The Four Stages Of Genocide

Genocide is defined by the united nations as any of the following actions committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Most people who hear the word are confused at first because it isn’t a very common term. According to endgenocide.org, In 1944 , a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin sought to create a new term to describe Nazi policies of the systematic murder …show more content…
In this stage people make clear the differences between the people being oppressed and the oppressors. By distinguishing people based on clothes, appearance, opinion, religion, beliefs, preference, or environment we place a boundaries in all these places for little or no reason. Boundaries often lead to distrust, which can lead to rebellious people who take rebellious actions and rebels make war. Though, symbolization and classification are everyday human practices and aren 't technically dangerous, in terms of genocide they can be the first steps that an evil manipulative person such as hitler can take advantage of. This can lead to stage three …show more content…
The people of the dominant race are taught and bred during this stage to regard the lesser race as less than human. To Adolf Hitler, the jews, once a resected people were nothing more than rats that had infested his country. He had them taken into concentration camps and fed practically nothing. Some were then escorted to “showers” where they met a gas chamber, where they were killed. Genocide being such a strong idea is dangerous. The last 5 stages of genocide include organization, where a state is chosen and a militia is used to provide deniability of the state’s responsibility. These militia groups “acquire” their own arms these groups then are used by the state to carry out the genocide. The state also spies on and secretly murders any opposition to the person in charge. Then there is polarization, where extremist drive a stake in a unified community laying out a foundation of hate. Followed by preparation and extermination this is when victims are separated out, collectively individualized, and then mass murder is the outcome. The last stage being denial, will always follow a genocide. The excuse will be they did it for the “greater good” or they were helping the world. They block investigations, they blame the victims for what happened. They do everything in there power to make their criminal behavior sound