Three reasons why the charge of "gEnOciDe!" works as a virtue signal against Israel
The charge of “genocide!” at Israel, which began by end of day Oct 7 2023, serves three purposes.
Being self-evidently absurd, it serves as an unambiguous membership signal in the Jew-hate cult.
It justifies doing anything, no matter how awful, to Jews.
It avoids directly using “unclean” or dehumanizing epithets, something politically tricky given the Holocaust, but it nevertheless manages to imply as much.
What I find interesting, and informative, is the number of people with whom I am acquainted who seem to approve of the "genocide" designation, who seem to believe that Isreal is some type of evil empire and express such opinions openly on Twitter. In fairness and full disclosure, except for this piece (https://thewiltster.substack.com/p/have-we-heard-this-song-before) I have almost no opinion about the issues. This is because I have NOT dug into the history or even the current events deeply enough to have an informed opinion. As such, I trust opinions such as yours, Doc. Hopefully, that's enough.
You are correct in that the use of "genocide'" in this context is shaming language; very much like how women use shaming language on men to manipulate the men b/c the woman can not physically impose her will on the man. Here we see Hamas using it to try and shame Israel.
Since you brought up the use of shaming language tactics how about we explore other uses of this like with "antisemitism"? There over 1,000 different ethnicities on the planet and of them the term "racism", when speaking English, is sufficient; except for 1 group. One group needs their own special term to set them apart from the rest. That or it's being used as a shamming language like tactic to shut down criticism and questions regarding the group.
What do you think Mark? Do they use antisemitism because they see themselves as needing to be apart form all other groups or do they use it for shamming language, to shut down criticism and questions about the group?