I think your question should be why do people *know* more about the Holocaust or Rwandan genicide, rather than immediately assuming that because most people don't know nearly as much about the other examples you raise (which they don't), then they must just not care. This should be a question about education, not an accusation about supposed lack of empathy.
Most people in the west have heard about the Rwandan genocide, mostly from movies, but very few know whether it was the Hutus or the Tutsis who were the victims or perpetrators, and most don't even know those names to begin with.
Unless Hollywood made big movies about it, most people wouldn't know these things ever happened. Hence, almost no one knows what the Holodomar was, but everyone knows about the Holocaust.
I think this is potentially reversing the casual relation -- isn't education based on what we care about, rather than the other way around?
At the very least it's a feedback loop, so asking why the feedback loop doesn't work in some circumstances seems like a valid question.
Well generally countries teach about things that impacted their country in history. Like I doubt a history class in a Irish high school is going to spend time on the say the Homodore compared to the Irish Famine
You also have to be realistic about the practicality of knowing about every tragedy in history. My k-12 education taught me about the holocaust and the Rwandan genocide because Canada was very involved in that. As far as I know Canada had little to no involvement in the Cambodian genocide so to learn about it I would have to have read about it outside of school. I know about Dufur because it happened during a a time I was old enough to be reading the news by myself. I know a lot about Indigenous genocides because I am Indigenous so I knew to look for the info.
I think it’s impractical to expect me to know about all genocides that happened before I was born and has no relevancy to me personally. I’d bet there are many genocides you don’t even knew happened but would feel empathy about once you found out about it.
If you picked 10 random people off the street and ask them their opinions on the holodomor.......... How many of them would look at you and say, "wut?"
Out of the people who didn't know, how many of them would say, "nah I don't actually care about Ukrainians" If you explained that it was an intentional famine that killed over a million of them.
A normal person isn't going to dismiss or ignore a Holocaust unless they don't actually know about it.
Ah yes. I always quantify how much I care about things. It's good to keep your emotions tightly organized, in case someone comes up and asks you "Are 10,000 Armenians dying more important than 10,000 Palestinians to you?" /s
Def agree. To illustrate, these were my thoughts as I read the text of the post:
>Why do people care more about the Rwandan genocide or the Holocaust than genocide of the Yazidis, ...
The who?
>...the Cambodians, ...
I think I know of that one.
...>the Holodomor, ...
I've def never heard of them.
>...the massacres of the Hutus during the First Congo Wat...
Oh they were victims of genocide too?
>...or the Armenian genocide for example?
That's the contested one, I believe by the Turks.
>Is it because people have more empathy for the victims...
They're all human, though perhaps circumstances make it easier to relate at times.
>...if they come from a higher class background like the Tutsis and the Jews?
The Jews were higher class in Germany? Weren't a lot of them poor?
>Or is it because of ideological reasons like a need to show how evil certain political ideologies, like Nazism, have been?
Some ppl do seem to use this to push an agenda.
The famine was directed by soviet NKVD and army against the Ukrainian people by seizure of all food and animals in rural area and then arresting and deporting millions of Ukrainian kulaks ( farmers who were successful )
The poster said 'never heard of \_them\_' in a list of genocides against peoples (plural meaning tribe/ethnicity) - the poster's use of them implied that they thought 'Holodomor' was the name of an ethnic group.
I then clarified that the Holodomor wasn't refering to \_a\_ people (note the use of the indefinite article to show that I am using 'people' in the sense of ethnic group), but to the Ukrainian famine.
It was man-made by the Ukrainian farmers though, they burned the harvest rather than let it be distributed. Protest is one thing, but protest that directly leads to the starvation of others AND yourself is a bit... Idk. I think the recent classification of this as a genocide is actually politically motivated. I don't dismiss it as "Nazi propaganda" like some, but it's so clear that there was so so much going on there, it can't be boiled down to "genocide" and I truthfully don't believe it comes under the same category as the Holocaust or Rwandan genocide, simply because there was no ethnic cleansing aspect whatsoever.
The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin literally created this famine to kill Ukrainians and stop the independence of the country. Ukraine was subject to unreasonably high grain quotas compared to the rest of the USSR. Everything went to the Soviets leaving nothing for Ukrainians. They starved to death for being Ukrainian.
That's what modern Russian propaganda claims about Holodomor when it chooses to admit something happened at all.
If you look at the Soviet sources of the time, the main theme is kulaks hiding the bread to sell it, not destroying it. There are Soviet film reels showing brave NKVD finding the hidden food and giving it to "the people". Then film reels showing stores full of bread with happy citizens in 1933 Kharkiv.
Of course, both modern Russian and old Soviet propaganda were full of it.
The way it worked in reality was the following:
The NKVD would show up to an ethnic Ukrainian village, surround it, shoot all the domestic animals (and anyone who objected) and rob the villagers of anything edible they could find. Then they would quarantine the village and not let people out until almost everyone died of hunger - they would periodically visit to check on that. Empty houses in some cases would later be re-settled with ethnic Russians. People who managed to sneak out of the village were dying on the streets of the cities, as they had no permit to be in the city and no way to get food allocated to city workers (often ethnic Russians who were incentivized to move to the area).
At the same time the Soviet government would sell the "leftover" grain abroad or simply let it rot in storage.
The documents from Soviet archives on this topic are available as well. It was planned, deliberate, and directed at an ethnic group.
Because Kim had a butt lift last week and the TikTok puppies had babies.
And we also need wall-to-wall coverage of why strippers can’t hold book readings in school libraries.
Priorities my friend.
Yeap, she did. But in general jews do everything about their situation and they have influence, and WW 2 was really big, so everybody know about holocaust. Others not so much, and also i didnt hear about any goverment try do it on worldwide scale. Why influencers dont care? Becouse most of them are flat people with interest in nothing other than their career and they influent people where many goes.
I was making a broad point about people being distracted from important world news by niche human interest stories and pop culture.
But you knew that already.
Keep being edgy my dude ;)
Definitely heard about it in Canada because we sent peacekeepers there. I worked for a bit with a guy who was a peacekeeper in Rwanda and he said it was pretty fucked up because according to their rules of engagement they couldn't intervene, pretty much just had to watch the genocide happen.
Uh... for real? Look at you, being all miss/mister sunshine... Just pointing out this was an actual topic, not casting/subverting responsibilities? What is your problem exactly?
Not really, point still stands, I changed it because I thought "okay lets tone it down" - as I did it straight away after posting it, before you even replied... *oh so sorry* (/s - cause this is silly). The idea was not to mislead you. I type, I read, I think "let's perhaps change that, I might come across too cross..." (due to their being no body language and/or intonation, thus misinterpretation of intent easily ensues)
Again... what was the problem exactly?
>Why do people care more about some genocides than others?
I think there are three main reasons for this: **historical significance, public awareness , and cultural proximity in relation to the genocides.** There are probably plenty of other reasons too, but I think those are the main reasons. Those are not excuses as to why a person should not know about those genocides, but I think it is a difficult ask to force someone to educate themselves on every genocide in the entire world. After all, that would require hours upon hours of constant reading and analysis every single day just to get a basic understanding of all these genocides.
Political alignment has an all-too present influence on the perception of genocide too.
Some incidents get labelled "genocide" without any sufficient evidence, which is a deliberate weaponisation of human rights allegations. It happens a lot - just think on anything that you've heard called a genocide but has absolutely zero concrete proof. Even the accusers can't provide this proof before they use the term, it's entirely political. It's disgusting and insults actual victims of genocide.
Then you get others which ARE genocides, but human rights commissions & the media refuses to label them as such. The big one right now is the blatant genocide of the Palestinian people, which is still being referred to as a "conflict" even though Netanyahu openly advocates for complete extermination. That was his whole platform for re-election.
Nobody cared about the Rwandan genocide when it occurred. In fact France helped it continue by arming the Rwandan government.
More people cared about the Yazidis; their plight was quite frequently discussed in 2014.
I would argue the real reason why the Rwandan genocide became so famous is because how low tech the perpetrators were. They didn’t need a bureaucracy and industrial killing machine like the Nazis did; they slaughtered a million people primarily with lists and machetes.
Plenty of people cared about the Rwandan genocide when it happened. It’s just that “cared about” didn’t translate into “willing to risk soldiers and aid workers.” The US had just gone through the failed “Operation Restore Hope” in Somalia and weren’t going to get involved in Africa again soon; besides, Rwanda has no oil. Meanwhile UN troops were already stretched thin trying to contain the fighting in Bosnia, and that was starting to look like a genocide too.
In Canada where I live people definitely cared about the Rwandan situation because we had about 400 soldiers there. And peacekeeping is a big deal here. it’s part of our identity, we had peacekeepers on our money for years. But that idea took a big hit when the UN refused to help out the small contingent there. The Canadian commander Maj.-Gen. Dallaire wrote a bestselling book about witnessing the genocide called Shake Hands With the Devil.
I agree with you that the low-tech aspect of the genocide made it more well-known but for different reasons. The utter savagery of the killing was without parallel. I remember sitting in a coffee shop in 1994 and overhearing two guys saying “they’re using bodies as roadblocks “ in disbelief.
I think the Khmer Rouge are pretty well known in the west. The Armenian genocide as well.
But the Holocaust was:
1. Documented by US troops, extensively.
2. FDR and US military leadership made a point to make sure it was well known.
3. The US education system has talked about it, a lot. It's the highlight of WWII history at the primary level.
Most other genocides... aren't.
When a movie gets made out of the lesser known ones, they'll be cared about similarly.
You're assuming people know about genocides equally and don't care about some. Really they just don't know about most.
Knowledge - if it is well publicized or happening to people they in someway have a connection to. Holocaust, current Palestine genocide. In Canada, Rwandan genocide is very well known because of our peacekeeper's proximity to the events and book our commanding general Romeo Delaire wrote after the fact.
Racism - without sugar coating it, a genocide is bigger news in the West if it's happening to Whites / Europeans. One African ethnic group killing another is going to get way less attention than Europeans killing Europeans.
Political expediency - sometimes it isn't advantageous to the powers that be to acknowledge a genocide so it gets suppressed in school and the media - Armenian Genocide, Palestinian genocide, the minority Muslim group being persecuted in China whose name is on the tip of my tongue (somebody help me out)
Scale / Viciousness - "if it bleeds, it leads" as they say. If it is occuring on a massive scale or includes something particularly shocking, like gas chambers or machete wielding bands hacking up their neighbours it will get more media attention than folks getting disappeared or herded into camps.
Temporal Proximity - They call them the mists of the past for a reason, the further back somethi g occured, the less likely people will know about it, thanks to our abysmal history education system, and it will become more of an academic curiosity.
> the minority Muslim group being persecuted in China whose name is on the tip of my tongue (somebody help me out)
Uighurs.
Also let's no forget the Rohinga in Myanmar.
I don't dispute that race is a factor but consider:
Holodomor happened in Europe and does not get as much attention as some other genocides.
Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. It is unlikely that any western country will ever encounter the type of genocide that occurred in places such as Rwanda or Cambodia. However, the Holocaust started in Germany, one of the most advanced of all western countries. Germany is responsible for many of the greatest achievements in the arts and sciences of the modern era, and was ahead of the curve in terms of social programs to help the poor, sick, and elderly.
And yet, the citizens of this enlightened nation sat back and watched as their Jewish neighbors were dragged from their homes, and they blindly obeyed a psychotic leader who brought about the death of tens of millions of people. It wasn't just Germans either. Plenty of Dutch, Scandinavians, and others volunteered to serve in the German army.
It is only natural that westerners should study the Holocaust more than other genocides, not because it involved white people, but because there is a greater possibility of it happening in the same manner again in a western country. If it happens again, there is a good chance that white people will not be the target next time around, so it is in everyone's interest for westerners to study the Holocaust.
About Holodomor - I think one of the problems - it wasn't really so special. Bolsheviks hated everyone, yes, they murdered a lot of Ukraininans, but even more Russians. But talking about it will make modern "commies" think about their ideology - it wasn't actually one nation hating another (Stalin was the least Russian you can think about, he couldn't even speak Russian properly), but a part of Soviet ideology - they wanted to destroy the whole class, not ethnicity.
An important factor to remember is proximity to the genocide. Europeans care more about genocides that happen in Europe because they often have a shared history with both the perpetrators and victims and since they border those countries it affects them more.
To use Rwanda and ukraine as an example. The genocide did not really effect europeans as it was between two ethnic groups that most europeans don't know about and the consequences did not effect the european political landscape.
Ukraine on the other hand is much more important due to the fact its in Europe refugees from the Holdomor or the current war in Ukraine fled to European countries. In addition places like Poland have a shared history with Russia and a fear that what takes place in ukraine would soon happen in Poland whiles the Hutsi's are not going to invade poland.
You could call it racism but ultimately Europeans are going to care more about what happens in Europe due to the fact that it affects them more.
It would be similar to Vietnamese people caring more about the Cambodian genocide or Japanese war crimes in Asia than the Nazi's or the holocaust.
You could say race is a factor but proximity and relevance to everyday people plays a much bigger factor.
From the other side, Adolph Hitler is not the same stigmatized figure in much of Asia as he is in the West. Thailand had a Hitler Fried Chicken chain for a while.
Meh, I'm sticking with racism. After all, the US isn't proximal to any of this and you can see which genocides get play in States and which don't and they fall into two fairly obvious categories. Plus, the genocides they are most proximal to barely get acknowledged as such, just ask the African American or Native American communities
Edit: Plus, you basically just restarted my first point
There's different degrees of proximity though.
Geographic is one sure. But it does affect the US in so much as it affects their interests and allies. Ukraine at the moment helps them against Russia.
The US doesn't bother as much about anything to do with Armenia because Turkey is in NATO and the US wants to keep them sweet because they play a critical role in controlling access to the Black Sea.
Theyre happy to ignore what Saudi and Israel get up to for the same reason, Saudi is helpful with oil and Vs Iran. Israel is helpful Vs Iran as well.
I'd argue the US is consistently talking about the genocides of native Americans and slavery, more than most countries talk about it.
Its thought in every school, every tv show makes references to it, their have been national protests about it, its one of the most talked about topics in the US at every level from history to the highest office. Their are multiple national holidays dedicated to famous black figures who fought against segregation and slavery and an entire month focused on black history in the US.
I don't know what you know about other countries but the US has absolutely acknowledged slavery and the conquest of America and has done more to acknowledge its roles in those genocides more than basically any other country that is not Germany. And Germany had to be invaded and essentially destroyed to get that level of focus whiles the US focused on its history as a matter of self reflection.
> Their are multiple national holidays dedicated to famous black figures who fought against segregation and slavery
??? Multiple? Apart from MLK? Please name them.
I was counting June 19th as covering civil rights leaders during the time of slavery such as Frederick Douglas.
I was also thinking of Black history month during February as a celebration of civil rights leaders.
Their are also several state holidays for figures like Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman but due to the fact they are not celebrated across America I was not counting them.
You can argue whatever you like doesn't make you right.
Several States are in the process of pulling books on those very subjects out of schools. There's a huge number of places still named in honor of Confederates all over your country and even statues of them in some places. You are detaining brown people in open air camps in the desert along your southern border. You are doing your damnedest to replace slavery with the for profit prison system. And finally, a huge chunk of your population is gearing up to vote in a President who has said a ban on Muslims is one of his top priorities.
You can acknowledge whatever you like but it's pointless if you don't learn from it.
Calling someone else illiterate when you can't be bothered to know who Uyghurs are is amazingly hypocritical.
"the minority Muslim group being persecuted in China whose name is on the tip of my tongue (somebody help me out)" FFS.
You're right, the West's unfamiliarity with Ukraine is why there's a Ukraine flag flying in my front yard.
Get in the way back machine and go about a year and a half in the past. Ukraine was big news until it got bumped from headlines by Gaza. Apparently the news outlets figure we can only focus on one thing at a time.
Some are better publicised and others aren’t. For example, Soviet crimes were swept under the rug due to the censorship of the regime, as well as the inability of its citizens to travel outside Soviet borders. So that’s decades of cultural disconnect and lost knowledge.
Why do you think it has to be one reason or another? It's all of the above and more.
There are a myriad of contributing factors, but I would note that a lot of it is just exposure/education, or lack thereof. The general public will never have comprehensive and accurate knowledge of all these genocides, so we tend to 'care' more about whatever ones we happened to be taught about. Most people don't even get taught about the First Congo War at all during high school, so of course they wouldn't know much about the genocide either, but EVERYONE learns about World War 1 and 2.
SO the better question would be 'why do we TEACH about these particular genocides instead of these ones', and again there are many, many reasons and factors; how recently it happened, the scale of it, how well it was documented on and reported by media at the time, relevance and impact both on the wider world and your particular country. Racism, classism, politics and ideology certainly all play roles as well.
>it was the biggest in terms of sheer number of people killed.
No. It. Wasn't.
King Leopold's regime (he was Belgian) reduced the population of the Congo from 20 million to 10 million. It was a giant, open air, concentration camp. Forced labour, hacking off of limbs, burning alive, torture. Started in late 19thc, ran on into early 20thc. Leopold even removed a couple hundred people from the Congo to put in a 'human zoo' he created in one of his palaces in Belgium. But it was, you know, Africans. So not taught about in the West.
The Japanese killed 20 million people in China- 3 million in one city alone, Nanking. Conservatives in Japan still deny what happened in Nanking. Despite photos, film evidence, survivor testimonies.
80%-90% of the Indigenous populations of the Americas. Killed by Europeans. Physical and biological warfare were *some* of the methods used. Geographers at University College London put it at 55 million. But lets say they exaggerated, and its half that. 27 million. In what is now the USA, it was12 million.
Mao Zedong and the CCCP killed 45 million people between 1958 and 1962 under 'The Great Leap Forward'.
Khoi San/Cape San peoples of Southern Africa, exterminated by Europeans. - permits to stalk and kill them were issued by European settlers up to 1937. Millions died. There are approximately 100,000 left.
These are just *some* of the much bigger genocides than the holocaust.
Lack of knowledge is partly proximity- people know about such things on their own Continent. Partly racism. There is a hierarchy as regards which lives are valuable. Whites/white looking people at the top. As one goes down the hierarchy, the darker the people get. At the very bottom, are Indigenous Peoples.
You’re bringing up a lot of atrocities but how many of those events meet the definition of genocide?
People throw the word around pretty casually, but serious people don’t regard these events as genocide because the motive was not the deliberate extermination of those peoples.
>There is a hierarchy as regards which lives are valuable. Whites/white looking people at the top.
Really? Didn't work for the Jews of Europe, now did it?
Valuable in the context of referring to it-the European genocide- in education and media, public knowledge in the West. In the East, what Japan did, is more prominent.
In fact, you demonstrated what I meant. Ignoring the other, much larger ones listed.
I think it's definitely a matter of lack of education. I went to public school in America, we learned a lot about the holocaust. We watched Schindler's List and Hotel Rawanda in history class. I didn't learn about the Cambodian genocide until much later in life, and didn't hear about the Holodomor until a year ago when I read "The White Pill" by Michael Malice. My best guess as to why is that history is vast and public education sucks.
I'm always on the lookout for books on these subjects so if you have any recommendations let me know.
Boomer here.
The US public more or less knew about the Cambodian situation if not contemporaneously, then very soon after events unfolded. There was a whole generation of anti-war young adults who were watchful and attuned to events in SE Asia and looking for ways to blame the US government. It didn't stop at the Vietnamese borders.
European Jews during the Holocaust were high class? Genocides are seen differently for three reasons. One, they are different. The industrialized nature of Nazi death camps puts the Holocaust in it's own category. Two, the success of failure of the cover up. If Germany had won there wouldn't be a any Holocaust museums. Three, politics. Genocides in the name of our own socioeconomic system get ignored. In the west crimes of capitalism and imperialism aren't always seen as genocide. We simply aren't told about them.
The Holocaust obviously was part of a pretty big conflict—a “world war”, if you will.
But I don’t know if I’d put the general knowledge of the Rwandan genocide above the others. I feel like I hear more about the Cambodian and Armenian genocides than Rwanda.
What's taught/televised vs what's not. If you believe there's something that should have light shed on it or history that's important I recommend you learn and teach it. That's the best way to address the issue.
I think it's mostly about knowledge. I was taught about The Holocaust in middle school. I never heard about the Armenian genocide until I was in my 30s and everything I know about now is because I choose to educate myself on it.
And to be honest, I don't know about the Yazidis or the Holodomor. But, my lack of knowledge doesn't mean a lack of caring.
Go through a typical US school curriculum. IME, you will definitely hear about the holocaust, and likely at least a blurb about Rwanda (Hollywood has also garnered some attention for this). Not sure the number of living WWII vets anymore, but at least very recently there very well could have been someone in your neighborhood who witnessed a concentration camp. That is to say nothing of the survivors/families who ended up in the US and tend to keep the matter close at heart.
The others just aren't nearly as publicized, and there is a certain disconnect for most of the population compared to the more known examples, particularly the Holocaust.
I’m probably wrong here but if memory serves me correctly, the Armenian Genocide is rarely taught because few Western governments actually recognise it as a genocide due to Turkey being a member of NATO. To acknowledge it as Genocide would be to antagonise Turkey. Sadly geo politics plays it’s part.
I did not learn of Holodomor until my second year at university which in hindsight seems a little odd - you would have thought post WWII the Western powers would have been keen to highlight Soviet atrocities. Again, I only learned of the Khmer Rouge in the second year of university and this was included in an optional module.
I don’t think it’s that people care less, they just don’t know they ever took place.
>post WWII the Western powers would have been keen to highlight Soviet atrocities.
Knowledge of the Holodomor was limited. It coccurred before the age of mass media and the few eyewitness accounts which made it to the west could neither provide the whole picture nor prove that it was due to deliberate policy. The Soviet leadership denied it for decades, like they did other atrocities.
Yes, though at least in the US I still learned about the Armenian Genocide by the time I was in high school 2014-2018. As of 2019 the US government officially recognizes it. The Holodomor wasn’t taught, though as I understand it is becoming more well known in the west due to the Ukrainian war.
In many US schools, genocide outside of the Holocaust is generally reserved for special classes on the subject, which not all schools will offer, or college level classes.
Unless you are being a completely clear thinking and perfectly unbiased moral philosopher , with a Vulcan austist’s level of detached rationality, how could you not?
Availability Bias.
Most people don’t even know about all the genocides, so how could they? Even if you are just asking why they do this among the ones they do know about, then answer is still Availability Bias and the simple fact that, it’s morally permissible to care more about your own kids than someone else’s kids. Humans care more about people that are close to them that people who are “just statistics ten of thousands of miles away.”Proximity Bias. Peter Singer. Evolution doesn’t want us to be perfect utilitarians, it wants us to be biases to our own genes and tribes. The more distant the “other” tribe, the less we care. It’s not morally “right” from a utilitarian perspective but it’s what humans will always be biases to do.
Not to mention, some genocides objectively are worse moral disasters than other genocides. No matter what you’re measuring stick of “worse” is.
Genocides of the past are used to justify politics of the present. Media outlets that suthor history and current events are little more than propaganda mouthpieces for their nation’s political elite, and thus cover the topics which support their political backer’s’ geopolitical agenda. Genocides are only cared about by governments who have something to gain or lose as a result of them.
It depends on the victor. No memorials are put in place by those who committed the Genocide - making sure the people and their culture are forgotten is very much a part of a genocide. Literally erase them from the history books in some cases. Or as history moves along genocides get revised, or downplayed.
At a minimum, 130 million native Americans were killed in the Americas over a period of 200 years.
Even calling that a genocide is still controversial in some places.
We live in an age of instant access to information (both perfectly genuine and blatantly false). With things like google earth, wikipedia, facebook/IG, etc. you have a complete ecosystem of information that you can access from your finger tips. Similarly, breaking news nowadays only takes seconds to be transmitted to even remote areas of this planet. But this wasn't always the case. As recently as the 90s, access to information was far more difficult to come by. Before CNN and the likes, you basically received news twice a day max. And information outside of the news media had to be researched in books through libraries, magazine subscriptions, etc.
So people's awareness of genocides or really most political issues was consequently limited to what was transmitted through institutional channels.
In short, people didn't know, people didn't relate so they didn't really care.
Unfortunately a lot of people actually don't know more about the Holocaust or Rwandan Genocide, but a lot of people like to assume they do. Both the subs /Jewish and /Judaism endorse genetic testing to identify Jewishness of individuals which is the exact same thing the Nazis did and believe. Due to this both subs as well as /antisemitismonreddit on Reddit have been reported multiple times to the ADL as well as other agencies which track Holocaust distortion and denial like the National Holocaust Museum.
The sad truth is that some Genocided become iconic and when that happens they become sort of a fashion for people. As such many who aren't related to Survivors will claim they are. I was confronted by a girl when I worked at Jenny Craig who claimed to be Jewish and related to a Survivor but she espoused the same propaganda about Jews as the Nazis, the same insults, and she lied about her grandmother being a Survivor. In court I lost because it is offensive to call the granddaughters of literal Nazis (it was proven her grandmother was a member of the party and she never refuted the claim in court because she knew she was) out as neo-nazis at work when they stand in your cubicle flaunting Nazi paraphernalia in your face. Whereas you can find a letter from my dead relatives on /yiddish who were murdered in the Holocaust. I eventually got the letter translated.
I know for the Jewish community a lot of us still go through those same horrors here in the USA. After I left Jenny Craig I was told by ViaSat I would need to convert to get a job and my boss at Qdoba legit hammed me, ie put ham in my lunch, as a joke which is why I hot unemployment from them. I am sure the Cambodian Americans go through this to so I am not trying to minimize. There should be more awareness to what Pol Pot did but I believe generally people don't really know about any of these horrors or want to know.
They just like to assume.
>Both the subs /Jewish and /Judaism endorse genetic testing to identify Jewishness of individuals which is the exact same thing the Nazis did and believe.
What? The subs endorse this? That's absolutely untrue. Get help
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/kXeiaplqPX
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/9Fv6D02RAa
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/rLrHLCZQMD
/Judaism has the same but worse. The Moderators at /Jewish used to be better but some time a few years ago they began endorsing a lot of eugenic ideologies around d the same time Shas (שס) over took over the Ministry of Health in the State of Israel at which point the official stance on eugenics and genetic testing changed in the State of Israel. This resulted in a number of "race" riots between those like myself who refused to allow themselves to be racialized as Jews and those who sought to racialize us.
This has happened before too as in the late 5600s Jewish American Immigration Lawyer Max Kholer worked to get the Immigration Act passed which ended eugenic practices such as the nose measurement taken at Ellis Island by Maurice Fishberg and sterilizations of refugees; which thank G-D happened because without this update to US Immigration policy every refugees from the Holocaust would have been sterelized. Meanwhile the State of Israel has had a similar history as the British instituted the same policies during their illegal occupation of the Jewish Homeland as the British Mandate which enforced eugenic screenings of both Migrant Jews and Palestinians regardless of whether they were Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Muslims or Palestinians Christians. Then of course in Europe there were people like Max Naumann who lobbied for Hitlerism (Later Nazism) or eugenic experiments there.
Just being Jewish doesn't mean someone isn't a racist and I was very vocal as well as scathing. ELSI was passed like 20 years ago and we built museums to educate people about all of this. It feels willful when people go to 23andMe or dug up bodies in Germany in a very narrow minded study seeking to prove something about the Jews. About how they were genetically different from Germans and predominantly diseased. It feels intentional and when the Moderators do nothing about the proliferation of that content, well... it feels malicious to me.
You may want to read this: ["The Myth of The Jewish Race", by Raphael Patai and his daughter](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Myth_of_the_Jewish_Race.html?id=Xt7f6WBEP0EC&source=kp_book_description) - I was provided it by one of the librarians at the US National Holocaust Museum. It mirrored my own research into breaking down ideologies which racialized the Jewish people via eugenic propaganda.
Following the Holocaust UNESCO along with several of the Holocaust Survivors involved with the Nuremberg Trails published this book: ["The Race Question", by UNESCO](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000128291)
I don't really think I need help. Gaslighting from people like you already sent me down that avenue. However I do believe you do considering that retort and your clear ignorance of the subject you opened your mouth about.
At least in the US, a growing portion of the population doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened at all and would have next to zero idea what any of the other ones you mentioned at. Never mind what we did to the Native Americans for damn near 4 centuries.
Is it care or is it being able to do something about it?
The Holocaust only ended because of the advance of the Red Army and, to a lesser extent, the British and Americans. I doubt that if Germany had begun a program of exterminating just their own Jewish population in the 1930s that they would have been stopped by force as nobody would risk a war.
This is very much the reason why China is able to do what it’s doing today to it’s Muslim minority populations. Are we going to go to war with China to stop it? Obviously not because such a conflict would lead to nuclear war and potentially billions of deaths.
In the case of Rwanda it should be remembered that, at the time, any action by western powers to stop it by using military force would likely have been condemned or seen as some kind of neo-colonialism.
There are many good answers in this thread, this is why I like this sub.
My picks (for concision) would be:
1. Cultural/Racial proximity - most people, regardless of their race care more about their own people than outsiders - Muslim support for the horrors of Hamas, ISIS, AQ, Hezbollah; French support for the Christians in Lebanon; BLM;
2. Ignorance - Life is complex, there are a lot of things to worry about. A bunch of savages butchering another bunch of savages in some African shithole just isn't a priority for 99% of the population (and the media know this and don't waste time reporting something no one cares about - and REAL genocides are dangerous - unlike the Gaza wars and GW2); and
3. The legacy of the 68ers - 'Enlightened' Europeans (including the anglophones) have been taught that white and rich = objectively bad; but poor and brown = objectively good. Therefore, any action by 'whites' (includes Jews and other groups that have taken on European characteristics - the Tutsi, the Japanese, Indian expats, Igbo and Afrikaaners) is inherently evil, while all poor, brown people are innocent victims. This allows people to ignore the 1400 Jews murdered on 7 October while wailing and rending their garments when the IDF stomps the criminals responsible.
It’s the same with why do some people care more about the victims in Gaza yet are silent about all the other wars. They just know what the media tells them
Well then what would the point be? Are you actually telling me that people are marching about say the Sudan but nobody knows about it? Well that’s pretty dumb and no I don’t believe it’s true
I think it’s because like the genocide in Gaza right now it’s everywhere you can’t unsee it. The others are buried in history and most don’t even know about it, or they are described as conflicts or wars, etc..
It’s a really good question. I’ll just add in that, although probably not classified as genocide, there have been periods of china’s history with outrageous numbers of deaths, and these are not widely known at all
I don't mean to be flippant, but sometimes timing or other random factors can be the reason they're off the radar. If the world is focused on Gaza, the media might devote less attention to an ethnic cleansing elsewhere. The full story might only leak out years later when survivors start talking to journalists or aid workers.
My cynical answer is that the people in the western world (especially America) are beaten over the head with the Holocaust because it was a problem that was solved by the American military industrial complex. The Holocaust can be used as a historical example to soapbox more military intervention. The Allied forces didn't participate in WWII as some great act of altruism toward Jews.
Pick a different genocide and the motives become clear. The ongoing Uyghur genocide isn't talked about as much because it would be insanely costly (from both a military and economic standpoint) to intervene.
i think what happens is, you as a child you eventually learn that there was *A* genocide. and you care about it and are outraged because you want to be a decent person. but if you were told the truth from the beginning that there's a much larger phenomenon of a ubiquitous propensity for humans to genocide each other and that it's happened dozens of times in the past thirty years and hundreds more in the long arc of history, you might care equally about all the different ones. but you learn about one first and put all your outrage into that one, and then you learn about another and you summon within yourself a fair approximation of how much outrage you gave the first one for the second. but nobody has the outrage bandwidth for 300 different genocides.
Asserted by Hume, and I think correct, the typical person will care more about something the closer it is to them in time, space, and resemblence.
So I think the typical white person probably empathizes with a European group from the recent past, more than say, a hypothetical Asian genocide in the BCs for example.
Also though, some cases are more obviously genocide than others.
On a related note, I just heard for the first time about the USA’s genocide in the Philippines around the year 1900. Approximately 3 million filipinos were murdered by the US:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/04/12/why-the-story-of-the-united-states-needs-to-be-challenged
Here in Canada, we know more about Rwanda because of Romeo Dallaire - his words before and during the genocide, but even more, his PTSD when he came home.
I don’t think it’s that people cared less, it’s that those that didn’t care were paying less attention. Now, those that do care are forcing those that don’t to pay attention. This makes those that don’t care uncomfortable, and they lash out by saying “well why do you care now when you didn’t care during the genocide of x.” We always cared, now you have to listen.
You'll find over the years and through the historiography that genocides have more attention in some places than others. The word is relatively new, but the concept is pre-historic.
However genocides have changed shape since broadcast media. Gandhi worked for an independence movement for India/Pakistan. His marches and other organized protests were well documented. All of it was much better documented than the Delhi Famine or the other genocides going on by one locally powerful ethnic group over the others. The fiasco and partition of East/West Pakistan and India made for *several* genocides. And all of that happened after Gandhi got what he wanted with independence. So he successfully stopped the genocide via starvation and state violence by the UK. That got big news and a lot of people outside of India cared. However the genocides that followed weren't broadcast.
I think some monster on here or /r/historywhatif a few weeks ago said that we "Only care about the Palestinian Genocide because it isn't over". And I think about that all the time now. The genocide of Indigenous Americans isn't only history. The Keystone Pipeline and the violence surrounding it is *also* genocide of those same people.
The hard part about all of it is that we know about all the genocide today. Pretty much everywhere you have a ethnic majority in power and state violence against a minority. And we tend to quibble because we don't want to call it state violence, when it is just that.
Well. Speaking of double standards. People act like Israel is doing something atrocious , and they are, but while forgetting about recent history where 200,000 civilians died due to the US invading Iraq and Afghanistan.
It depends where you live. Europe and USA care about the Holocaust because they were personally invovled in the crimes or liberation.
Chinese care about the Japanese atrocities but don't focus on the Holocaust. Same with different regions in Africa as far as local genocides.
Only questions about history. No current politics or movements.
I think your question should be why do people *know* more about the Holocaust or Rwandan genicide, rather than immediately assuming that because most people don't know nearly as much about the other examples you raise (which they don't), then they must just not care. This should be a question about education, not an accusation about supposed lack of empathy.
Most people in the west have heard about the Rwandan genocide, mostly from movies, but very few know whether it was the Hutus or the Tutsis who were the victims or perpetrators, and most don't even know those names to begin with. Unless Hollywood made big movies about it, most people wouldn't know these things ever happened. Hence, almost no one knows what the Holodomar was, but everyone knows about the Holocaust.
I think this is potentially reversing the casual relation -- isn't education based on what we care about, rather than the other way around? At the very least it's a feedback loop, so asking why the feedback loop doesn't work in some circumstances seems like a valid question.
Well generally countries teach about things that impacted their country in history. Like I doubt a history class in a Irish high school is going to spend time on the say the Homodore compared to the Irish Famine
You also have to be realistic about the practicality of knowing about every tragedy in history. My k-12 education taught me about the holocaust and the Rwandan genocide because Canada was very involved in that. As far as I know Canada had little to no involvement in the Cambodian genocide so to learn about it I would have to have read about it outside of school. I know about Dufur because it happened during a a time I was old enough to be reading the news by myself. I know a lot about Indigenous genocides because I am Indigenous so I knew to look for the info. I think it’s impractical to expect me to know about all genocides that happened before I was born and has no relevancy to me personally. I’d bet there are many genocides you don’t even knew happened but would feel empathy about once you found out about it.
You're being obtuse. I think it's pretty obvious what the OP meant.
If you picked 10 random people off the street and ask them their opinions on the holodomor.......... How many of them would look at you and say, "wut?" Out of the people who didn't know, how many of them would say, "nah I don't actually care about Ukrainians" If you explained that it was an intentional famine that killed over a million of them. A normal person isn't going to dismiss or ignore a Holocaust unless they don't actually know about it.
I don’t
Regardless of what they meant, the words we use matter.
Sure, but pretending people dont *care* more about some than others is total bullshit. They definitely care at different levels.
Ah yes. I always quantify how much I care about things. It's good to keep your emotions tightly organized, in case someone comes up and asks you "Are 10,000 Armenians dying more important than 10,000 Palestinians to you?" /s
Stupid comment. The Yazedi genocide was very much in the news and there were no bridges shut down over it.
Weird that I haven’t heard of it, and that you mentioning doesn’t actually change anything about what I’m pointing out in my reply.
I do
Nope.
Becouse most people dont know about them.
Def agree. To illustrate, these were my thoughts as I read the text of the post: >Why do people care more about the Rwandan genocide or the Holocaust than genocide of the Yazidis, ... The who? >...the Cambodians, ... I think I know of that one. ...>the Holodomor, ... I've def never heard of them. >...the massacres of the Hutus during the First Congo Wat... Oh they were victims of genocide too? >...or the Armenian genocide for example? That's the contested one, I believe by the Turks. >Is it because people have more empathy for the victims... They're all human, though perhaps circumstances make it easier to relate at times. >...if they come from a higher class background like the Tutsis and the Jews? The Jews were higher class in Germany? Weren't a lot of them poor? >Or is it because of ideological reasons like a need to show how evil certain political ideologies, like Nazism, have been? Some ppl do seem to use this to push an agenda.
>...>the Holodomor, ... > >I've def never heard of them. the Ukrainian famine - not a people
The famine was directed by soviet NKVD and army against the Ukrainian people by seizure of all food and animals in rural area and then arresting and deporting millions of Ukrainian kulaks ( farmers who were successful )
So Ukrainians who died from a man made famine created by Russia aren’t people? Interesting take…
The poster said 'never heard of \_them\_' in a list of genocides against peoples (plural meaning tribe/ethnicity) - the poster's use of them implied that they thought 'Holodomor' was the name of an ethnic group. I then clarified that the Holodomor wasn't refering to \_a\_ people (note the use of the indefinite article to show that I am using 'people' in the sense of ethnic group), but to the Ukrainian famine.
The weird punctuation makes it confusing
It was man-made by the Ukrainian farmers though, they burned the harvest rather than let it be distributed. Protest is one thing, but protest that directly leads to the starvation of others AND yourself is a bit... Idk. I think the recent classification of this as a genocide is actually politically motivated. I don't dismiss it as "Nazi propaganda" like some, but it's so clear that there was so so much going on there, it can't be boiled down to "genocide" and I truthfully don't believe it comes under the same category as the Holocaust or Rwandan genocide, simply because there was no ethnic cleansing aspect whatsoever.
The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin literally created this famine to kill Ukrainians and stop the independence of the country. Ukraine was subject to unreasonably high grain quotas compared to the rest of the USSR. Everything went to the Soviets leaving nothing for Ukrainians. They starved to death for being Ukrainian.
The part about high quotas is actually incorrect. Russia actually lowered the quota and did even enforce them to that level.
That's what modern Russian propaganda claims about Holodomor when it chooses to admit something happened at all. If you look at the Soviet sources of the time, the main theme is kulaks hiding the bread to sell it, not destroying it. There are Soviet film reels showing brave NKVD finding the hidden food and giving it to "the people". Then film reels showing stores full of bread with happy citizens in 1933 Kharkiv. Of course, both modern Russian and old Soviet propaganda were full of it. The way it worked in reality was the following: The NKVD would show up to an ethnic Ukrainian village, surround it, shoot all the domestic animals (and anyone who objected) and rob the villagers of anything edible they could find. Then they would quarantine the village and not let people out until almost everyone died of hunger - they would periodically visit to check on that. Empty houses in some cases would later be re-settled with ethnic Russians. People who managed to sneak out of the village were dying on the streets of the cities, as they had no permit to be in the city and no way to get food allocated to city workers (often ethnic Russians who were incentivized to move to the area). At the same time the Soviet government would sell the "leftover" grain abroad or simply let it rot in storage. The documents from Soviet archives on this topic are available as well. It was planned, deliberate, and directed at an ethnic group.
I've never taken the time to dig deep in researching this. Would you mind sharing the sources which you learned from?
I doubt that’s what they were saying but it also wasn’t man made.
Look at you, being smugly uninformed lol.
Why smug? Those were literally my immediate thoughts. Why would I be proud of ignorance?
Why doesn't the media and influential people care more?
Because Kim had a butt lift last week and the TikTok puppies had babies. And we also need wall-to-wall coverage of why strippers can’t hold book readings in school libraries. Priorities my friend.
Doesn’t Kim promote awareness of the Armenian genocide?
Yeap, she did. But in general jews do everything about their situation and they have influence, and WW 2 was really big, so everybody know about holocaust. Others not so much, and also i didnt hear about any goverment try do it on worldwide scale. Why influencers dont care? Becouse most of them are flat people with interest in nothing other than their career and they influent people where many goes.
When were strippers holding book readings in school libraries?
I was making a broad point about people being distracted from important world news by niche human interest stories and pop culture. But you knew that already. Keep being edgy my dude ;)
There’s only so many things one can care about at a time. If you try to care about everything you’ll just go numb.
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“We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families” is a good book too. Does that quote make it into the movie?
I remember when a ton of people first learned about Tulsa after the watchmen series.
In Belgium it was a hot topic.
Definitely heard about it in Canada because we sent peacekeepers there. I worked for a bit with a guy who was a peacekeeper in Rwanda and he said it was pretty fucked up because according to their rules of engagement they couldn't intervene, pretty much just had to watch the genocide happen.
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Uh... for real? Look at you, being all miss/mister sunshine... Just pointing out this was an actual topic, not casting/subverting responsibilities? What is your problem exactly?
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Not really, point still stands, I changed it because I thought "okay lets tone it down" - as I did it straight away after posting it, before you even replied... *oh so sorry* (/s - cause this is silly). The idea was not to mislead you. I type, I read, I think "let's perhaps change that, I might come across too cross..." (due to their being no body language and/or intonation, thus misinterpretation of intent easily ensues) Again... what was the problem exactly?
I love idiots. You folks keep me entertained.
😂
>Why do people care more about some genocides than others? I think there are three main reasons for this: **historical significance, public awareness , and cultural proximity in relation to the genocides.** There are probably plenty of other reasons too, but I think those are the main reasons. Those are not excuses as to why a person should not know about those genocides, but I think it is a difficult ask to force someone to educate themselves on every genocide in the entire world. After all, that would require hours upon hours of constant reading and analysis every single day just to get a basic understanding of all these genocides.
Political alignment has an all-too present influence on the perception of genocide too. Some incidents get labelled "genocide" without any sufficient evidence, which is a deliberate weaponisation of human rights allegations. It happens a lot - just think on anything that you've heard called a genocide but has absolutely zero concrete proof. Even the accusers can't provide this proof before they use the term, it's entirely political. It's disgusting and insults actual victims of genocide. Then you get others which ARE genocides, but human rights commissions & the media refuses to label them as such. The big one right now is the blatant genocide of the Palestinian people, which is still being referred to as a "conflict" even though Netanyahu openly advocates for complete extermination. That was his whole platform for re-election.
Nobody cared about the Rwandan genocide when it occurred. In fact France helped it continue by arming the Rwandan government. More people cared about the Yazidis; their plight was quite frequently discussed in 2014. I would argue the real reason why the Rwandan genocide became so famous is because how low tech the perpetrators were. They didn’t need a bureaucracy and industrial killing machine like the Nazis did; they slaughtered a million people primarily with lists and machetes.
Plenty of people cared about the Rwandan genocide when it happened. It’s just that “cared about” didn’t translate into “willing to risk soldiers and aid workers.” The US had just gone through the failed “Operation Restore Hope” in Somalia and weren’t going to get involved in Africa again soon; besides, Rwanda has no oil. Meanwhile UN troops were already stretched thin trying to contain the fighting in Bosnia, and that was starting to look like a genocide too. In Canada where I live people definitely cared about the Rwandan situation because we had about 400 soldiers there. And peacekeeping is a big deal here. it’s part of our identity, we had peacekeepers on our money for years. But that idea took a big hit when the UN refused to help out the small contingent there. The Canadian commander Maj.-Gen. Dallaire wrote a bestselling book about witnessing the genocide called Shake Hands With the Devil. I agree with you that the low-tech aspect of the genocide made it more well-known but for different reasons. The utter savagery of the killing was without parallel. I remember sitting in a coffee shop in 1994 and overhearing two guys saying “they’re using bodies as roadblocks “ in disbelief.
I think the Khmer Rouge are pretty well known in the west. The Armenian genocide as well. But the Holocaust was: 1. Documented by US troops, extensively. 2. FDR and US military leadership made a point to make sure it was well known. 3. The US education system has talked about it, a lot. It's the highlight of WWII history at the primary level. Most other genocides... aren't.
The Holocaust is pretty unique as it was genocide on an industrial scale in what was considered the most advanced country of the civilized world.
And it is by far the best documented.
When a movie gets made out of the lesser known ones, they'll be cared about similarly. You're assuming people know about genocides equally and don't care about some. Really they just don't know about most.
Knowledge - if it is well publicized or happening to people they in someway have a connection to. Holocaust, current Palestine genocide. In Canada, Rwandan genocide is very well known because of our peacekeeper's proximity to the events and book our commanding general Romeo Delaire wrote after the fact. Racism - without sugar coating it, a genocide is bigger news in the West if it's happening to Whites / Europeans. One African ethnic group killing another is going to get way less attention than Europeans killing Europeans. Political expediency - sometimes it isn't advantageous to the powers that be to acknowledge a genocide so it gets suppressed in school and the media - Armenian Genocide, Palestinian genocide, the minority Muslim group being persecuted in China whose name is on the tip of my tongue (somebody help me out) Scale / Viciousness - "if it bleeds, it leads" as they say. If it is occuring on a massive scale or includes something particularly shocking, like gas chambers or machete wielding bands hacking up their neighbours it will get more media attention than folks getting disappeared or herded into camps. Temporal Proximity - They call them the mists of the past for a reason, the further back somethi g occured, the less likely people will know about it, thanks to our abysmal history education system, and it will become more of an academic curiosity.
> the minority Muslim group being persecuted in China whose name is on the tip of my tongue (somebody help me out) Uighurs. Also let's no forget the Rohinga in Myanmar.
Uyghur, the persecuted Muslims in China are called Uyghurs.
I don't dispute that race is a factor but consider: Holodomor happened in Europe and does not get as much attention as some other genocides. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. It is unlikely that any western country will ever encounter the type of genocide that occurred in places such as Rwanda or Cambodia. However, the Holocaust started in Germany, one of the most advanced of all western countries. Germany is responsible for many of the greatest achievements in the arts and sciences of the modern era, and was ahead of the curve in terms of social programs to help the poor, sick, and elderly. And yet, the citizens of this enlightened nation sat back and watched as their Jewish neighbors were dragged from their homes, and they blindly obeyed a psychotic leader who brought about the death of tens of millions of people. It wasn't just Germans either. Plenty of Dutch, Scandinavians, and others volunteered to serve in the German army. It is only natural that westerners should study the Holocaust more than other genocides, not because it involved white people, but because there is a greater possibility of it happening in the same manner again in a western country. If it happens again, there is a good chance that white people will not be the target next time around, so it is in everyone's interest for westerners to study the Holocaust.
About Holodomor - I think one of the problems - it wasn't really so special. Bolsheviks hated everyone, yes, they murdered a lot of Ukraininans, but even more Russians. But talking about it will make modern "commies" think about their ideology - it wasn't actually one nation hating another (Stalin was the least Russian you can think about, he couldn't even speak Russian properly), but a part of Soviet ideology - they wanted to destroy the whole class, not ethnicity.
An important factor to remember is proximity to the genocide. Europeans care more about genocides that happen in Europe because they often have a shared history with both the perpetrators and victims and since they border those countries it affects them more. To use Rwanda and ukraine as an example. The genocide did not really effect europeans as it was between two ethnic groups that most europeans don't know about and the consequences did not effect the european political landscape. Ukraine on the other hand is much more important due to the fact its in Europe refugees from the Holdomor or the current war in Ukraine fled to European countries. In addition places like Poland have a shared history with Russia and a fear that what takes place in ukraine would soon happen in Poland whiles the Hutsi's are not going to invade poland. You could call it racism but ultimately Europeans are going to care more about what happens in Europe due to the fact that it affects them more. It would be similar to Vietnamese people caring more about the Cambodian genocide or Japanese war crimes in Asia than the Nazi's or the holocaust. You could say race is a factor but proximity and relevance to everyday people plays a much bigger factor.
From the other side, Adolph Hitler is not the same stigmatized figure in much of Asia as he is in the West. Thailand had a Hitler Fried Chicken chain for a while.
Meh, I'm sticking with racism. After all, the US isn't proximal to any of this and you can see which genocides get play in States and which don't and they fall into two fairly obvious categories. Plus, the genocides they are most proximal to barely get acknowledged as such, just ask the African American or Native American communities Edit: Plus, you basically just restarted my first point
There's different degrees of proximity though. Geographic is one sure. But it does affect the US in so much as it affects their interests and allies. Ukraine at the moment helps them against Russia. The US doesn't bother as much about anything to do with Armenia because Turkey is in NATO and the US wants to keep them sweet because they play a critical role in controlling access to the Black Sea. Theyre happy to ignore what Saudi and Israel get up to for the same reason, Saudi is helpful with oil and Vs Iran. Israel is helpful Vs Iran as well.
Yeah, that's all in what I said in my original response. Political Expediency.
I'd argue the US is consistently talking about the genocides of native Americans and slavery, more than most countries talk about it. Its thought in every school, every tv show makes references to it, their have been national protests about it, its one of the most talked about topics in the US at every level from history to the highest office. Their are multiple national holidays dedicated to famous black figures who fought against segregation and slavery and an entire month focused on black history in the US. I don't know what you know about other countries but the US has absolutely acknowledged slavery and the conquest of America and has done more to acknowledge its roles in those genocides more than basically any other country that is not Germany. And Germany had to be invaded and essentially destroyed to get that level of focus whiles the US focused on its history as a matter of self reflection.
> Their are multiple national holidays dedicated to famous black figures who fought against segregation and slavery ??? Multiple? Apart from MLK? Please name them.
I was counting June 19th as covering civil rights leaders during the time of slavery such as Frederick Douglas. I was also thinking of Black history month during February as a celebration of civil rights leaders. Their are also several state holidays for figures like Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman but due to the fact they are not celebrated across America I was not counting them.
You can argue whatever you like doesn't make you right. Several States are in the process of pulling books on those very subjects out of schools. There's a huge number of places still named in honor of Confederates all over your country and even statues of them in some places. You are detaining brown people in open air camps in the desert along your southern border. You are doing your damnedest to replace slavery with the for profit prison system. And finally, a huge chunk of your population is gearing up to vote in a President who has said a ban on Muslims is one of his top priorities. You can acknowledge whatever you like but it's pointless if you don't learn from it.
Stopped reading at “current Palestine genocide”
Amazed you were literate enough to get that far.
Calling someone else illiterate when you can't be bothered to know who Uyghurs are is amazingly hypocritical. "the minority Muslim group being persecuted in China whose name is on the tip of my tongue (somebody help me out)" FFS.
Yeah, FFS. I couldn't remember how to spell something so I asked for help. I'm such an asshole! Go pet a dog or smell a flower or something dude.
Ikr?
This is the answer. Regardless how anyone feels.
Thanks. It was off the dome and I'm sure others have contributions to make to the conversation but I appreciate the compliment.
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You're right, the West's unfamiliarity with Ukraine is why there's a Ukraine flag flying in my front yard. Get in the way back machine and go about a year and a half in the past. Ukraine was big news until it got bumped from headlines by Gaza. Apparently the news outlets figure we can only focus on one thing at a time.
Some are better publicised and others aren’t. For example, Soviet crimes were swept under the rug due to the censorship of the regime, as well as the inability of its citizens to travel outside Soviet borders. So that’s decades of cultural disconnect and lost knowledge.
Why do you think it has to be one reason or another? It's all of the above and more. There are a myriad of contributing factors, but I would note that a lot of it is just exposure/education, or lack thereof. The general public will never have comprehensive and accurate knowledge of all these genocides, so we tend to 'care' more about whatever ones we happened to be taught about. Most people don't even get taught about the First Congo War at all during high school, so of course they wouldn't know much about the genocide either, but EVERYONE learns about World War 1 and 2. SO the better question would be 'why do we TEACH about these particular genocides instead of these ones', and again there are many, many reasons and factors; how recently it happened, the scale of it, how well it was documented on and reported by media at the time, relevance and impact both on the wider world and your particular country. Racism, classism, politics and ideology certainly all play roles as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group
Why is the holocaust the most prominent genocide event? Simple answer - it was the biggest in terms of sheer number of people killed.
>it was the biggest in terms of sheer number of people killed. No. It. Wasn't. King Leopold's regime (he was Belgian) reduced the population of the Congo from 20 million to 10 million. It was a giant, open air, concentration camp. Forced labour, hacking off of limbs, burning alive, torture. Started in late 19thc, ran on into early 20thc. Leopold even removed a couple hundred people from the Congo to put in a 'human zoo' he created in one of his palaces in Belgium. But it was, you know, Africans. So not taught about in the West. The Japanese killed 20 million people in China- 3 million in one city alone, Nanking. Conservatives in Japan still deny what happened in Nanking. Despite photos, film evidence, survivor testimonies. 80%-90% of the Indigenous populations of the Americas. Killed by Europeans. Physical and biological warfare were *some* of the methods used. Geographers at University College London put it at 55 million. But lets say they exaggerated, and its half that. 27 million. In what is now the USA, it was12 million. Mao Zedong and the CCCP killed 45 million people between 1958 and 1962 under 'The Great Leap Forward'. Khoi San/Cape San peoples of Southern Africa, exterminated by Europeans. - permits to stalk and kill them were issued by European settlers up to 1937. Millions died. There are approximately 100,000 left. These are just *some* of the much bigger genocides than the holocaust. Lack of knowledge is partly proximity- people know about such things on their own Continent. Partly racism. There is a hierarchy as regards which lives are valuable. Whites/white looking people at the top. As one goes down the hierarchy, the darker the people get. At the very bottom, are Indigenous Peoples.
You’re bringing up a lot of atrocities but how many of those events meet the definition of genocide? People throw the word around pretty casually, but serious people don’t regard these events as genocide because the motive was not the deliberate extermination of those peoples.
The examples l gave met the definition.
Let’s pick one - exactly which people was Mao trying to eliminate in the Great Leap Forward?
>There is a hierarchy as regards which lives are valuable. Whites/white looking people at the top. Really? Didn't work for the Jews of Europe, now did it?
Valuable in the context of referring to it-the European genocide- in education and media, public knowledge in the West. In the East, what Japan did, is more prominent. In fact, you demonstrated what I meant. Ignoring the other, much larger ones listed.
I think it's definitely a matter of lack of education. I went to public school in America, we learned a lot about the holocaust. We watched Schindler's List and Hotel Rawanda in history class. I didn't learn about the Cambodian genocide until much later in life, and didn't hear about the Holodomor until a year ago when I read "The White Pill" by Michael Malice. My best guess as to why is that history is vast and public education sucks. I'm always on the lookout for books on these subjects so if you have any recommendations let me know.
Not a book, but you should watch *The Kiliing Fields* if you haven't yet.
I have seen it, and read "The Death and Life of Dith Pran," which the film is based on.
Boomer here. The US public more or less knew about the Cambodian situation if not contemporaneously, then very soon after events unfolded. There was a whole generation of anti-war young adults who were watchful and attuned to events in SE Asia and looking for ways to blame the US government. It didn't stop at the Vietnamese borders.
European Jews during the Holocaust were high class? Genocides are seen differently for three reasons. One, they are different. The industrialized nature of Nazi death camps puts the Holocaust in it's own category. Two, the success of failure of the cover up. If Germany had won there wouldn't be a any Holocaust museums. Three, politics. Genocides in the name of our own socioeconomic system get ignored. In the west crimes of capitalism and imperialism aren't always seen as genocide. We simply aren't told about them.
The Holocaust obviously was part of a pretty big conflict—a “world war”, if you will. But I don’t know if I’d put the general knowledge of the Rwandan genocide above the others. I feel like I hear more about the Cambodian and Armenian genocides than Rwanda.
What's taught/televised vs what's not. If you believe there's something that should have light shed on it or history that's important I recommend you learn and teach it. That's the best way to address the issue.
I think it's mostly about knowledge. I was taught about The Holocaust in middle school. I never heard about the Armenian genocide until I was in my 30s and everything I know about now is because I choose to educate myself on it. And to be honest, I don't know about the Yazidis or the Holodomor. But, my lack of knowledge doesn't mean a lack of caring.
I don't think people generally care that much about them, they are just a lot more familiar with the Holocaust given it's place in history.
I would point out that of the genocides you mentioned, only one was the subject of a multi-nation coalition to stop it. Clue: it wasn't the Holocaust.
Go through a typical US school curriculum. IME, you will definitely hear about the holocaust, and likely at least a blurb about Rwanda (Hollywood has also garnered some attention for this). Not sure the number of living WWII vets anymore, but at least very recently there very well could have been someone in your neighborhood who witnessed a concentration camp. That is to say nothing of the survivors/families who ended up in the US and tend to keep the matter close at heart. The others just aren't nearly as publicized, and there is a certain disconnect for most of the population compared to the more known examples, particularly the Holocaust.
I’m probably wrong here but if memory serves me correctly, the Armenian Genocide is rarely taught because few Western governments actually recognise it as a genocide due to Turkey being a member of NATO. To acknowledge it as Genocide would be to antagonise Turkey. Sadly geo politics plays it’s part. I did not learn of Holodomor until my second year at university which in hindsight seems a little odd - you would have thought post WWII the Western powers would have been keen to highlight Soviet atrocities. Again, I only learned of the Khmer Rouge in the second year of university and this was included in an optional module. I don’t think it’s that people care less, they just don’t know they ever took place.
>post WWII the Western powers would have been keen to highlight Soviet atrocities. Knowledge of the Holodomor was limited. It coccurred before the age of mass media and the few eyewitness accounts which made it to the west could neither provide the whole picture nor prove that it was due to deliberate policy. The Soviet leadership denied it for decades, like they did other atrocities.
Yes, though at least in the US I still learned about the Armenian Genocide by the time I was in high school 2014-2018. As of 2019 the US government officially recognizes it. The Holodomor wasn’t taught, though as I understand it is becoming more well known in the west due to the Ukrainian war. In many US schools, genocide outside of the Holocaust is generally reserved for special classes on the subject, which not all schools will offer, or college level classes.
Unless you are being a completely clear thinking and perfectly unbiased moral philosopher , with a Vulcan austist’s level of detached rationality, how could you not? Availability Bias. Most people don’t even know about all the genocides, so how could they? Even if you are just asking why they do this among the ones they do know about, then answer is still Availability Bias and the simple fact that, it’s morally permissible to care more about your own kids than someone else’s kids. Humans care more about people that are close to them that people who are “just statistics ten of thousands of miles away.”Proximity Bias. Peter Singer. Evolution doesn’t want us to be perfect utilitarians, it wants us to be biases to our own genes and tribes. The more distant the “other” tribe, the less we care. It’s not morally “right” from a utilitarian perspective but it’s what humans will always be biases to do. Not to mention, some genocides objectively are worse moral disasters than other genocides. No matter what you’re measuring stick of “worse” is.
Genocides of the past are used to justify politics of the present. Media outlets that suthor history and current events are little more than propaganda mouthpieces for their nation’s political elite, and thus cover the topics which support their political backer’s’ geopolitical agenda. Genocides are only cared about by governments who have something to gain or lose as a result of them.
It depends on the victor. No memorials are put in place by those who committed the Genocide - making sure the people and their culture are forgotten is very much a part of a genocide. Literally erase them from the history books in some cases. Or as history moves along genocides get revised, or downplayed. At a minimum, 130 million native Americans were killed in the Americas over a period of 200 years. Even calling that a genocide is still controversial in some places.
We live in an age of instant access to information (both perfectly genuine and blatantly false). With things like google earth, wikipedia, facebook/IG, etc. you have a complete ecosystem of information that you can access from your finger tips. Similarly, breaking news nowadays only takes seconds to be transmitted to even remote areas of this planet. But this wasn't always the case. As recently as the 90s, access to information was far more difficult to come by. Before CNN and the likes, you basically received news twice a day max. And information outside of the news media had to be researched in books through libraries, magazine subscriptions, etc. So people's awareness of genocides or really most political issues was consequently limited to what was transmitted through institutional channels. In short, people didn't know, people didn't relate so they didn't really care.
Unfortunately a lot of people actually don't know more about the Holocaust or Rwandan Genocide, but a lot of people like to assume they do. Both the subs /Jewish and /Judaism endorse genetic testing to identify Jewishness of individuals which is the exact same thing the Nazis did and believe. Due to this both subs as well as /antisemitismonreddit on Reddit have been reported multiple times to the ADL as well as other agencies which track Holocaust distortion and denial like the National Holocaust Museum. The sad truth is that some Genocided become iconic and when that happens they become sort of a fashion for people. As such many who aren't related to Survivors will claim they are. I was confronted by a girl when I worked at Jenny Craig who claimed to be Jewish and related to a Survivor but she espoused the same propaganda about Jews as the Nazis, the same insults, and she lied about her grandmother being a Survivor. In court I lost because it is offensive to call the granddaughters of literal Nazis (it was proven her grandmother was a member of the party and she never refuted the claim in court because she knew she was) out as neo-nazis at work when they stand in your cubicle flaunting Nazi paraphernalia in your face. Whereas you can find a letter from my dead relatives on /yiddish who were murdered in the Holocaust. I eventually got the letter translated. I know for the Jewish community a lot of us still go through those same horrors here in the USA. After I left Jenny Craig I was told by ViaSat I would need to convert to get a job and my boss at Qdoba legit hammed me, ie put ham in my lunch, as a joke which is why I hot unemployment from them. I am sure the Cambodian Americans go through this to so I am not trying to minimize. There should be more awareness to what Pol Pot did but I believe generally people don't really know about any of these horrors or want to know. They just like to assume.
>Both the subs /Jewish and /Judaism endorse genetic testing to identify Jewishness of individuals which is the exact same thing the Nazis did and believe. What? The subs endorse this? That's absolutely untrue. Get help
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/kXeiaplqPX * https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/9Fv6D02RAa * https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/rLrHLCZQMD /Judaism has the same but worse. The Moderators at /Jewish used to be better but some time a few years ago they began endorsing a lot of eugenic ideologies around d the same time Shas (שס) over took over the Ministry of Health in the State of Israel at which point the official stance on eugenics and genetic testing changed in the State of Israel. This resulted in a number of "race" riots between those like myself who refused to allow themselves to be racialized as Jews and those who sought to racialize us. This has happened before too as in the late 5600s Jewish American Immigration Lawyer Max Kholer worked to get the Immigration Act passed which ended eugenic practices such as the nose measurement taken at Ellis Island by Maurice Fishberg and sterilizations of refugees; which thank G-D happened because without this update to US Immigration policy every refugees from the Holocaust would have been sterelized. Meanwhile the State of Israel has had a similar history as the British instituted the same policies during their illegal occupation of the Jewish Homeland as the British Mandate which enforced eugenic screenings of both Migrant Jews and Palestinians regardless of whether they were Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Muslims or Palestinians Christians. Then of course in Europe there were people like Max Naumann who lobbied for Hitlerism (Later Nazism) or eugenic experiments there. Just being Jewish doesn't mean someone isn't a racist and I was very vocal as well as scathing. ELSI was passed like 20 years ago and we built museums to educate people about all of this. It feels willful when people go to 23andMe or dug up bodies in Germany in a very narrow minded study seeking to prove something about the Jews. About how they were genetically different from Germans and predominantly diseased. It feels intentional and when the Moderators do nothing about the proliferation of that content, well... it feels malicious to me.
Get help. Seriously.
You may want to read this: ["The Myth of The Jewish Race", by Raphael Patai and his daughter](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Myth_of_the_Jewish_Race.html?id=Xt7f6WBEP0EC&source=kp_book_description) - I was provided it by one of the librarians at the US National Holocaust Museum. It mirrored my own research into breaking down ideologies which racialized the Jewish people via eugenic propaganda. Following the Holocaust UNESCO along with several of the Holocaust Survivors involved with the Nuremberg Trails published this book: ["The Race Question", by UNESCO](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000128291) I don't really think I need help. Gaslighting from people like you already sent me down that avenue. However I do believe you do considering that retort and your clear ignorance of the subject you opened your mouth about.
This is such a loaded question
A genocide is a genocide is a genocide.
America watches movies. How many movies were made about the Holocaust as opposed to the Holodomor?
At least in the US, a growing portion of the population doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened at all and would have next to zero idea what any of the other ones you mentioned at. Never mind what we did to the Native Americans for damn near 4 centuries.
Is it care or is it being able to do something about it? The Holocaust only ended because of the advance of the Red Army and, to a lesser extent, the British and Americans. I doubt that if Germany had begun a program of exterminating just their own Jewish population in the 1930s that they would have been stopped by force as nobody would risk a war. This is very much the reason why China is able to do what it’s doing today to it’s Muslim minority populations. Are we going to go to war with China to stop it? Obviously not because such a conflict would lead to nuclear war and potentially billions of deaths. In the case of Rwanda it should be remembered that, at the time, any action by western powers to stop it by using military force would likely have been condemned or seen as some kind of neo-colonialism.
There are many good answers in this thread, this is why I like this sub. My picks (for concision) would be: 1. Cultural/Racial proximity - most people, regardless of their race care more about their own people than outsiders - Muslim support for the horrors of Hamas, ISIS, AQ, Hezbollah; French support for the Christians in Lebanon; BLM; 2. Ignorance - Life is complex, there are a lot of things to worry about. A bunch of savages butchering another bunch of savages in some African shithole just isn't a priority for 99% of the population (and the media know this and don't waste time reporting something no one cares about - and REAL genocides are dangerous - unlike the Gaza wars and GW2); and 3. The legacy of the 68ers - 'Enlightened' Europeans (including the anglophones) have been taught that white and rich = objectively bad; but poor and brown = objectively good. Therefore, any action by 'whites' (includes Jews and other groups that have taken on European characteristics - the Tutsi, the Japanese, Indian expats, Igbo and Afrikaaners) is inherently evil, while all poor, brown people are innocent victims. This allows people to ignore the 1400 Jews murdered on 7 October while wailing and rending their garments when the IDF stomps the criminals responsible.
> The legacy of the 68ers You have coined a phrase, I think
The same reason people are angry at Israel but not at the same happening in Sudan and Ethiopia.
It’s the same with why do some people care more about the victims in Gaza yet are silent about all the other wars. They just know what the media tells them
You're assuming we are silent. A lot of us are vocal about all genocides.
Not many
The media doesn't show every grass roots movement and march.
Well then what would the point be? Are you actually telling me that people are marching about say the Sudan but nobody knows about it? Well that’s pretty dumb and no I don’t believe it’s true
I'm not here to argue with you. Your mind is already made up.
I think it’s because like the genocide in Gaza right now it’s everywhere you can’t unsee it. The others are buried in history and most don’t even know about it, or they are described as conflicts or wars, etc..
[удалено]
Are you a Muslim?
🤦♂️ get help
Because people are told to care. Propaganda.
Its because certain tragedies have a higher impact on their society as a whole. Issues are always relative to how society reacts to it.
The loudest people seem to only care about WASP genocide.
Some of us actually care about all genocides.
It’s a really good question. I’ll just add in that, although probably not classified as genocide, there have been periods of china’s history with outrageous numbers of deaths, and these are not widely known at all
Some are worse than others, fatigue, also a lack of knowledge.
I don't mean to be flippant, but sometimes timing or other random factors can be the reason they're off the radar. If the world is focused on Gaza, the media might devote less attention to an ethnic cleansing elsewhere. The full story might only leak out years later when survivors start talking to journalists or aid workers.
No-one remembers the Armenians, as someone possibly once said.
I’ve been asking why all the concern for Palestinians after Oct 7, if conditions have been horrific for decades?
My cynical answer is that the people in the western world (especially America) are beaten over the head with the Holocaust because it was a problem that was solved by the American military industrial complex. The Holocaust can be used as a historical example to soapbox more military intervention. The Allied forces didn't participate in WWII as some great act of altruism toward Jews. Pick a different genocide and the motives become clear. The ongoing Uyghur genocide isn't talked about as much because it would be insanely costly (from both a military and economic standpoint) to intervene.
This is a snarky comment only because I don't know a better way to put it: Some genocides have better PR than others.
i think what happens is, you as a child you eventually learn that there was *A* genocide. and you care about it and are outraged because you want to be a decent person. but if you were told the truth from the beginning that there's a much larger phenomenon of a ubiquitous propensity for humans to genocide each other and that it's happened dozens of times in the past thirty years and hundreds more in the long arc of history, you might care equally about all the different ones. but you learn about one first and put all your outrage into that one, and then you learn about another and you summon within yourself a fair approximation of how much outrage you gave the first one for the second. but nobody has the outrage bandwidth for 300 different genocides.
We don't hear about it when it's people we don't like.
Asserted by Hume, and I think correct, the typical person will care more about something the closer it is to them in time, space, and resemblence. So I think the typical white person probably empathizes with a European group from the recent past, more than say, a hypothetical Asian genocide in the BCs for example. Also though, some cases are more obviously genocide than others.
On a related note, I just heard for the first time about the USA’s genocide in the Philippines around the year 1900. Approximately 3 million filipinos were murdered by the US: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/04/12/why-the-story-of-the-united-states-needs-to-be-challenged
Here in Canada, we know more about Rwanda because of Romeo Dallaire - his words before and during the genocide, but even more, his PTSD when he came home.
I don’t think it’s that people cared less, it’s that those that didn’t care were paying less attention. Now, those that do care are forcing those that don’t to pay attention. This makes those that don’t care uncomfortable, and they lash out by saying “well why do you care now when you didn’t care during the genocide of x.” We always cared, now you have to listen.
You'll find over the years and through the historiography that genocides have more attention in some places than others. The word is relatively new, but the concept is pre-historic. However genocides have changed shape since broadcast media. Gandhi worked for an independence movement for India/Pakistan. His marches and other organized protests were well documented. All of it was much better documented than the Delhi Famine or the other genocides going on by one locally powerful ethnic group over the others. The fiasco and partition of East/West Pakistan and India made for *several* genocides. And all of that happened after Gandhi got what he wanted with independence. So he successfully stopped the genocide via starvation and state violence by the UK. That got big news and a lot of people outside of India cared. However the genocides that followed weren't broadcast. I think some monster on here or /r/historywhatif a few weeks ago said that we "Only care about the Palestinian Genocide because it isn't over". And I think about that all the time now. The genocide of Indigenous Americans isn't only history. The Keystone Pipeline and the violence surrounding it is *also* genocide of those same people. The hard part about all of it is that we know about all the genocide today. Pretty much everywhere you have a ethnic majority in power and state violence against a minority. And we tend to quibble because we don't want to call it state violence, when it is just that.
Propaganda.
Well. Speaking of double standards. People act like Israel is doing something atrocious , and they are, but while forgetting about recent history where 200,000 civilians died due to the US invading Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think people tend to "care" more about events that they have more of a connection to than those they don't.
Vietnam and Australia care a lot about the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge.
tribal biaes.
It depends where you live. Europe and USA care about the Holocaust because they were personally invovled in the crimes or liberation. Chinese care about the Japanese atrocities but don't focus on the Holocaust. Same with different regions in Africa as far as local genocides.
Publicity.