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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24349 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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Technically, "persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined [to include only male and female], or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law" (defined as "intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of identity") does count as a crime against humanity, even though in common parlance it does not sound so weighty.

There should really a better way to encapsulate the specific idea "people are trying to make there not be any Xs anymore" as distinct from just "people are systematically mistreating Xs"; many groups are persecuted without their enemies' aim being to extinguish the relevant identity altogether. Trivially, that UN definition you quote conceives of itself as applying to gender-based "persecution", and it would be… surprising for any government to set itself the goal of actually erasing women from the Earth (even in the non-murder-based sense of trying to forcibly transition all women into trans men), so they can't intend that "persecute" should be understood as implying an intent to destroy.

Sorry, clarification: "Persecution" is a crime against humanity only "in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court"—that is to say, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, "other inhumane acts of a similar character", etc. So in effect it's just an aggravating factor to the real crimes against humanity, rather than a crime against humanity in itself.

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