In this episode I had the privilege of speaking to Dirk Moses, one of the world’s leading scholars of genocide, editor of Journal of Genocide Research, and author of the book The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression.
This episode was the first I’ve done in-person. Dirk and I spoke in a cozy cafe in the quaint university town of Leuven, Belgium. If I had the resources, I’d do every episode face-to-face. Who knows, my Joe Rogan moment may come. Haha. No, but seriously, there’s just something special about being able to see directly into someone’s eyes when you talk with them.
Dirk has examined the concept of genocide and its foundational problems from countless angles and with exceptional nuance. It was, admittedly, a little difficult to give justice to his thinking in a little over an hour. And yet, what he said, I predict, will make most of you rethink what you know about genocide, its history, and its capacity to bring justice to victims.
The actual driver of mass violence against civilians is not really hatred, although undeniably hatred accompanies and is entwined with the motivations… it was only in a certain geopolitical context where a group is considered threatening, not just inferior, that you get a genocidal conjuncture. It’s in those circumstances that perpetrators develop a paranoid mentality, they feel they have to deal with the threat in a once and for all manner…. not just mowing the grass, but rip up the lawn, that’s the language we’re seen now in relation to Gaza.
We spoke about how Dirk became interested in studying genocide in the first place.
I asked Dirk to take us through some keywords and figures in the formation of the concept of genocide - including Bartolomé de las Casas, liberalism, imperialism, Raphael Lemkin, Zionism, the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt, permanent security, the language of transgression, and ethnonationalism.
We also spoke about the state of the field of Genocide Studies, in particular how it continues to hold on to the problematic assumptions of the genocide concept.
We spoke, of course, about Gaza and how it fits into the broader history, and how it showcases the problems, of genocide.
To learn more about Dirk and to access some his articles, please visit his website: https://www.dirkmoses.com/.
Sound credits:
Political (loop) by AudioCoffee -- https://freesound.org/s/718891/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
Left For Dead.wav by Casonika -- https://freesound.org/s/539182/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
