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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29177 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Per the core definitions used, ethnic cleansing is explicitly "get them to leave" as distinct from "destroy them" entailed by genocide. This is common across most sources. See eg:

That's one of the major reasons to have separate terms for the two! They're often paired in history, but it's not weasel-wording to use the actual definition of the phrase as it's actually and deliberately used in practice.

If using a term as it is defined, but relying on the fact that everyone reading it will interpret it very differently isn't weasel wording, what is?

I'm going to disagree here, I think "ethnic cleansing" is commonly understood as forceful displacement rather than actual genocide. It's obviously not an entirely clean distinction - making an entire ethnic group leave an area is almost always going to require a lot of violence - but normies are not going to look at a Kosovo situation and say "that's not ethnic cleansing, there's no gas chambers".

I'm prepared to bite whatever bullet is here and say "those who read it and interpret it differently are wrong." It's a useful phrase with a clearly defined meaning. I use it as appropriate and if someone overinterprets it I'll correct them. I'm looking to describe a set of events that happen sometimes, not encourage overreaction.

I would say "You're welcome to suggest another phrase for the process of deliberate removal of a group of people from an area by any means necessary," but that feels silly. We have a phrase for that. It's ethnic cleansing. We don't need another. If people are overstating it or overinterpreting it, they should knock it off, since the word "genocide" already exists for that purpose.

Imagine my confusion when I saw this out of context in the comment feed, and assumed it was posted in this thread instead.

I appreciate strong definitions too (although it's a war we have thoroughly lost, because strong definitions mean accountability and the mainstream can't abide that) but ethnic cleansing isn't the term I am looking to define - weasel wording is. What is weasel wording if it isn't relying on fuzzy definitions to push an agenda while maintaining plausible deniability?

In that case I don't understand the objections when that word is used to describe what happened to white ethnics in urban cores in the sixties.

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