The 8 Stages of Genocide

The 8 Stages of Genocide

THE GENOCIDAL PROCESS
Prevention of genocide requires a structural understanding of the genocidal process. Genocide has eight stages or operational processes. The first stages precede later stages, but continue to operate throughout the genocidal process. Each stage reinforces the others. A strategy to prevent genocide should attack each stage, each process. The eight stages of genocide are classification, symbolization,dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial.

Classification
All languages and cultures require classification - division of the natural and social world into categories.
We distinguish and classify objects and people. All cultures have categories to distinguish between “us” and “them,” between members of our group and others. We treat different categories of people differently. Racial and ethnic classifications may be defined by absurdly detailed laws -- the Nazi Nuremberg laws, the "one drop" laws of segregation in America, or apartheid racial classification laws in
South Africa. Racist societies often prohibit mixed categories and outlaw miscegenation. Bipolar societies are the most likely to have genocide. In Rwanda and Burundi, children are the ethnicity of their father, either Tutsi or Hutu. No one is mixed. Mixed marriages do not result in mixed children.

Symbolization
We use symbols to name and signify our classifications. We name some people Hutu and others Tutsi, or Jewish or Gypsy, or Christian or Muslim. Sometimes physical characteristics - skin color or nose shape - become symbols for classifications. Other symbols, like customary dress or facial scars, are socially imposed by groups on their own members. After the process has reached later stages (dehumanization, organization, and polarization) genocidal governments in the preparation stage often
require members of a targeted group to wear an identifying symbol or distinctive clothing -- e.g. the yellow star. The Khmer Rouge forced people from the Eastern Zone to wear a blue-checked scarf, marking them for forced relocation and elimination.

Dehumanization
Classification and symbolization are fundamental operations in all cultures. They become steps of genocide only when combined with dehumanization. Denial of the humanity of others is the step that permits killing with impunity. The universal human abhorrence of murder of members of one's own group is overcome by treating the victims as less than human. In incitements to genocide the target groups are called disgusting animal names - Nazi propaganda called Jews "rats" or "vermin"; Rwandan Hutu hate radio referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches." The targeted group is often likened to a “disease”, “microbes”, “infections” or a “cancer” in the body politic. Bodies of genocide victims are often mutilated to express this denial of humanity. Such atrocities then become the justification for revenge killings, because they
are evidence that the killers must be monsters, not human beings themselves.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages1996.htm (page 2 of 6)


Credit where credit is due:
[This article was originally written in 1996 and was presented as the first Working Paper (GS 01) of the Yale Program in Genocide Studies in 1998.
1. Gregory H. Stanton is the James Farmer Professor of Human Rights, The University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia; President, Genocide Watch; Chairman, The International Campaign to End Genocide; Director, The Cambodian Genocide Project; Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars.]

BLOGNOTE:
Pay close heed to stage 3; Dehumanization.
I mentioned it in my last post.

ALSO ;
VERY IMPORTANT to the case in New Orleans!
From http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages1996.htm (Page 1 of 6)

The Genocide Convention is sometimes misinterpreted as requiring the intent to destroy in whole a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Some genocides have fit that description, notably the Holocaust and Rwanda. But most do not. Most are intended to destroy only part of a group. The Genocide Convention specifically includes the intentional killing of part of a group as genocide. It reaffirms this definition when it includes as among the acts that constitute genocide "deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'. Those who shrink from applying the term "genocide" usually ignore the "in part".


BlogNote (cont'd)
Many were allowed to escape, in fact the deaths are only a messy inconvenience to the powers that be. They only needed the people out of the way so those in power could satisfy their agenda. The agenda I speak of is to lay claim to the vacated, depopulated lands in New Orleans. The crippled society of New Orleans did not show up to vote Democratic as usual. So, 'Wormwood' is 'Under New Management'until a champion for the people of the American Diaspora suits up and shows up with a viable plan for restoring the land for the people, by the people and of the people. When only developers and fat greasy oil barons show up to vote... they will vote for their own wallets and screw the people to hell. We have an elitist, global agenda stealing the money that should be used to restore the city FOR the people; not to make the rich richer. Wormwood is doomed to be haunted by the cries of mothers draped over tiny pink and blue coffins. The ghosts of the elderly who could not escape the floods; whose taxes did not go to pay for levee repairs, but were instead sent to pay for bombs and bullets to murder innocent brown people overseas instead.

Yes, I have a problem with that.