Crimes Against Words: Groomer and Genocide

Groomer

The topic of crimes against words first sprang to mind due to the recent vile, indiscriminate misuse of the word “groomer.” a word that should be applied solely to a perpetrator of that crime.

Jeffrey Epstein was a groomer of countless victims; Humbert Humbert, Nabokov’s famous fictional character, was a groomer of Lolita.

Who is not a “groomer?” Someone who merely opposes the new law in Florida about what can be taught in classrooms. And shame on the morally bankrupt politicians and others who hurl the word groomer at anyone questioning or opposed to the law.

Genocide

I am a Jew and when I hear the word genocide, I think of the Holocaust (six million). I think also of the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda (500,000+), and of the Armenian genocide during World War 1 (around one million). Genocide to me is systematic murder at monstrous scale of peoples for no reason other than their ethnicity.

In contrast, when I hear genocide, I don’t think of the killing of civilians that is coincident with war. I don’t think of the World War Two bombings of cities, whether London by the Germans or Dresden by the Allies (both responsible for tens of thousands of deaths). Nor do I think of the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam where hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed by American troops (Give America some credit for prosecuting the key perpetrators of that war crime, something few nations ever do.)

Which leads me to the war crimes Russia is committing through the gratuitous slaughter of Ukrainian civilians. Many leaders in the West have rushed to name this slaughter “genocide.”

I believe any civilian death in war is a terrible tragedy and I believe the more civilians who are killed, the more terrible the tragedy and the worse the crime. Genocide properly understood, however, is a matter of scale as well as circumstance. The scale and circumstance of what’s going on in Ukraine is not comparable to any genocide and especially not to the Holocaust, which gave birth to the invention of the word genocide–– “geno,” meaning people or race and “cide” meaning kill.

The Holocaust happened during a war, but it had no military purpose. On the contrary, it consumed German military resources that would otherwise have been used in their war effort. There was no wicked twisted logic of demoralizing or frightening the civilians of an enemy combatant. Nor was it an outpouring of rage and frustration by soldiers.

The word genocide ought to be reserved to describe the worst evil. Not “worse,” but “worst.” Evils of such magnitude that neither the brain, nor the heart, nor the soul can comprehend them.

Genocides are rare. War crimes are horrible, but not rare (the fact that they’re not rare is itself horrible.) But when we attach the label of genocide to war crimes, then we not only lose language, but we lose our capacity to properly gauge evil.  And if we can’t properly measure something, we can’t properly react to it. Think, for example, about all the gradations of criminal charges for taking another’s life. Conviction for third-degree manslaughter carries different penalties than first degree murder does.  

Two other related and recent observations that set me on this train of thought.

First observation: Senator Tom Cotton, speaking in opposition to the Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, had this to say. “You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg to prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.”

Cotton’s insinuation that Judge Jackson would sympathize with Nazis, because she was somehow “soft on crime” was factually wrong. More germane to my point, the crimes that Cotton falsely alleged Jackson being soft on (assault, etc.) bear no comparison with the crime of genocide committed by the Nazis.

(As well, the Nazi war criminals were afforded defense counsel. And I have no doubt that “this Judge Jackson” believes every defendant has a right to counsel. As I’m sure did the “last Judge Jackson.”)

Second observation: A retired general who comments on the Ukrainian war posted a picture of Adolf Eichmann on trial in Israel in 1960. The ex-general did so in the context of urging the world to use the example of Eichmann’s capture and trial as a guide to prosecuting Russians for war crimes.

My response to the general was, “If you put up a picture of Eichmann, then discuss Eichmann or the Holocaust. Don’t use it for any other purpose. Never.”

George Orwell warned about the dangers of using language that was “slovenly.” Because slovenly language makes it easier to think foolishly and thinking foolishly makes it easier to act foolishly.