ah, a long, well controlled part on the left poles and philosophers have puzzled over the nature of law and why do people to come to it? but the opposite question of why do people hate and kill, maybe even harder to answer from the biblical fratricidal murder to the john sides of the 20th century. how well do we understand this urge to the other to discuss it now joined by alex hinton distinguish professor of anthropology at rutgers university and the unesco chair on genocide prevention professor can it's great to talk to you. thank you very much for finding the time. yeah,

thanks so much for inviting me on. you know, i used to be a warrant correspondence in every conflict. they cover the charges of genocide for the 1st just bring out partially because it's how fear operates, especially if you're back. but also because it's a highly colton political charge, it can impact the outcome of a comp, like a somebody who's dedicated. he's korea to study genocide. can you always tell the difference between the real imminent danger out targeted mass killings and the conscious app or she used that here to exploit that you're just back to political outcome. yeah. you know that's, that's a great question. and a complicated question and i think maybe several questions so, so maybe we'll sort of start with the 1st and work towards the last one. but just so in terms of definition, right, genocide refers to the intent to destroy

a group and whole arm part. and after a political negotiation in bargaining at the u. n, they came up with 4 protected groups, racial, national, apnic, and religious and minis. people who study genocide like myself, believe the political groups, any group is defined in terms of an identity position. if there's an attempt to destroy that group should all within that umbrella just to make it relevant to the recent history of that recent european history of the case or struggling. it would be an internationally recognized case of genocide despite the fact that it was preceded and followed by many examples of mass killings which were not recognized as genocide. what would be the difference then? mass killing, ethnically motivated, mass killing, one less

a group of travel storms through the village and kills everybody in that way and genocide. yeah. so the key one of the key words is intent, right. which makes it also difficult to prove intent. and so just sort of get your question, i want to go through one other distinction though, as sort of link to the definition of the term. it's important to sort of lay off these parameters, ordered to answer the sorts of questions that you're asking and they're great questions. but so that was the negotiation that took place at the end of the us from $46.00 to $48.00. we got this sort of strange definition and they include things like the killing as well. i'm flipping bodily or mental harmonic groups transferring children. there are sort of a cluster of acts. but again, those acts came through this process of bargaining. as i was saying, most scholars have a broader definition, but within international law we have the crime of genocide. but there is

a cluster of crimes called a trustee, crimes which, which differentiate between genocide, crimes against humanity, which doesn't have to have the intent, which is a key distinction, war, crimes, ethnic and ethnic cleansing. so what do you do if you see a situation to sort of go back to your 1st question that says motion? well, for example, the un office of special adviser genocide, prevention has come up. there are many different sort of risk assessment list that people use. they come up with one, and the idea is, is there a set of common risk factors, polarization, upheaval, so on and so forth. they're mainly to genocide that they could also lead to other sorts of atrocity crime. so when you're in the moment to go back to that great 1st question you asked, you can say, well, atrocity crimes, it looks like there's a high risk of them taking place. one of which is genocide, but it's also possible that these other sorts of trusty crimes will take place or

maybe already are taking place. why are we giving so much more weight to the issue of genocide as opposed to other killers? because i mean, again, going back to the boston war, the bosnian muslims have committed, documented trust. that is which in many cases where africa law today that and yet i think be the horror of shrubbery. nisa has somewhat overshadowed the other crimes. and i know that many people in the balkans feel very bitter about the kind of justice was served in the aftermath of those wars. don't you think that distinguishing between, let's say, or assign a higher way to genocide as opposed to mass killing or other sort of atrocities. we gaze the very purpose of justice or paying attention to issues like that. so why is genocide the crime that people want to talk about it?

because, you know, in part because of what the nazi atrocities look came to be eventually it was initially referred to as a holocaust, probably been in the 1970 s. you know, after the trial we actually have an adverse who's been trial next month. but then i can some views, there began the all costs are spread around and became a global. ready icon, right? embodiment of what genocide is when people think of what genocide is, they think usually of the holocaust sort of systematic state sponsored mass murderer that takes place with you know, it's industrialized. but of course that's not always the case to your point. the use of the term genocide then as a tool for home mobilization to call attention to a given crisis to be used politically. as you know, people draw upon it. that's why it has this more away to separate question to say, is it appropriate to use this term in these different cases and again,

progress. anything if it was appropriate to be applied, let's say in the case of robert, if not in the case of many other cases of mass murder in the balkan. yeah. so you sort of again, it goes back to system as to city intent my view more broadly, as the genocide has taken place. far more than anyone acknowledges. right? it takes place frequently. it has taken place in virtually every country in the world. people don't want to address that because of that stigma, you know, that's attached to it. importantly to the holocaust. and so you know, genocide is much more widespread so why does it come to be call them? well there's political will mobilization. remember wanda, nobody initially wanted to make new agenda, so i was taken place. nobody wanted to call it that eventually that label. and to take placement, not at the time when immense for unfolding. and part of that,

politicize ation is if you say it's genocide suggests that you need to do something . but of course, as we see in the world now that's actually down to a point where you can say something is genocide. you know, like the weaker they're hanging people can pretty much call it out, but nothing is really done because joe politics and it's hard with powerful countries. you can't really intervene. ok and doesn't work the other way around. that. when the charges of genocide i picked up and acted upon that there is a political motivation of the strong players to perhaps use them as their own political course always. absolutely. but there are also as a move by other groups, non governmental groups, academics, victims, that are a number of different groups that are mobilized around these terms. but certainly the politics and the super powers, they're absolutely using it to their strategic state interest all the time. so,

you know, we can't go ultimately with just what a court of law calls, genocide. we can't go ultimately just with what a government polish genocide, it's much more complicated. it goes back to that initial sort of use of definitions and understanding the origins of this term and how it's come to be mobilized through history. that's important. and away by only focusing on genocide, we get diverted away from mass atrocities, of all sorts that we should be attending to. and genocide has this way. it's sort of mobilization nowadays, or people say, well, it's not genocide. well then we don't really need to do anything. i think it's almost 10 years ago to deal with that exact issue that you're mentioning, a concept of responsibility to protect was invented. a lot of people were talking about that. but i think that's all but buried now, came by the obama administration, after the way they use the un mandate in believe, be an intervention, then not only disposing of the got off in government,

but turning a prosperous country legitimately. one of the reaches countries in africa and open air slave market. now, do you think? yeah, disagreement, they've been why i don't necessarily disagree with the 2nd part of your statement, but the framing of the 1st part to say the concept of and the norm of rtp responsibility to protect is no longer operative. i don't, i don't agree. i don't see any chance of, let's say russia is one of the permanent council members ever agreeing to you or something like that. having seen what has been done, not only to lead it but to the whole continent as a result of that, it leads me to another question. i think it's an important justice question because the abuse of the un mandate is indisputable. the bama restriction clearly over the negative consequences out also for everybody to see, you know, that many, many thousands of people lost their lives in lively as

a result of the economy or the country was destroyed. and he had nothing that was ever investigated as a long, broad course. if we are talking about justice in broad terms and google trying to do things should have been least looked at how this fear is of genocide or playing up this year. a mass murderer was used for geopolitical gains and whether somebody has to take responsibility for that. yeah. so yeah, absolutely. as another catastrophe. there always should be sort of a reckoning with what's taking place. there wasn't just the united states, but our 2 p has 3 pillars. during the last pillar, the 1st thing says all countries have a responsibility to protect their people and i think all countries agree with that . right? so that's part of the reason we got this norm. the 2nd pillar is that if a country is unable to protect their people,

the international community and they can seek help in a number of different ways, assistance, food training, what have you? so that's the 2nd pillar, and then we get to the 3rd pillar that if a country is unable to protect its people, international community has a responsibility of some sort to enter beans and within the sorts of interventions, military interventions the last step. so are to be the earlier parts of it are still operative. it's a norm that we have. and that's a norm that important ways under state sovereignty, which even as it needs to be a respite expected, enables genocide to take place because it goes back to that whole thing. well, there are people in my country, it's my problem. i need to deal with it. you don't have any right. i'm in and interfere with what we're doing. we've had an erosion of that to say that human rights need to be protected all countries. we all great need to protect are people . so i would say i have to be protected also from the intervention over of a foreign tower, which comes with one mandate and over stuff in

a way that causes far more harm than good. right? well, i mean, i already said we're in agreement about that, but what i think i don't even know if we're in disagreement, but certainly the a r t p is enormous. that i don't agree with. i think it's active, it's the baited at the un, but it's not quantify, but even putting the responsibility project aside. do you think the, the current legislation on side is it still irrelevant and likable? given the scale of geopolitical divisions in the world and how differently various countries look at various conflicts. you know, i would just say, as opposed to starting with libya or the rain guy or the week or what have you. let's go back to 945. let's go back to the nazi atrocity. and if you look at the human rights infrastructures that existed at that moment, if you looked at the ability of the norms of convention that existed at that moment

. and you compare them to now we have our massively much more robust infrastructure to do things. and you know, everyone always jumps intervention as military force. that's not the case. all sorts of things can be done. so we now on a global trans national, regional and domestic level have infrastructures to prevent genocide that did not exist in 1925. and we made good use of it or is there is an optical medical the time. but i guess the point is it's a lot better to have those infrastructures than not to have an impact. the only thing we ever hear about or the cases of failure, we never hear about the successes because in that situation, atrocity crime don't take place. we have to take a very short break right now. we will get back in just a few moments here. ah

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. join me every person on the alex, simon, i'll be speaking to guess in the world politics sport. business. i'm sure business . i'll see you then. mm. ah. welcome back to well, the alex distinguished professor polish at rutgers university and ask a chair on genocide prevention. professor hinton, your most recent book is called it can happen here wide power and the rising read of genocide in the united states. and i think it's both a straightforward and somewhat ambiguous statement of it, because you genocide can happen anywhere where people leave where and where they

can conceptualize and emotionally weaponized differences in the united states as a very diverse country clearly carries that. why does it have to be stated and why doesn't have to be stated in explicitly racial trends, given how many divisions exist in the united states? yeah, no, thank you. that's a great question. ok. and a big one. you know, sort of the 1st thing you say, the shadow and recognition of the shadow. you know, i absolutely agree that all countries have a shadow of some sort. as i mentioned earlier in terms of dennis, i know the crime is taking place different countries to different extent and also in terms of different specific cases. acknowledge that shadow the united states ah, for link back to the history of the country, notions of manifest destiny. you know, the politics of subtler colonialism and taking land indigenous peoples in terms of global capitalism,

enslavement and terms of prostate crimes during war and again in on focusing on the, on the u. s. many of these things are, can be said about most countries in the worlds which we can just put that aside. there's a global reckoning, the sorts of things i talked about in my book that you know, needs to be made. but the thesis in terms of the book itself, is that because of manifest destiny, destiny, notions of american exceptionalism, there's there forms of denial that exist. one is when we have an event like charlottesville, when white power actors took to the streets, protested personally, as a person drove a car down the street. and everyone says, you know, this is not us. this is not the us, it's not america. and that's a form of a 1st denial that exists in the 2nd one is when people see neo nazis skinheads different sorts of white power extreme as they tend to amelie dismiss them as racist. haters bigots, as opposed to saying, well, you know, they're actually spectacular examples of something that's existed for

a long time in terms of white proficient in the and yet you use the term. why yourself and the title of your book and given how mixed the american population is, i mean, president obama has a white mother and a black father. so it's hard to tell really whether he white, a black, i mean, unless you take it very literally, i mean, the influences of both of both cultures and their even how this american population is given. how much the economy in general has benefited, save from slave labor from appropriate lands from killing indigenous people. how can one make those fine distinctions without falling into as forces them dynamic? because as far as i'm concerned, every american citizen, regardless of he's or her skin color, regardless of her ethnic background, has benefited and been penalized by the legacy of slavery. why does it only has to

be focused on the whiteness of the abusers when in fact everybody, your country as a hall still read the benefits of slave trade? yeah, absolutely. so, you know, the categories, one thing you're raising is, you know, what is race and how do we get these categories those categories, racialized categories are actually bound up with subtler o'neill is globally in the u. s. we had a particular amount of station in terms of black and white, and they became political, legal, and scientifically justified categories even as their social constructions. so the model is ation of a term like that is the term that the people who are identifying in a movement a white car movement, is the term that in which they identify the more broadly in the us. those are salient categories. those are categories that people use to distinguish between people, even as their social constructions and ideally, as you rightly pointed out,

we shouldn't be. but those are the categories in terms of violence that you have to parse in order to do the sort of risk assessment. we talked about earlier, which actually i took and apply to the united states in real time. as during the trump administration, i, as things began to really heat up and we add all or is ation upheaval, scapegoating. we had our militias in the streets and then as we got to 2020, if you looked at a store examples of genocide, a mouse atrocity, or maybe we should say better atrocity crimes. we had several combined on contested election, a coo and evidence, increasingly as coming out, suggesting that there was a very intentional attempt to have a coup in the united states. we'll see what happens as we continue to move forward . but regardless, and attempted to, however you frame it, those are the factors that catalyze mouse atrocities. so genocide is, as i said,

the tip of the iceberg of these different atrocity crimes and then assessment. this is what i did in the united states. it's after i say that we do and other countries as we pull together these risk assessment factors, we say, what is the likelihood of something happening? and then you raise the alarm. so nothing does happen. well, when you are raising the alarm about genocide, isn't it a bit of a catastrophe sizing they the problem? i mean, i understand that many of the issues that you are raising are legitimately concerning to people. i frankly disagree with the racial framing over it. i think it's far more complicated and there are many studies, frankly, you show that the race is not defining factor in, don't you think that it's somewhat artificial? and again, you are very slowly pushing on versus done dynamic and yet somehow seem to be playing along with it. yeah, i don't, i don't think so,

but i appreciate your point. you know, as i said before, these are socially constructed categories. but that reality is different from the way the race is deployed politically in terms of everyday social life. and now, you know, in the united states, people are talking about structural racism, which is something that actually of course, many of us have said before i teach about the holocaust, you can look at the nazi atrocity is very direct in terms of structural racism. but the point is that if a system that embodied manifests in empowered through law through access to jobs through. ready access to education and then all these different domains, they undergird a system where those identified as white and i completely agree with you about the problematic categories. right? how does vantages and historically have dominated blacks in the country? and i think that no one,

not even the members of the palm pale commission on human rights, right under the comp and ministration disagrees with that impact a point to enslavement this empowerment instructional racism and their report. so, you know, i'm not going with democrats, i'm referring to a republican report that acknowledges this history. it's, i think contest it is. this is like straightforward something. it's not, it's true for the present to be because if you actually look at some of the studies, let's say in 2019 middle age wide nails in america, accounted for 70 percent of suicide. if you look at the various health statistics. so i've raised the answering colleges and finishing those college, if you will see that it's a huge social problem being a white male in the united states and in some other western countries. right now comes with lots of social disadvantages. i'm just not trying to frame that intellectual terms, but i was,

i would like to ask you about the way this is deployed in politics. something that you were referred to earlier, not only by the trump administration. clearly, they appeal to certain primitive biases, but also by the democrats, because the democrats have used explains his racial appeals. why consistently in the campaigns in the policy? sure, they were more sophisticated and perhaps they raise more positive themes. but if one political party appeals to a certain demographic group, isn't it an additive or that it would produce some counter reactions socially? so it's ok to appeal to the let's say life experiences of single black women. why is it not ok to appeal to quite real life challenges, all middle aged white man? yeah, absolutely. so, you know, you said

a few different things and maybe we'll go back to the 1st one in terms of opioid use in terms of suicide. what you've raised is class in some sense as an issue. well, i also mentioned rate, you mentioned it and i have your 1st name as y mail, but you're jumping in before i can finish what i'm saying. so i'm saying that the use of the category of race and racial identifiers a lives or races, things like class, gender, at necessity and other complex identity positions. you know, and so in the united states, there's a big debate about 1619. i don't know if you're familiar with it and then 16, i think, well, what does that mean? that means that we don't look at 1492. we don't look at indigenous experience. we don't talk as much about gender as an issue. so absolutely. there are complex

gender class ethnic positionings including those of say, poor whites and, and communities where industrial production things moving overseas in terms of manufacturing on and so forth. absolutely, there are issues that need to be attended to. and ultimately, as you suggested, we wouldn't have to operate with when within the frame coming of race itself. but it's the reality that exist on the ground is the reality that's mobilized by people . and i think you're absolutely right to say that democrats and republicans, especially on the fringes, tend to mobilize heavily in terms of race. do you have any cancellation, if possible, while the politics is still done in such way when political leaders make those regional appeals to unity? but actually, the way they operate both on the campaign trail and policy wise, when it's still very much demographically focused, focused on the expediency of certain demographic groups, rather than treating society as a whole. you know,

this is where i say we have to think people like you for having conversations like this because it brings these issues, the public awareness. so even if conglomerates, media conglomerates, corporations, the government, aren't attending to an, are actually playing upon these sorts of categorizations. it takes sustain analysis and conversations. you know, i have them, for example, in the classroom. i have them and interviews like this. i can talk about it through my writing in different ways. and those are the spaces in which i know there needs to be push back, because sadly, all governments, including the united states, mobilize identity categories, so they can hold on to political power. and you know, or so where is it? it's so we'll society, the media, academia, those are the spaces where there needs to be pushed back and including grassroots activism. thank you for thank you for your show in that respect your, your part of the prevention efforts in a sense, well,

and thank you for being here. i wish i had much more time than this fascinating discussion. thank you very much for thinking. well, thanks so much for having me down. i appreciate it. i thank you for watching. supposed to hear again next week on the part ah. with me. ah. with blue right now there are 2000000000 people who are overweight or

obese. it's profitable to sell food that is fatty and sugary and salty and addicted . it's not at the individual level, it's not individual willpower. and if we go on believing that will never change this obesity epidemic, that industry has been influencing very deeply. the medical and scientific establishment. so what's driving the obesity epidemic? it's corporate. ah. when the source is shake the way here, when i say russia and vital to list proposals tonight, so for maintaining joint security, the deputy for a minute to say the board is now in the alliance is caught when it comes to the escalation. i v crying oh to this, out of the pentagon says no u. s. military personnel will be held liable for that. bought strategy strike in afghanistan last summer,