A fact from Justifying Genocide appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 December 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that in Justifying Genocide, Stefan Ihrig argues that many 1920s German nationalists viewed genocide as the "cost of doing political and military business in the twentieth century"?
I have to say that in pursuit of a marginal - and fairly unimportant - thesis, namely that the word for genocide pre-existed Lemkin, the text ends up being anachronistic - using words that didn't exist at the time and creating false equivalence in order to support a wholly semantic thesis ie if Völkermord as a term existed before genocide, and if its meaning is precisely the same as genocide, then somehow German invented the term or concept - or somesuch. Even the German WP article says that German has -and uses- both the older and the newer term. By definition, the English word was first coined when it was first coined in English - unless there is an acknowledged etymological root, the fact that a word with a similar meaning in German pre-existed 'genocide' is interesting background at most. The application of the word anachronistically in order to make this point is just confusing IMO. Pincrete (talk) 10:03, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Pincrete, Our article genocide is not about the word "genocide", it is about the concept of genocide. And there is every indication that this concept existed in some form before 1944. Just look at the revision to international law that Lemkin suggested in 1933.
None of the reviews of the book said that it used words in an anachronistic way. That's just your opinion, and you haven't cited any reliable sources that would support it. In fact you are continuing in the line of reasoning of those who say that it is somehow incorrect or anachronistic to call the Armenian Genocide a genocide. (t · c) buidhe10:19, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Look I'm not that concerned about THIS article - I feel it could be clearer, but it's up to you whether you heed that. It is anachronistic to refer to Armenian genocide - or ancient British genocide for that matter - if there is the implication that it was called that at the time. From the little I have read of the content of Ihrig, he does not use the term 'genocide' anachronistically. But I think it is a fairly trivial, somewhat confusing and anachronistic argument to seek to imply anything very much from the fact that a word in German may predate a word with a very similar meaning in English. English and every other language on earth had ways of talking both about mass ethnic killing and cultural/social destruction. So what? This article would be clearer in my opinion if it didn't presume an exact equivalence between "Völkermord" and "genocide", but made clear the relationship between the terms.
Regardless of what term is used, this article is surely about German attitudes to the intentional mass destruction of Armenians and others selected on an ethnic basis. Pincrete (talk) 10:59, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Pincrete:This article would be clearer in my opinion if it didn't presume an exact equivalence between "Völkermord" and "genocide", but made clear the relationship between the terms. But that's exactly what Ihrig does. He states that genocide and Völkermord are synonymous and it is accurate to translate Völkermord as genocide. If you can find any sources arguing otherwise, be my guest.
ps - the section "origin of the word" is about??? Not surely about other languages having words with similar meaning other than as 'background' to establish that Lemkin didn't pluck these ideas out of thin air. Pincrete (talk) 11:03, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Since I did not say - and do not think - that using the word genocide of events before 1944 is inherently anachronistic, I couldn't care less what arguments are used by deniers. I think all modern terms CAN BE USED in ways that are anachronistic and can result in purely semantic arguments. More often such use results in text which is muddled if, for example, we imply that some historical person or source used the actual word 'genocide'. Crudely speaking, modern historians and commentators refer to the Armenian Genocide - or some other mass ethnic killing - contemporaries did not. The distinction is worth making IMO for similar reasons to why we would not claim that the Emperor Constantine lived in Istanbul nor that Boudica lived at a particular address in Suffolk. Avoiding such anachronisms is usually achieved fairly easily. Pincrete (talk) 12:34, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Your arguments would be much more persuasive if you cited any evidence besides your own opinion that it is incorrect or anachronistic to translate Völkermord to genocide. (t · c) buidhe13:07, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about clarity, not about substance. I'm not claiming that the normal modern translation of Völkermord is not 'genocide', nor that the event should not be referred to as "the Armenian genocide - I'm saying that in some contexts eg "the German press repeated uncritically denial of the genocide by German officials long after the facts were widely known, as well as justification and rationalization of the killings", it would be both clearer IMO, and more efficient to avoid a word which the neither the German press nor German officials actually used eg "the German press repeated uncritically denials made by German officials long after the facts of the killings were widely known, as well as justification and rationalization of them." However I'm not that concerned about this article - the worst ambiguity has been fixed - which incidentally I had already fixed, I thought, but was reverted by you. Pincrete (talk) 13:35, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
