Talk:Ethnocide

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[edit] Merge cultural genocide here

Both terms convey the same meaning, "ethnocide" seems more to the point and has been actively theorized as such (Robert Jaulin, etc.). Tazmaniacs 14:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. They do not. Cultural genocide refers to the destruction of cultural artifacts for genocidal reasons. The act of cultural genocide does not require there to be an existing ethnic group that uses, has ownership of, or feels itself attached to, the destroyed artifacts. Meowy 16:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Meowy. VartanM 01:31, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem with both terms is the root "-cide," which means "to kill." However unjust, what we are referring to as cultural genocide or ethnicide does not involve the death of a human being, and so to refer to it as a "-cide" actually waters down the power and specificity of the original term. So my problem with these words is not that they do not adequately denote what it is we are trying to describe, but that is muddles the language that we have to name other crimes that are, I think it is fair to say, more serious.

Joshuagitelson 18:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)joshuagitelson

The "killing" is the killing of a culture through destruction of its artifacts. I can also point out the existence of the phrase and the concept of "white genocide", which refers to genocide committed without the shedding of any blood. Meowy 18:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I think that the use of the term "ethnocide" (or "ethnozide") when it overlaps with the definition of "cultural genocide" is mainly used in non-English speaking countries, presumably because "cultural" is an English word. Meowy 20:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It's all Genocide

Genocide's definition shortens to "An attempt to eliminate an ethnicity." This includes "Ethnocide" as confirmed by noting the mental part of the wiki entry for Genocide. Looking at the bible, I'm not surprised monotheism tends to exterminate other cultures, see evilbible.com. Polytheism tends to do this less, possibly because they can theoretically get infinite explanatory power by just adding more deities. This would tend towards a theoretically infinite complexity under polytheism.

An unintuitive example

Corporations packed the U.S. Supreme Court after the Civil War and finally expanded their rights so successfully that few today know that treating them as "persons" was unthinkable to the prior court. Thus the Genocide successfully eliminated the culture that had defeated much of the arbitrary power of corporations we take for granted. jane_ikari@yahoo.com 38.99.84.53 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 12:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)