that one could possibly regard the actions of the Soviet bureaucracy to Ukraine as an institutional response to the peasant rebellion that broke out at the beginning of collectivization. Ukrainian peasants resisted forced collectivization and requisitions by acts of sabotage, destroying crops, and burning cattle and this led the local Soviets under general orders to stop providing new seeds for planting and likewise provided the internal passport which made it difficult for them to move to gain food in new areas, which aggravated the crisis causing mass starvation, which would fit the legal rubric of genocide if one sees the peasants of the Kuban as a "national/ethnic/religious/racial" group distinct from Ukraine's urban centers and the peasants in the Caucasus/Kazakhstan and Russia. This was Rafael Lemkin's contention since he regarded the Ukrainians as a distinct ethnic entity.
** Timothy Snyder, in his book ''Bloodlands'', also regards the Ukraine famine as a genocide, though he uses different parameters than Lemkin. He noted that if one included political groups under the 1948 contention, then one could identify the actions of the Soviet government as genocidal. He notes that the 1948 UN Genocide Convention was compromised because the Soviet Union deliberately argued against including political groups as categories falling under the criteria for victims of genocide. William Schabas, one of the foremost authorities on genocide, disagrees. He noted that the Soviet Union's refusal to include "political categories" was backed by many countries some of whom such as Sweden/Iran/Egypt/Belgium hardly qualified as Soviet puppets, as well as the World Jewish Congress and that it was determined by the vagueness of defining political groups.
** The Soviet Union protested the inclusion of political affiliation or class as potential classes for genocide along with race, national identity, cultural identity, and religion in the official definition used by the United Nations. [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem As one of the five founding members of the United Nations with a permanent seat on the security council]], they had the clout to have those removed. After all, if they hadn't, then they'd have been guilty of genocide ''several times over''.
* 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, wars, massacres, and bounty programs (such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Genocide in California]]), 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. And this is to say nothing about the effects of the reservation system, the forced displacement of people from traditional lands, and the (usually) well-meaning but ultimately destructive policies that followed them (such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Livestock_Reduction reduction of Navajo livestock]]). The now-infamous American (former) professor Ward Churchill invoked this in his book ''A Little Matter of Genocide.'' He naturally argues that it ''was''. At the very least, the situation hit on every point in Raphael Lemkin's definition, above: the end result was the economic, cultural, and sometimes physical destruction of the Native-American peoples, much of it was coordinated, and much of it intentional. The thorniness of the situation is not helped by being still-present: cultural and linguistic erosion is ongoing, and while it would be difficult to impossible to argue that this was because of modern coordinated practices, the political socioeconomic pressures that contribute to it are a direct result of what came before.
* Peru had a similar story with Alberto Fujimori's "ligation days", but it's not Peru that denies it. Like Iran and a few of Israel's other neighbors with the Holocaust, this one involves countries unrelated to the actual perpetrator: The United States (mostly because of some American companies who supported Fujimori) and Japan (because the Japanese-Peruvian Fujimori resided there for years and it took a ''long'' effort to be brought back to face justice).
* In East and South-East Asia, the Japanese are considered notoriously cavalier about their [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Army's war crimes]] during [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar the 1930s]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and 40s]]. Part of this comes from genuine ignorance, as Japan's right-wing has been partially successful in preventing this from being covered in schools and school textbooks; they fear that acknowledging the 6-20 million dead[[note]]Largely from starvation-related diseases as per the Gulf of Tonkin Famine (c.2 million) in northern Vietnam, Henan Famine of 1942 in Guomindang China (another c.2-3 million), Indian Famine of 1942-43 (another c.2 million) in Bengal and other bits of UsefulNotes/TheRaj that relied on Burmese rice imports, and a few other million resulting from tens of millions of people fleeing Japanese Occupation to live in the most impoverished and agriculturally-poor bits of China during the eight-year war[[/note]], as well as the specifics of the various war crimes and crimes against humanity (biological weapons testing on hundreds of thousands, human medical experimentation on tens of thousands, mass-rape of hundreds of thousands, torture of hundreds of thousands, forced prostitution of tens of thousands, POW deaths from preventable causes[[note]]starvation-related disease being the big one, of course[[/note]] and heavy-handedness[[note]]like being bayoneted or beaten to death for failing to work hard enough because of disease and starvation[[/note]] in the hundreds of thousands, POW-beheading contests, etc, etc) would harm the patriotism and national pride of Japan's youth. Interestingly enough, some surveys of national pride would appear to indicate that the advent of the internet has resulted in a dramatic '''decrease''' in Japanese patriotism, as the i-net-savvy younger generations have started to become aware of their country's horrible war deeds.
* Matthew White, a self-described "atrocitologist", has taken it upon himself to be a scholar of the absolute nadirs of evil human beings have committed. He coined the term hemoclysm ("blood flood") to describe the worst atrocities of history. While World War II tops the list in raw numbers with at least 55M deaths, when the ranks are adjusted for the world's population at the time, it drops to ''ninth''. The Mongol conquests may have killed 40M in the 13th century (#3 in raw numbers, #2 in adjusted rank), and the An Lushan Revolt in the 8th century supposedly claimed 36M (#4 in raw numbers, #1 adjusted). None of these meet the definition of "genocide" since they constitute 'attempted extermination of a people'. Stephen Pinker, who used Matthew White's work as a tiny fraction of his research for ''The Better Angels of Our Nature'', makes the case that hemoclysms and genocides of history have been relatively frequent, and even advances the rather bold claim that they were 'ordinary' in the minds of the people of those eras.
** Of course, this also conflates various types of killing; while the Mongols really did execute a couple of genocides, this only accounted for a small part of their body count. Also, the idea that it was "normal" at the time is modern-day revisionism and propaganda: it wasn't at all. Indeed, one of the major reasons that the Mongols were so harsh to some of their enemies was precisely to terrorize everyone else into surrendering, so that they didn't ''have'' to fight as much. If their enemies just gave up, it was much easier for the Mongols to rule over them. Additionally, some of it was done to end endless inter-tribal violence; by simply killing all the older men (gendercide), they effectively deprived the losing tribe of the ability to take revenge. People like Vlad the Impaler and the Mongols are remembered precisely ''because'' they were unusually harsh, and they were well aware of the psychological impact on the enemy and took full advantage of it.
*** Finally, just as you'd expect of someone whose entire claim to fame rests on massive kill figures, White's numbers are extremely dubious and much-disputed. The supposed topper (the An Lushan Revolt) is a case in point. For a start, in Chinese history, there have nominally been armies or massacres of ''exactly 800,000 people'' no less than ''three hundred times''. This is because [[BlindIdiotTranslation '800,000' was actually shorthand for 'well, nobody knows for sure, but trust us it sure was a hell of a lot']]. Chinese sources on non-800,000 numbers tend to be somewhat wonky at the best of times, especially regarding warfare. On top of this, a great many of the things used to gauge the overall population figures in the area concerned are wonky, like using census and tax returns listing numbers of household (which don't just reflect the population loss, but also the breakdown of the ability to count the people still alive).
* Countless tribes were exterminated in tribal warfare, their names never recorded and the crimes lost to history.
** The standard outcome of a defeated city was to be subject to massacre for much of history. For example, the 1258 Siege of Baghdad ended with roughly two million exterminated. This would be called genocide by most modern scholars.
** 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. In Samuel I Chapter 10, King Saul is ordered to exterminate the Amalekites and is rejected by God (Who goes so far as to ''repent'' selecting him) for being insufficiently thorough in the 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.
* Paul Mojzes in his book ''Balkan Genocides'' argues that the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 were actually a series of genocides -- ones that the world has mostly forgotten, partially because they happened in a rather remote area, and partially because the term "Genocide" had not yet been coined back then. He also argues that some of the events called "ethnic cleansing" (such as the war in Bosnia 1992-95) or "repatriation" (the expulsion of the Germans after World War 2) actually constituted genocide.
* From 1976-1983, the UsefulNotes/NationalReorganizationProcess in Argentina carried out an extensive campaign of what could best be called "politicide", exterminating 30,000 members of various leftist political groups. Right-wing supporters of the junta went into denial, with UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher, and various other Cold War leaders all trying to paint the situation as a civil war -- at least up until the Argentines attacked British territory during UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar in 1982, and it backfired so badly that the Junta ended up falling to pieces in few months.
* Following the rift between Israel and Turkey due to the Mavi Marmara incident, an argument arose in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, regarding the question of acknowledging the Armenian Genocide as such, mostly due to political reasons.
* What the Belgians did to the Congolese is still up for debate as to whether it actually was a genocide, mostly because the Belgians did not try to exterminate the Congolese -- they wanted to enslave them instead. However, if it does count as genocide, then it would have caused far more casualties than the Holocaust. It does not help that Belgium has made Holocaust denial illegal, but denying this doesn't look like a problem; they still have a Monument of Leopold II where it is written: "I have undertaken the work in Congo in the interest of civilization and for the good of Belgium."
* A minority of French historians want the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e War in the Vendée]] (during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution) being recognized as genocide, calling the events "Franco-French genocide". This view is generally considered fringe by most scholars (pro and anti-revolutionary) who noted that the uprising there is more precisely a CivilWar with considerable violence and casualties on both sides. It was the Vendeean Royalists, who first opened fire on the Republic (out of protest at the French government's anti-Catholic policies and {{Conscription}}), when they massacred 200 people at Machecoul, likewise the Committee of Public Safety had considerable local support from Republican Vendeeans, which meant that it wasn't directed against the whole region, but specifically those parts of it that were counter-revolutionary and actively rebelling against the state.
* 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, no one could credibly deny the crimes of the Nazis.
** As Eisenhower [[BeamMeUpScotty is supposed to have said]]:
--->Get it all on record now -– get the films –- get the witnesses –- because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.
** As Eisenhower actually said ([[https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-dwight-eisenhower-say-someday-someone-will-claim-it-never-happened-in-1945/ or possibly]], General George Marshall ''to'' Eisenhower):
--->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.]
* There is actually a common line of thought that the Ancestral Puebloans, formerly referred to as "Anasazi"[[labelnote:explanation]]This word is no longer used to refer to the Ancestral Puebloans as it is a Navajo word meaning "Ancient Enemies"[[/labelnote]] were the victims of a genocide in [[http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/7705 the 9th century AD]], with some people saying it may have been [[https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39268873 a war between differing factions of the same tribe]]. However, at least one documentary explaining the findings basically refused to acknowledge that this ''might'' have been a genocide to spare the feelings of first nation peoples, who still do live in the region.
[[/folder]]

* [[UnPerson Genocide of who...?]] You never killed anyone, let alone these... [[UnPerson what did you say they were they called again?]] That whole time period you are so concerned about was very fuzzy -- badly-documented, lots of records lost. It was a time of great unrest and upheaval. Even if they ''had'' been a real people, ''anything'' could have happened to those guys. Just because this hypothetical demographic is not around today does not mean someone ''killed them all'' -- that is a very serious accusation! [[LeaveNoWitnesses Where is your evidence?]] ...oh, I see. HaveYouToldAnyoneElse No? Well, [[HeKnowsTooMuch nice knowing you]]. [[GenocideBackfire Can't very well start having a conscience]] ''[[LeaveNoWitnesses now]]''...

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

* [[RefugeInAudacity Admit it proudly, and inflate the figures.]] It wasn't just necessary, it was ''right''. The demographic/species you exterminated were AlwaysChaoticEvil, and anyway AMillionIsAStatistic. You might want to put narrative focus on how much better off all non-bad/normal/good people are now that the bad/weird/evil people are no longer around to contaminate and/or prey upon them. The only sad thing about any of it is how many non-bad/normal/good people suffered and died exterminating them. There is room for fudging the figures, but only upward — to make your extermination-achievement look greater, and your losses greater and/or more tragic as well.
* Avoid admitting it, and down-scale the figures. [[DirtyBusiness Maybe it was not 'right',]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo but it was necessary.]] The demographic/species you dealt with [[FanonDiscontinuity were quite definitely]] AlwaysChaoticEvil, and [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming it was all their fault anyway]] — [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar it was you or them]]! Your own lot suffered so much more than they did that you can't even imagine how offensive it would be to suggest that ''they'' came off worse just because you dealt with them all!
* [[UnPerson Genocide of who...?]] You never killed anyone, let alone these... [[UnPerson what did you say they were they called again?]] That whole time period you are so concerned about was very fuzzy — badly-documented, lots of records lost. It was a time of great unrest and upheaval. Even if they ''had'' been a real people, ''anything'' could have happened to those guys. Just because this hypothetical demographic is not around today does not mean someone ''killed them all'' — that is a very serious accusation! [[LeaveNoWitnesses Where is your evidence?]] ...oh, I see. HaveYouToldAnyoneElse No? Well, [[HeKnowsTooMuch nice knowing you]]. [[GenocideBackfire Can't very well start having a conscience]] ''[[LeaveNoWitnesses now]]''...

* ''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 [[NotSoDifferentRemark 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/{{Lucifer}}'' volume ''Mansions of the Silence'', Lucifer annihilates billions of souls as a side effect of saving the life of one single person. (That one person was someone he owed a favor, his billions of victims were not.) Of all the people who witness this tragedy, only Bergelmir says anything about this action being immoral, and even he is quite polite about it. Even so, everyone else simply ignores him as they would a person who's being generally rude, impolite, and socially inappropriate. Those present know that annoying Lucifer is really not the best course of action if your plans involve seeing another day, so they're probably staying quiet out of simple self-preservation. But in any case, elsewhere in the comic, it is mentioned that it's impossible to destroy a soul — it simply unravels and then rewinds itself over millennia. And considering that the Mansions of Silence are in some ways worse than Hell, it could just as well be said that Lucifer granted their inhabitants a break from their usual torment.

** 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 ''Fanfic/KaraOfRokyn'', the nomadic Travelling Clan -to which [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]]'s wrestler rival Jara belongs- was persecuted and nearly wiped out in the past. Although nobody condones such actions nowadays, it's still a touchy subject that Kandorians prefer not to talk about.

--> '''Speaker:''' ''[interrupts]'' Excuse me-

* A ''gameplay mechanic'' in ''VideoGame/AgeOfWonders.'' When you take over a town, you have the option to "migrate" the race currently inhabiting the town, replacing it with a race that's friendly to you. It's a very useful option — say you're a good-aligned race but just took over an undead town and want to replace it with another good-aligned race — but you're still basically committing mass deportation and resettlement...

** You can "purge" anything from individual pops (each of which represents roughly one billion people) to entire species, including your own, but no matter what the game calls it, it's genocide on a mind-boggling scale, the other empires in the galaxy are very aware of it and tend to react suitably appalled if you indulge in it. Methods range from comparatively merciful mass neutering to execution squads systematically going from house to house. The tool tip for the latter option even includes another cynically trivializing term: "dissolution of a people". Early versions of the game allowed absolutely everyone to purge anyone they didn't like, but later updates restricted the ability to purge pops to the morally darkest grey and black empires, which usually means some combination of militaristic and xenophobic mindsets. The most extreme AbsoluteXenophobe factions have this hard-coded into their foreign policy — every alien species they conquer gets purged automatically, resulting in their total extinction in as little as two years.

** During the genocide in Rwanda and the slaughter of a large chunk of the population for being the Tutsi and not Hutu, the UN and major nations insisted on calling the events genocide-like acts as a way of {{loophol|eAbuse}}ing out of doing anything. The USA was a particular abuser of this – since the Somalian intervention in 1993 blew up in their face, they didn't want to risk another failure. Probably the best account of this is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barnett Michael Barnett]]'s ''Eyewitness to a Genocide'', which documents it from the perspective of someone who actually worked at the UN at the time (it isn't pretty).

* During World War II, [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust most Germans]] and a lot of people in the allied nations as well refused to acknowledge that the concentration camps were really death camps – even if they knew the truth for certain, it was so much easier to pretend it wasn't happening. To this day, there are still people who cling to the fantasy that the Holocaust didn't happen at all, or that it "only" happened to the Jews – thus retconning away the ''other'' victims: the Slavs, the gays, the intellectuals, the Romani, the mentally disabled, and so on.[[note]]Most of the dozen million killed in the various camp systems (concentration, starvation-to-death, slave labour, work-to-death, and extermination) weren't Jews, although Jews were still the single largest group. Interestingly, the number of Soviet civilians indirectly killed under the ''Hunger Plan'' (mass-requisition of food to feed Germany) seems to have been about a dozen-plus million as well (not accounting for 'anti-partisan' actions, starvation behind allied lines, and civilian deaths in combat).[[/note]]

* The systematic extermination and/or relocation of indigenous people in the United States was generally depicted by contemporary writers (even Creator/LFrankBaum of all people) as justifiable, necessary, and inevitable, with few exceptions, and they were mythologized as a DyingRace to more or less cover up the fact that it was largely being done on purpose. This kind of myth was also used in Argentina and Australia, countries where European settler-immigrants also wanted the locals to make space for them (but not New Zealand or South Africa, where it was pretty clear that the locals were there to stay). Also used in The Raj (of 1848-1947), wherein the British consistently favoured static/agricultural nations and peoples over nomadic tribes — most famously in Burma, where they managed to piss off the mountain tribes [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII enough that they sided with]] [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan the Japanese]].

* Paul Mojzes in his book ''Balkan Genocides'' argues that the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 were actually a series of genocides — ones that the world has mostly forgotten, partially because they happened in a rather remote area, and partially because the term "Genocide" had not yet been coined back then. He also argues that some of the events called "ethnic cleansing" (such as the war in Bosnia 1992-95) or "repatriation" (the expulsion of the Germans after World War 2) actually constituted genocide.
* From 1976-1983, the UsefulNotes/NationalReorganizationProcess in Argentina carried out an extensive campaign of what could best be called "politicide", exterminating 30,000 members of various leftist political groups. Right-wing supporters of the junta went into denial, with UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher, and various other Cold War leaders all trying to paint the situation as a civil war — at least up until the Argentines attacked British territory during UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar in 1982, and it backfired so badly that the Junta ended up falling to pieces in few months.

* What the Belgians did to the Congolese is still up for debate as to whether it actually was a genocide, mostly because the Belgians did not try to exterminate the Congolese — they wanted to enslave them instead. However, if it does count as genocide, then it would have caused far more casualties than the Holocaust. It does not help that Belgium has made Holocaust denial illegal, but denying this doesn't look like a problem; they still have a Monument of Leopold II where it is written: "I have undertaken the work in Congo in the interest of civilization and for the good of Belgium."

--->Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.

* 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.]]

* ''Literature/AllTheseWorlds'' sees the Bobs carry out a genocide against the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Others]]. They don't like the idea of wiping out an entire sentient species, but the Others have committed ''multiple'' genocides and have shown no desire for negotiation, so the general feeling is that they have no choice. In fact, their attack on the Others' homeworld occurs simultaneously with the Others attacking Earth.

* In the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series, the extermination of the vast majority of the quarian species during the Geth War 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 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."
** ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' gives us the kett, a race of ScaryDogmaticAliens that invaded the Heleus Cluster and almost immediately started a war of extinction against the native angara roughly eighty years before the Andromeda Initiative arrived. It takes about a third of the game to uncover that the kett [[spoiler:are actually perpetuating an AssimilationPlot that can be summed up as "convert any compatible specimen of every species we can get our paws on into more kett, kill the rest, then move on". It's literally the only way they can procreate because they ''intentionally'' removed their reproductive organs via genetic engineering, which means they willingly chose to become [[TheVirus a plague]] on the galaxy that has genocide of everything non-kett hard-coded into their life cycle. They call this insanity "exaltation", have built their entire society around it, treat it with religious zeal, and [[BlueAndOrangeMorality honestly think they're doing their victims a great favor]].

* ''Literature/{{AllTheseWorlds}}'' sees the Bobs carry out a genocide against the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Others]]. They don't like the idea of wiping out an entire sentient species, but the Others have committed ''multiple'' genocides and have shown no desire for negotiation, so the general feeling is that they have no choice. In fact, their attack on the Others' homeworld occurs simultaneously with the Others attacking Earth.

* Uther Pendragon in ''{{Series/Merlin 2008}}'' views his slaughter of magic users and all dragons except [[LastOfHisKind one]] as completely justified. His son, [[Myth/KingArthur Arthur]], [[WellDoneSonGuy goes along with it to please him]], but it's repeatedly shown that he will not kill harmless magic users if he isn't forced into it.

* In ''Videogame/{{Halo 2}}'', after the changing of the guard, the remaining Prophets initiate an Order 66-style genocide of the Elites, disguised as a Brute uprising.

** Justin, the Shadows' human mouthpiece, admits that a few species are "lost" as a result of the Shadows' ideology of encouraging development through conflict. He finds it "unfortunate", and feels that it can't be easy [[ItsAllAboutMe for the Shadows.]]

* ''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 ''Fanfic/LinesAndWebs'', non-equine races can't be magically mind-controlled by Celestia to stop them from being violent, so she plans to drive their species to extinction in order to enact her vision of a peaceful harmonious world. Interestingly {{downplayed|Trope}}, Celestia doesn't want to actively commit genocide, just cause their civilizations to shrink until they die off naturally. Of course, it's still resulting in mass starvation, so [[NotSoDifferent it really isn't any different.]]

* In East and South-East Asia, the Japanese are considered notoriously cavalier about their [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Army's war crimes]] during [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar the 1930s]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and 40s]]. Part of this comes from genuine ignorance, as Japan's right-wing has been partially successful in preventing this from being covered in schools and school textbooks; they fear that acknowledging the 6-20 million dead[[note]]Largely, boringly enough, from starvation-related diseases as per the Gulf of Tonkin Famine (c.2 million) in northern Vietnam, Henan Famine of 1942 in Guomindang China (another c.2-3 million), Indian Famine of 1942-43 (another c.2 million) in Bengal and other bits of UsefulNotes/TheRaj that relied on Burmese rice imports, and a few other million resulting from tens of millions of people fleeing Japanese Occupation to live in the most impoverished and agriculturally-poor bits of China during the eight-year war[[/note]], as well as the specifics of the various war crimes and crimes against humanity (biological weapons testing on hundreds of thousands, human medical experimentation on tens of thousands, mass-rape of hundreds of thousands, torture of hundreds of thousands, forced prostitution of tens of thousands, POW deaths from preventable causes[[note]]starvation-related disease being the big one, of course[[/note]] and heavy-handedness[[note]]like being bayoneted or beaten to death for failing to work hard enough because of disease and starvation[[/note]] in the hundreds of thousands, POW-beheading contests, etc, etc) would harm the patriotism and national pride of Japan's youth. Interestingly enough, some surveys of national pride would appear to indicate that the advent of the internet has resulted in a dramatic '''decrease''' in Japanese patriotism, as the i-net-savvy younger generations have started to become aware of their country's horrible war deeds.

* 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 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."
** ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' gives us the kett, a race of ScaryDogmaticAliens that invaded the Heleus Cluster and almost immediately started a war of extinction against the native angara roughly eighty years before the Andromeda Initiative arrived. It takes about a third of the game to uncover that the kett [[spoiler:are actually perpetuating an AssimilationPlot that can be summed up as "convert any compatible specimen of every species we can get our paws on into more kett, kill the rest, then move on". It's literally the only way they can procreate because they ''intentionally'' removed their reproductive organs via genetic engineering, which means they willingly chose to become [[TheVirus a virus-like plague]] on the galaxy that has genocide of everything non-kett hard-coded into their life cycle]]. They call this insanity "exaltation", have built their entire society around it, treat it with religious zeal, and [[BlueAndOrangeMorality honestly think they're doing their victims a great favor]].

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

* A codex in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' talks about a long series of wars between the Qunari and all the other nations of Thedas. The Qunari were eventually driven back when they withdrew to avoid civilian casualties. In the lands they had occupied, there had been many converts to their strange, totalitarian, and occasionally brutal religion. When the Chantry could not convert them back, they simply purged the civilians and then denied that it ever happened.
** Several codexes about the ''Exalted March Against the Dales'' detail how relations between the Elven Kingdom of the Dales and the other (human) nations soured, so the human Chantry invaded, conquered, and annexed the elven kingdom. The elves were given a "choice": [[JoinOrDie Convert to Chantry worship]] and work as second-class servants and laborers in [[FantasticGhetto fantastic slums]] in human cities, or flee into the forest. Most Chantry clerics hold that the elves should be ''grateful'' that the Chantry gave them that choice at all, rather than slaughter every elf down to the last man, woman, and child, and maintain that since elves fought back in the war that means they weren't "helpless victims."