In an interview on the Raging Moderates podcast yesterday with Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway, Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed revealed his thoughts on genocide, the Holocaust and accusing Israel of committing it. After stating the word genocide was created to explain the "murder of 6 million Jews", El-Sayed added:
But the whole point of creating that word isn’t that you have to wait until the crime is that big again to be able to use it, otherwise it loses its power. Its power is in naming a thing before it gets that big, so we could do something about it.
El-Sayed is wrong, of course.
It was Raphael Lemkin who coined the term "genocide" in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Although the subject was Nazi rule, it was the mass murder of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during WWI that would inspire Lemkin's work. Indeed, it wasn't until the following year that the world would fully know of Hitler's efforts to exterminate Europe's Jews. Genocide did not become a legal term until 1948 when the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Indeed, the notion that the term genocide loses its power unless you use it is absolute rubbish. Decent people understand the horror of the Holocaust and of genocide. Decent people also understand such words shouldn't be used casually.
El-Sayed has no such reservations. Genocide is indeed a powerful word and in accusing a people of committing it without any factual basis or with dubious claims serves the purpose of promoting hatred against that people as demonstrated by the global surge of anti-Semitism since October 7th.
You could call it a big lie. Say the word genocide loud enough and often enough then people will come to believe it.
You can also, to borrow a phrase from VP JD Vance, create stories. From where I sit, both men are one in the same.
El-Sayed isn't using the word genocide as a statement of fact. He is using it to engage in demagoguery.
Unfortunately, he appears to be succeeding.
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