Thursday, August 27, 2009

What does the future of genocide look like?

It is hard to imagine genocide at any level, really.  No one could have imagined the atrocities of the Holocaust before WWII, just like no one could imagine the disaster that befell the Armenians in 1915.  The Hutu and Tutsi Civil War in Rawanda in 1995 and the "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo are the two latest incidents of genocide.  Today, with social media, I think that it would be easier to identify groups for genocide, and a leader with that purpose in mind could have one on a massive scale.  That said, the same social media that points out groups for execution would also serve as a watchdog against genocide.  There were no cameras rolling when the Ottoman Empire marched Armenians into concentration camps.  The first reactions to the Holocaust were shock and denial.  Today, with smartphones and social media, the world is hyper-sensitive against genocide and public outcry would force the United Nations to at least examine a potential genocide. While sadly I think that humanity is still capable of being barbaric enough to commit genocide, I think that social media makes it harder to commit one, at least in secret.  

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