In my opinion, the page's quote doesn't really work with this trope. It is more commonly translated (from the original German) as "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" This paints a very different picture than the translation on this page; rather than trying to downplay the Armenian genocide, Hitler was not only acknowledging its full extent (one of complete "annihilation") but (if you read the rest of the document that the quote comes from - the Obersalzberg Speech) stating his intentions to replicate it in terms of horrific magnitude and brutality with his own genocide.
Edited by SwineHerd
Why does the Strontium Dog entry suddenly veer off onto a tangent about Magneto, a character from an entirely different comic?
By now, it should be clear to all except the most dense of us that sheep are secretly conspiring to kill us all and steal our pants. Hide / Show Replies
Bad example writeup, I bet.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Deleted this one:
- Few people would say that they are accusing someone of antisemitism for this reason, so this is less "conservatives do this" and more "someone else tries to impugn the motives of conservatives by claiming they do this".
- It is in fact possible for someone to hate Israel for antisemitic reasons and use something else (such as Israel's alliance with South Africa) as an excuse. This happens more than you'd think.
- How many conservatives, anyway?
So does Isriel recognize genocides or not? One guy says it has a poor track record, the other says it only doesn't recognize the one, and only because it was committed by one of its closest allies, and that they're this close to officially recognizing it.
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I was cleaning up the natter and decided to remove that entry. If anybody knows the score, they can rewrite it and put it back if applicable.
- Israel has a surprisingly poor track record in recognizing genocides other than the Holocaust. During a meeting of the Knesset commission focused on whether or not Israel should officially recognize the Armenian genocide, one member said “If we recognize the Armenian Genocide, others will also turn to us regarding the massacre in the Balkans, Holodomor, will remember Pol Pot and Idi Amin. There will be no end to this. We have always believed that genocide of a people, persistent and systematic, occurred only during World War II.”
- Recently the Knesset had a unanimous vote that sent it over to the education committee, a big step towards recognizing it. Probably in the next year it'll be recognized. This is also the only genocide I could find that the Israelis haven't recognized, and that was likely due to not wanting to publicly upset Turkey- the vast majority of Israeli citizens are strongly for recognizing it, the government was just worried about the consequences.
- No, the argument was about calling them ‘holocausts’, not genocides. Acknowledging genocides is an oddly rare issue in Israeli political discourse. With that said, there are a number of Jewish scholars that have outright stated that the Holocaust was a unique event and that no other event like it has ever happened, which is evidently false.
Sen
Would the Armenian Genocide go on the list here?
Probably should get working on that essay now... Hide / Show Replies
However, the Real Life section is getting a bit large. I don't think it's out of hand yet, no need to axe it - but if it keep growing then maybe we should restrict it somehow so it doesn't have to get entierly axed in the future. I'm considering converting it into a Useful Notes page, but... meh. :-)
- The term "Genocide" originated in the mid 1940s, so it would be impossible for anything predating that to be called such by contemporary sources, though debates on ascribing the term to certain historical atrocities are still waged between the descendants of those involved.
- 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 do not have the resources to/have the desire to get involved in a long, drawn out conflict with little apparent gain to the intervening countries.
- The genocide in Rwanda: while a huge part of the population were slaughtered for their descent, the UN and big nations insisted on calling it genocide-like acts. This was possibly a way of loopholing 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.
- 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, they had signed some law saying that they must intervene in genocides, but intervening would make them look bad, as intervention has become a very dirty word in light of recent events. Thus it was not a genocide.
- During World War II, 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 gays, the intellectuals, the romani, the mentally disabled, and so on.
- Older Than Feudalism: The Roman destruction of Carthage and its entire population 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.
- The Armenian Genocide.
- This caused a major controversy when Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, urged the U.S. Congress not to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This was not considered becoming of one of America's most respected civil rights organizations. His rationale was to appease Turkey and encourage them to keep supporting Israel, but the internal conflict proved to be too much and the ADL has since downplayed the issue.
- Israel and Turkey's relations have since pretty much smoldered for different reasons.
- Every year on April 24th, the day commemorating the genocide, the US president in office makes a very carefully worded speech regretting the suffering that Armenians have endured, but he's very careful not to use the word 'genocide', nor to state who was causing the Armenians to suffer. This just ends up irritating both sides for very different reasons, though not enough for Turkey to, say, not let the US use its military bases anymore.
- It's inverted in Switzerland and France, where it's rude NOT to say genocide and you can be arrested and fined for denying the Armenian genocide publicly (it's the same with the Holocaust).
- This caused a major controversy when Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, urged the U.S. Congress not to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This was not considered becoming of one of America's most respected civil rights organizations. His rationale was to appease Turkey and encourage them to keep supporting Israel, but the internal conflict proved to be too much and the ADL has since downplayed the issue.
- French historians still have been known to debate whether or not the "intent" to exterminate a population is the clear and absolute objective: when people are killed so their neighbours will flee the country (Darfur, Bosnia...), it's not considered to be a genocide. When civilians are starved or indiscriminately killed in order to stave of a rebellion (Ukraine's famine, War of Algeria...), it's not considered to be a genocide. When a population is destroyed as a result of uncaring colonization or outright incompetence (Native Americans, Easter Islanders...), it is not considered to be a genocide. While intent is a main component of the definition genocide it's hard to debate that the intent wasn't there for a lot of these examples.
- The disappearance of the Turks from Greece and the Balkans can pretty much be described as this, with the various national movements killing or expelling as many Muslims as they could find upon victory. Fully a third of the modern Turkish Republic's are decended from such Rumelian Muhajirs
.
- Not that it makes it any more right, but the Turks also did this to the Pontic Greeks, another genocide they don't like to acknowledge.
I'm not sure that either of the Star Wars examples fit the trope. The senate was disbanded, not purged or cleansed or any other euphemism, and the Jedi were "revealed" as traitors and the institution outlawed. I just don't see which part of the trope those fall under.
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Also the Senate from Revenge of the Sith killed during the Great Jedi Purge aren't really an ethnic group themselves, rather, they are kind of a political one. One could possibly argue that the Jedi could be a religious or cultural minority though, maybe. Still a bit questionable.
Edited by Surenity My tropes launched: https://surenity2.blogspot.com/2021/02/my-tropes-on-tv-tropes.html
The original edit of the Real Life topic concerning Darfur implied that no action was taken because of a lack of natural resources, such as oil. One, this is chock full of Unfortunate Implications, and two, it's flat-out false. As a matter a fact, Sudan has oil - lots of it, in fact. Look it up if you don't believe me.
I changed the explanation to something much more likely.
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
As I mentioned in my editing notes, "1. The proverb is about good people doing nothing in the face of evil. 2. The trope is about the evil people keeping the true nature of their actions from seeing the light of day. 3. Numbers 1 & 2 have nothing in common with each other."
The focus on this trope is not about good people staying silent when they recognize evil; in fact, they may not even recognize evil in the first place, given that types A, B, and C are all about genocide being covered up with euphemisms, disinformation, and more deaths before most people can fully realize what's going on. And the fact that types A and B can lead to type C is pointless in this discussion because it still has nothing to do with good people doing nothing when they recognize evil.
Why is this on the page? It doesn't contribute anything of immediate value to the specific purpose of this trope. This is a good trope page; it just has this one thing in the description that's entirely useless to anyone reading it.
Edited by SeanMurrayI Hide / Show Replies
Oh.
You think this trope is limited to propaganda et cetera done by a Villain with Good Publicity!
Well, that's not how I intended the trope when I wrote it - and more importantly, if the trope was narrowed down that way then hardly any of the examples would fit anymore.
Your way of using the trope is valid, and I'll add an example where the trope is used that way. Since there's obviously a bit of confusion, I'll also add a clarification about how the trope comes into play.
Okay, I think/hope my clarification solved the problem. And with that I mean not only the little detail with te quote/proverb, I meran the real issue with the understanding of how the trope comes into play.
Also, the thing you bring up, with villains managing to keep a genocide completely secret... Until today, it havn't really been included in this trope at all. But while the trope should never be limited to that concept, I think it's a valid concept to include in the trope. Maybe we should add it as "Type D"?
The way I read it, both Types A and B come off as two separate methods of political spin to sell genocidal action as something that's more socially acceptable. The first one is built on demonizing a target group as something whose continued existence could pose a danger to another community, and the second tries to make the actual act seem more acceptable by giving it a more pleasing name or a deliberately misleading (and deliberately false) good intention.
Type C, on the other hand, isn't even actually a form of genocide. Actions described under that point aren't motivated by race or ethnicity but a preemptive measure to prevent populations that may speak out against a ruling body from doing so. It's certainly a form of mass murder, but genocide is a very specific form of mass murder, and trying to be rid of certain peoples for potentially wanting to speak out and give a different view for what's going on isn't it.
I think the main problem here is that we're actually playing with TWO dimensions here: WHAT is being done (justifying, downplaying, silencing), and WHO is doing it (the evil or otherwise genocidal people, the bystanders doing nothing in the face of evil, or the author of the work).
A and B fits poorly together with C because they are written in different dimensions.
I think the second dimension needs to be included in the trope description. However, this risks making the description too cumbersome. So, I'll make a draft in the sandbox.
Thoughts? Comments?
Btw, this is still a working draft, NOT a suggestion for a revision to take live.
i suggest removing real life examples. this tropes sounds very controversial and is prone to start edit warring. also, most of the real life examples are a giant wall of texts with information better suited for wikipedia. finally, the entire section really reeks ROCEJ violations.
Edited by namra