Semantic gripe

[jhetley]

I've noticed a tendency, even on PBS, to lump all sorts of nasty behavior under the title "genocide".  Cambodia, for all the hell of the Khmer Rouge, was not genocide.  I'm not sure that Darfur qualifies as genocide -- from this distance, it looks like a mix of religious pogrom and ethnic cleansing, where moving the subject people the hell out means more than killing them off wholesale.

Rwanda, that was genocide.

Comments

[antonstrout.livejournal.com]

Does the amount of chicken nuggets I got today off the dollar menu count as chicken genocide? Or chicken flavored product genocide?

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

I recall analogous concerns about misuse of the term "to decimate" -- which may, for all I know, now no longer be considered misusages...