Talk:Incitement to genocide

Synonyms, original research, and BLP implications
With this article it is important to avoid original research and classifying speech as incitement to genocide if reliable sources do not. To that end, I am starting a list of the terms can be considered synonymous because their definition is equivalent to "incitement to genocide", and which cannot. buidhe 17:44, 15 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Synonyms
 * "call to genocide", "call for genocide", "fatwa for genocide", etc.
 * "advocating genocide", etc.
 * Gray area
 * "call to murder", "call to violence", etc. in the context of ongoing genocide
 * referring to a speech or document as "genocidal" or having "genocidal intent"
 * Probably not
 * In pro-Israel media many things are described as "incitement", but it's not clear whether it refers to incitement to genocide, to terrorism, or to violence more generally.
 * Hate propaganda, not incitement to genocide
 * BLP implications
 * We cannot describe a living person as having committed incitement to genocide, even if RS describe them as such, unless they have been convicted for that offense specifically (for example, Vojislav Šešelj was convicted of "war propaganda and incitement of hatred towards non-Serb people", but not incitement to genocide). Instead, attribute or (preferably) use a construction as follows, "This statement was described as incitement to genocide" rather than referring to the person directly.

Further reading...
Was getting too long and I am not sure that all of these meet the MOS criteria, so removed to Talk:Incitement to genocide/Further reading. Please feel free to draw on these sources for expanding the article. buidhe 08:25, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Comment on sourcing
Some of the citations in this article may not be appropriate for a law article. I am very concerned that this article is developing novel legal arguments that are not discussed by any law books or treatises. I hope this is not the case, but some of the non-legal discussion may be better incorporated into other articles. JudgeJells (talk) 13:08, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree, somewhat similar to the main article on genocide, the term/concept is discussed both by historical and legal sources and the article should include both historical and legal perspectives. Additionally, although we do have Identifying reliable sources (law), an essay for US law sources, there is no policy or guideline which states which sources are reliable for international law. Anyway, perhaps you could give some examples of what you mean. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  13:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, perhaps my first impressions are unfounded. Please allow me some time to read all the cited sources and case law. JudgeJells (talk) 13:47, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Heavy POV
Examples are extremely limited, POV and one-sided, e.g.:

During a 2014 children's broadcast on Al-Aqsa TV, one of the participants says that she wants to "shoot Jews", all of them.[107]

So was this child guilty of calls to genocide? Shall we arrest and try her?

Let us mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Kahane

where a direct link to massacres and terrorism was repeatedly established by ... the Israeli and US governments: In 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre of Palestinian Muslim worshippers in Hebron by Kach supporter Baruch Goldstein, in which 29 Muslim worshipers were killed, the Israeli government declared both parties to be terrorist organizations.[82][83] The US State Department also added Kach and Kahane Chai to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. (and their previous US bombings).

What about Iraqis: The Simele massacre inspired Raphael Lemkin to create the concept of genocide.[269]

with the persistent anti-Christian propaganda and rumours insisted that the Christians were planning to blow bridges up and to poison drinking water in major Iraqi cities.... and many other examples from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

Does this sound like call for genocide? : The Germans are not humans. […] We shall kill. If during a day you have not killed a single German, you have wasted the day. […] If you do not kill the German, he will kill you. […] If it is quiet at your section of the front and you are waiting for the battle, kill a German before the battle. [...] If you have killed a German, kill another one too.

This illustrious gentleman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ehrenburg whose words lead to genocidal and planned par excellence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes.

-> Let us add planned and incited cases in Equatorial Guinea, Georgia, Indonesia, Bangladesh...: these are but random examples. Zezen (talk) 02:32, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Please, feel free to add any examples which are described in reliable sources as "incitement to genocide" (not just your opinion that it is), keeping in mind WP:DUE. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  02:37, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

No. As a gadfly WikiDragon and on mobile late at night, I alert yous to these heavy POV instead. The faultsnof the article are obvious. Do the legwork on a full PC, please, especially in context of the GA review. Here a 2 secs find: a NPR RS for a case above: https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their- victims-as-less-than-human ... the Russian-Jewish poet and novelist Ilya Ehrenburg was churning out propaganda for distribution to Stalin's Red Army. These pamphlets seethed with dehumanizing rhetoric: they spoke of "the smell of Germany's animal breath," and described Germans as "two-legged animals who have mastered the technique of war" — "ersatz men" who ought to be annihilated. "The Germans are not human beings," Ehrenburg wrote,

-> Find these. Use them to restore POV. Bows Zezen (talk) 02:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, Ehrenburg was referring to German soldiers, not civilians, in his famous 1942 pamphlet. (He opposed war crimes against German civilians). The source you cite does not describe the pamphlet or any other statement by Ehrenburg as incitement to genocide. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  02:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Pinging (Talk to me!) in view of his GA Review imprimatur hereinabove.

"From Incitement to Indictment - Prosecuting Iran's President for Advocating Israel's Destruction and Piecing Together Incitement Law's Emerging Analytical Framework"
I wonder if I take the trouble to track this source down if it will be a reliable source for "This propaganda led directly to the murder of over a million Armenians". I have read several general books about the genocide that was one of the most complicated with so many different factors and they make no mention of this as a major contributing factor. I'm not certain if this has to do with literacy and the media was not as well developed in those years as it was in later genocides. Is the source mainly advocating for the indictment of Iran's President for genocide for not being a supporter of Israel? I'm not a supporter of authoritarian regimes (in general) but this is too ] to be cited on Wikipedia. Gwynhaas (talk) 18:14, 27 July 2022 (UTC)


 * If I were doing the article again today I would do it very differently. I think that this article should be covered as a legal concept and it goes astray when it tries to touch on things unrelated to the law such as causes of particular genocides. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  00:57, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Buidhe's 10 Nov revert
I'm dismayed to see this revert. Much of the deleted text is firmly referenced to Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition by Gregory S. Gordon Oxford University Press. Gordon is described as an "American scholar of international law and a former genocide prosecutor." His book, as I understand it, explicity draws the connection between instances of speech and instances of genocide. This is not OR and it's doubtful if it is FRINGE; OUP is not generally considered a purveyor of fringe. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:22, 10 November 2023 (UTC)


 * He's an expert on the law; he is not an expert on the history. He did work with the ICTR but what he writes is not in line with current scholarship which does not place such an emphasis on the rtlm. What he writes about the Armenian genocide for example is dodgily sourced (the references he cites would not be acceptable on Wikipedia) and consequently just wrong when I compare it to high quality overviews of the Armenian genocide. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  17:34, 10 November 2023 (UTC)


 * In what sense is your opinion not, in fact, the OR? What makes you the expert in this area? If there is scholarship which is in contention with Gordon's view, surely we should be introducing that, not eradicating the properly sourced information which you happen not to esteem? --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not my opinion, it's the mainstream opinion of reliable sources focused on the topic that's the issue. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  23:32, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I think we need a large dose of citation needed at this point. Incitement is a legal concept. Here is a legal scholar who works in this field. Here is you, citing no sources, just making sweeping assertions. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Exactly, it is a legal concept and is discussed as such in the article as it exists—with regard to actual legal cases and established/proposed definitions in law. It is not an established concept in history or political science, so there is no sections that would mislead the reader into thinking that it is. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  01:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * You perhaps deliberately miss the point. Here is a legal scholar, who specialises in the study of incitement to genocide, providing analysis on incitement to genocide associated with Armenia, Germany &c. And here's some person on the internet, with no obvious credentials, deciding all this is "OR and FRINGE". How on earth is using Gordon as a source OR? On what basis do you label Gordon FRINGE? --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:58, 22 November 2023 (UTC)