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Comment by dlubarov | Hacker News Reader

The (arguably) relevant metric is population change during a purported genocide, not afterward.

If a definition of genocide is sensitive to where we mark the start and end of the genocide, then it isn't a very good definition of genocide. We can do the same thing with area: suppose some ethnic group was being genocided in a particular region, but overall population growth of that group was positive. Does that make it no longer a genocide? Clearly not.

The term genocide was coined specifically to refer to what happened to the Jews during WWII. Your nonsense logic doesn’t apply.

The definition of the term genocide doesn't mention net population decrease - or in fact any population decrease at all. I think I've demonstrated why it can't possibly include such a requirement. The way I did so involves, exactly as you imply, assuming that the holocaust was a genocide. Then I show how such a requirement would contradict that assumption.

I don't quite see where the miscommunication is. Serious claims about genocide normally come with (at least rough) temporal and geographic scopes. If we use too broad a scope, like "the Holocaust occurred from 1933-2025", then the claim becomes false. Right?

I think most people claiming a genocide is occurring are using a broad scope, like the conflict in Gaza since Oct 7 (if not something even broader), so it seems appropriate to look at the population change within that time period.

OTOH noone is claiming a genocide of Jews occurred from 1933-2025, so it wouldn't make sense to look at population change for that entire period.

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