Harris and Trump are calling each other a fascist. But either claim will die the death of a thousand qualifications. So it’s not a claim. It’s what Wittgenstein would call a move in a language game called political rhetoric. Fair enough. But then what about genocide? The Palestinians call the bombing of Gaza a genocide. As do the Israelis call the call for “from the river to the sea”. Neither claim will survive the death of a thousand qualifications. So they too are rhetoric. Which is not to disparage them. Both occupation and resistance to it require one gets his blood boiling. And acknowledgement that this is nothing more than what it feels like to be living in history rather than studying it – think of the Norman conquest of England – is not very good at getting one’s blood boiling.
So rhetoric aside, is the levelling of Gaza genocide or isn’t it? Well, is it systematic? Yes if viewed from the outside. But arguably not if systematic is a synonym for intended. (See my entry on the Principle of Double Effect.) Are the Israelis targeting a people or just their leadership? And if the latter, are a leaderless people still a people? If not then the distinction collapses. For that matter, leaderless or not – think of the Jews during the Holocaust – what is it to be a people? It can’t be skin colour, because then Rwanda couldn’t have been a genocide. But nor can it be a commonality of purpose, because then the Valentine’s Day massacre would have been a genocide. And so on. And I say “and so on” because this is precisely how the term dies the death of a thousand qualifications.
But to be fair, definitions are the obsession of philosophers, not rhetoricians. And what’s happening on our campuses between Jews and their allies, and Moslems and theirs, is rhetoric, not philosophy. Would it help to infuse the former with a little of the latter? Not one whit. It would just kill the conservation. Would it help to kill the conversation? Less than a whit. Yelling at each other, though feckless, is a blessing, because it produces very little tissue damage. Well, at least so far. And given that there’s enough of it over there, there’s no point adding to it here.
Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
Intriguing. Well over a decade ago, you tasked our class with reading your paper, What, If Anything, Is Wrong with Genocide? What you have written here is an interesting followup — it prods my memory of an article I read about a year ago, Does American Fascism Exist?
You might find the linked article of interest as it touches on many of the same themes and ideas you espouse here. Granted, the author focuses on how the word “fascist” or “fascism” has been used as a rhetorical device, as opposed to “genocide,” but nevertheless, I think you might find it worth exploring as it is in your wheelhouse.
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