Antisemitism – Progenitor of the Term “Genocide”

The antisemitic pedigree of the origins of the term “genocide” should not come as a surprise. Neither the advances or “progress” of humanity, nor the grim lessons of humanity’s antisemitic past seem to have muted or diluted let alone eliminated, the “core demonology” which lies at the heart of antisemitism. ^[1][1] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p. 3-11). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition. Rather, modernity and Jew-hatred appear to be comorbidities having a symbiotic relationship, with “progress” accelerating rather than curtailing the trajectory of Jew-hatred and enabling it to take on the most ominous of genocidal dimensions over the last century. It is therefore not coincidental that the word “genocide”, was first coined by Raphael Lemkin as a term, in response to the Holocaust, the apex of the antisemitic horrors – conceived of, executed and tolerated within and by the modern world. Churchill had described that event as “a crime without a name”^[2][2] http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/29/4/2940.pd and according to Lemkin it was in fact a “new conception” requiring “new terminology”, arguing that it was different than war crimes, crimes against humanity, mass murder or other categories that had been extant prior to the war.