Unproductive Frameworks in Genocide Discourse

Public conversations about genocide often become muddied by rhetorical strategies and emotional reactions that distract from justice, understanding, and reconciliation. These tactics are not only unproductive but disingenuous, often serving to obscure facts, deny accountability, or minimize suffering.

These conversations are not just academic, and genocide is not a historical relic. As of today, there are over 20 ongoing genocides, many of which have unfolded for decades out of the spotlight.

To have honest, ethical, and productive conversations about genocide, people must move beyond division and avoid falling back on rhetorical or logical fallacies. Victims and their descendants deserve truth, memory, and justice—not rhetorical games or nationalist denial. Genocide must be addressed with moral clarity, legal rigor, and historical honesty.

Below are several common frameworks that derail meaningful discussions about genocide:

1. The Numbers Game

“More people died in X, Y, or Z, so that’s worse.”

This attempts to quantify human suffering into a scoreboard, where higher body counts somehow justify ignoring or minimizing other atrocities. By turning genocide into a competition—often dubbed the Oppression Olympics—this framework erases the individual humanity of victims and discourages moral clarity. Suffering should not need to be the “worst” to be acknowledged. Every genocide deserves recognition not because of its scale, but because of its intent and its impact on communities and collective memory.

2. Whataboutism

“What about when [another country] committed genocide?”

Whataboutism is a form of rhetorical deflection that dodges accountability or avoids dealing with the specific atrocity under discussion. By shifting focus to another event or actor, it not only derails productive discourse but often escalates tensions. This tit-for-tat logic replaces inquiry with grievance, undermining justice for victims and creating an atmosphere of moral relativism rather than moral responsibility.

3. Denial

“That wasn’t a genocide because X, Y, or Z…”

Denial manifests in many forms: disputing the number of deaths, denying intent, questioning the definition of genocide, or justifying the violence. It can include statements like “they brought it upon themselves” or “there were no gas chambers, so it doesn’t count.” These arguments often hinge on a layperson’s or politically motivated redefinition of genocide, ignoring the legal definition established by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Denial is not a legitimate critique—it is a strategy of erasure.

For example, the Bosnian genocide has been subject to relentless denial, despite international recognition that a genocide had occurred. These denials often rest on semantic nitpicking, conspiracy theories, or efforts to minimize the scale or intent.

4. Moral Equivalence

“Every country has done terrible things.”

This approach seeks to blur the lines between routine historical wrongdoing and the specific crime of genocide. It’s a false comparison. While many nations have dark chapters, not all acts are genocide. Equating all crimes—especially state-sanctioned genocide—with lesser offenses collapses our ability to make meaningful moral distinctions. Worse, it can normalize atrocities by framing them as inevitable or commonplace.

5. Defensiveness

“My people suffered too!” or “You’re just smearing our nation!”

National or ethnic defensiveness is among the most emotionally charged derailments. It weaponizes the speaker’s identity to shut down difficult conversations. It’s often rooted in national pride or collective trauma, but it results in silencing victims and obscuring facts. Phrases like “You’re just pushing propaganda” or “You hate our people” recast attempts at truth-telling as attacks, creating a culture of denialism and gaslighting rather than one of reckoning.

This has been invoked to deflect from the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

6. Victim Blaming

“They weren’t innocent!”

This frame implies that mass violence is justifiable if the victims were politically flawed, criminal, or involved in conflict. It’s an attempt to rationalize genocide as deserved or provoked. But genocide, by definition, is the targeting of a group for destruction regardless of individual actions. Victim blaming reframes extermination as discipline, distorting the concept of justice and enabling a narrative of collective punishment, which is itself a crime against humanity.

7. Historical Distancing

“That was so long ago—why can’t people move on?”

Time does not erase trauma. Historical distance is often used to silence survivors and avoid the uncomfortable labor of remembrance, restitution, and repair. Justice and healing do not follow expiration dates. Calls to “move on” deny intergenerational trauma and perpetuate silence that benefits perpetrators and marginalizes victims. A society cannot move forward without first acknowledging where it has been.

Even when they fade from public consciousness, genocides can persist without bombs or bullets—through displacement, cultural erasure, sterilization campaigns, or starvation.

8. False Equivalence

“It was just war—civilian deaths happen.”

This argument reduces targeted extermination to mere collateral damage. But genocide is not incidental; it is deliberate. War may involve unintended casualties—genocide does not. Conflating systemic extermination with battlefield deaths dangerously mischaracterizes one of the gravest crimes under international law. It’s not a matter of “fog of war,” but of intentional and premeditated destruction.

9. Savior Complex

“But the Soviets liberated the Nazi camps—they’re heroes!”

This moral simplification posits that a group or nation cannot be guilty of genocide if they also did something morally commendable, such as liberating victims elsewhere. The idea that a liberator cannot also be a perpetrator shields those in power from accountability. Nations, like individuals, are capable of both heroism and atrocity. Acknowledging one does not negate the other. Moral complexity is not a threat to history—it is its foundation.