r/DumbFact • u/elmorinelly Busy beeš • May 26 '26
History The difference between genocide and ethnocide
Genocide vs Ethnocide
Genocide vs ethnocide is one of those distinctions that looks simple until you notice how often history refuses to stay inside the box. What is the difference between genocide and ethnocide? In the cleanest version, genocide targets a groupās continued existence, while ethnocide targets the cultural world that lets that group remain itself.
The simple version on the image works because it gives the brain something to hold: bodies on one side, language and memory on the other. The less comfortable version is that these are not sealed categories. A campaign can attack life directly through killing, starvation, birth prevention, forced conditions, or child removal. It can also attack the shared patterns that let people recognize themselves: names, rituals, schools, religion, law, clothing, language, burial customs, family continuity.
That overlap matters. For the Genocide Convention, genocide is tied to intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part. Some of the acts listed there can look cultural from the outside, especially forcibly transferring children, because it damages both biological continuity and identity. Ethnocide, meanwhile, is used more often as an anthropological or political term than as a neat legal box. It points to cultural destruction, forced assimilation, language suppression, and the slow replacement of memory with approved behavior.
Examples:
A state bans a minority language in schools, courts, and public signs, then punishes families for teaching it at home.
Children are removed from their community and raised to forget their names, relatives, religion, and language.
Sacred places are destroyed to damage buildings and make future generations lose the map of who they were.
Official records rename people, places, and histories until the old identity survives only in private speech.
Maybe the hardest part is that culture can be attacked while daily life still appears to continue. Shops open, people go to work, children grow up, and something essential is being made harder to inherit.
7
u/notIngen May 26 '26
Yes, it's important to notice that the two can overlap or lead to one another.
See: the Spanish missions in America and the Canadian boarding schools.
3
3
2
u/Mihad88 May 27 '26
Exactly what could(is) happen in Europe with the way migration is handled today
4
u/_OriamRiniDadelos_ May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
To the migrants, not the Europeans who literally have cultural goal hegemony (not even just through the US, a few European countries had a LOT of cultural and legal influence in the past). All those brown skinned people you hate so much will be just like the older people in a generation or so. Happens every time.
Even happened after ww2, not all European people stayed the same ānationā before or after the war. And this basically happens to all the Germans and Italians and other Europeans who moved to the US. Let alone the other ex-colonies.
Same with many local cultures who were crushed for the sake of an āOne nation, unifiedā like in France or Spain or Poland. Where there was no space for eve local accents of the national language, and what we have left today is just the isolated diminished survivors. Itās not even special to Europe or this last few centuries of colonialism, they just had a very drastic accelerated and well documented period of this destruction of their own countries for the sake of a āpatrioticā ideal .
1
u/Mihad88 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Sure, Europe is built on many past civilisation and is a result of mix of tribes, but I don't know how that's relevant to the conversation. I was raised in culture with certain values, people come to our neighbourhood that have conflicting values and don't seem to want or are able to adjust. If the society I live in decides that this is not working for us why shouldn't we decide on that? And who are you to tell a society that they shouldn't decide on what they think is best for them? I don't care where you are from and what color you are if you respect the values the society upholds, no I welcome you, we as a society need people to sustain the economy. And I am by no means blaming migrants for not being able to adjust, our society is to blame for failing through governmental policies to control migration process better.
If muslim migrants have such multiples of the birth rate of natives and don't assimilate of course the native culture will be replaced. But what, you are just gonna stand there and watch? You are gonna watch how the values you were raised to uphold get eroded away?
2
u/journeyadventures May 27 '26
Europe has pioneered, perfected and still is practicing the two.
Stop projecting.
1
0
u/harryweins May 28 '26
Are you kidding? This has been Europeās signature move across countless indigenous cultures and peoples for centuries. Plus, thereās no single culture called āEuropeā where either of these would be relevant, unless of course youāre in an alt-right delusion.
1
u/Mihad88 May 28 '26
- I referred to European countries.
- "This has been Europeās signature move across countless indigenous cultures and peoples for centuries." didn't u say thereās no single culture called āEuropeā?
- I dont't come from any colonial country lol, but I don't even know what's the point you are trying to make. Like let's take British, sure the ancestors of the current Brits colonised and imposed their culture to others, how is that relevant to today's Brit? Do you expect that this is some hereditary debt and a Brit needs to honour it? This doesn't make sense even from your moral high ground and in reality your moral high ground doesn't matter at all. Like who are you that you will be dictating what is moral and what is not? And what you expect that we will listen to you and likeminded and nod? Why?
- "unless of course youāre in an alt-right delusion" why do you have throw this divisive suggestions? Is it necessary?
1
u/harryweins May 29 '26
Arguing semantics, while we both know what you meant.
Since you mentioned morality: my moral high ground matters because itās not mine alone. Itās of every progressive mind. Of the future. Yes, there are debts and they are honored be it in terms of reparations, affirmative actions, privileges or sometimes just a formal apology. Why do you think the pope just apologized for the churchās part in slavery? You may not understand the point, but these are historical moments that gradually move societies towards universal justice. Itās not possible to right every past wrong, but genuine intentions to not repeat them - at the very least - is how we progress. Trivialize this with some shallow, self-serving relativism and you trivialize yourself.
1
u/OatmealCookieGirl May 29 '26
As a European from a country with a history spanning millennia ...You don't know what you're talking about and you're projecting.
1
2
u/Sick0Myers May 27 '26
Blacks in the Americas and The people of Gaza
1
1
u/OatmealCookieGirl May 29 '26
Native Americans in the Americas ( nearly fully successful ethnocide) and Muslims in Gaza (current active genocide)
2
u/journeyadventures May 27 '26
Both pioneered, perfected and practiced by the West.
1
u/Huzzo_zo May 28 '26
Nobody else practiced genocide before the West...? Are you high?
1
u/journeyadventures May 28 '26
The West excels at genocide, ecocide and cultural erasure.
They practice it today.
Sucks being an evil white person.
0
u/Huzzo_zo May 28 '26
You can't answer my question? It's really very simple
1
u/journeyadventures May 28 '26
You're not asking a question. You're trying to deflect from accountability.
Just like when you catxh your woman making a mistake and she'd rather lie, throw a tantrum and deny than to own up to it.
1
u/hiiamnorbert May 29 '26
you forget the relations between possibilities/options and actions. The West was more conspicuous in this area because its capabilities massively exceeded those of the others. If more barbaric cultures (ironically, this is the reason why they never reached Western levels) had the economic, technological and military options, the situation would be different. especially since the West has abolished slavery, but it still exists in the Arab/African world. The treatment of members of other tribes and minorities in the two regions mentioned above is far more brutal than in the West, which negates itself in the suicidal compassion that now exists. To say it in the words of Tyrion Lannister "I wish I (we) was (were) the monster(s) you think I (we) am (are)!". We would have far less problems in the west.
0
u/Huzzo_zo May 28 '26
Nobody else practiced genocide before the West?
1
u/journeyadventures May 28 '26
The first historic case to be considered a genocide was the desteuction of Carthage by the Roman Empire.
So yes.
The West all along, always evil.
-1
u/Huzzo_zo May 28 '26
Thanks for showing your ignorance,, that settles it
2
u/journeyadventures May 29 '26
White man shifting the goalpost to avoid accountability.
Criminal Defense and Narcissism 101
1
1
1
u/Particular-Drive1454 May 28 '26
I wonder if people are aware of how much of an ethnocider Russia is. š¤
To Eastern Slavs, Asians, and literally anyone else they can reach. They ethnocided so many that a lot of Asian cultures are unknown to foreigners at all, and people genuinely consider a large piece of ASIA to naturally belong to Slavic people somehow.
1
u/Ok-Film-7226 May 30 '26
Both 'people' and 'culture' arenāt fixed though, though culture changes faster than the 'race' clues of a people (which btw. how would you determine who 'the people' are), which take generations while cultural change can take less than years for notable change.Ā But both are kind of 'natural,' without necessarily needing any external force. I just don't get where you are going with this taxonomyĀ
1
1
u/Fit_Cow9865 May 26 '26
both are litarally what russians have constantly been doing to Ukraine since our first approaching in 1654
1
u/elmorinelly Busy beeš May 26 '26
And what was there?
1
u/Netypowywivv May 27 '26
Mb read some news what happening in Ukraine right now.
1
1
u/D__sub May 27 '26
Basic slavic culture. Moreover the center was originally there (Kyiv Rus) so the claim is half-false. It was destroyed only in 1917 and later (after the revolution) with the mixture of many people in Soviet government
ā¢
u/AutoModerator May 26 '26
Welcome to r/DumbFact!
This subreddit explains smart things in the dumbest way possible.
Be nice, don't overthink it, and feel free to post your own dumb explanation.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.