The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of TransgressionGenocide is not only a problem of mass death, but also of how, as a relatively new idea and law, it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of international criminal law, atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes', blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide, then, can function ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The Problems of Genocide contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security' imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats. |
Contents
Preface | |
The Problems of Genocide | |
The Language of Transgression | |
The Language of Transgression 1890s to 1930s 94 | |
Raphael Lemkin and the Protection of Small Nations 136 | |
The Many Types of Destruction 169 | |
Inventing Genocide in the 1940s 201 | |
Permanent Security | |
The Nazi Empire as Illiberal Permanent Security 277 | |
Human Rights Population Transfer and | |
Partition | |
Lemkin Arendt Vietnam and Liberal Permanent Security 395 | |
Genocide Studies and the Repression of the Political 441 | |
Holocaust Memory Exemplary Victims and Permanent | |
Index 512 | |
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The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression A. Dirk Moses No preview available - 2021 |
Common terms and phrases
acts Africa Allies American Arab Armenian atrocities attacks barbarism bombing British called Cambridge University Press century chapter Christian civilians civilization colonial Commission committed concept conscience continued Convention countries crimes criminal cultural Darfur destroy destruction Duke University East effect Empire enemy ethnic Europe European extermination fact forces Foreign Genocide German global groups History Hitler Holocaust Human Rights humanitarian imperial India Institute International Law Jewish Jews Journal killing land language later leaders League Lemkin liberal London mass massacres means military minority moral murder Muslim Nazi Nuremberg occupied Origins Ottoman Oxford Oxford University Press Palestine partition Peace permanent security political population prevent problem protection question race racial reason referred regarded regime represented resistance Responsibility Review rule settlers Social Society Soviet Studies supported terrorism thought transfer transgression Trials United University Press victims violence warfare Western World York