Interesting article from a serious source. The paywall-free quota is 1 article so you should be able to read it. If not, others can post an archive link. Or else consider subscribing if you can afford it. Democracy needs independent journalism as well as independent encyclopedias.
The definition of “genocide” contains an element of intent, which is all but impossible to prove. A lot of reputable sources (now) say the Gaza situation it is a genocide, a few say it is not. This is not physics or maths, it’s not a question with a “correct” answer. Moreover, it’s now politicized, which means large numbers of readers are watching eagle-eyed for signs of bias. It would have been simple to entitle the article “Gaza anti-insurgency” or whatever and then note in the first sentence that there is “growing consensus” around the word genocide. That would have been irreproachably correct and it would have maintained trust about Wikipedia’s NPOV. Instead of treading carefully like that, Wikipedia is stomping around and telling people what to think by including the trigger word in the title (telling people what to think never, ever works, incidentally). Jimmy Wales is right. This episode has sapped the whole project’s credibility. People here need to decide what’s more important: feeling good about their own righteousness, or Wikipedia’s survival as a credible information source. Not just credible for them, but credible for everyone, including the vast number of people whose values they may not share.
On the Covid issue, replace “genocide” with “conspiracy” as the unfalsifiable emotion-laden word and it’s roughly comparable. Beyond that I find it just too boring to get into a debate about right now, sorry.
“the source is that I made it the fuck up” for the COVID thing. Not a single reputable source says that.
I actually agree with the Gaza thing though. It’s fair to say that they should have added that as part of the first paragraph and not as the title of the article. At least initially.
But it’s also true that the only reason the Gaza genocide has become politicised is because of Israel’s status as a key US ally. If the exact same actions had been taken by a wildly unpopular government in the west like Iran, I’m sure no one would be complaining about it being called a genocide after so many reputable organisations have called it such as well.
Which begs the question: is the politisation really coming from those calling it a genocide or from those who don’t want to do so?
Why the need to make your point aggressively like this?
To (try to) wrap this up, my objection in that case is to the characterization as “conspiracy”. The proximate cause of the pandemic are still not fully understood. It is not black and white, just as Gaza is not black and white. The lab-leak hypothesis was never a “conspiracy” in that negligence (among lab technicians) is by definition not conspiratorial. Still less was it “racist” (by that standard the “wet market” explanation is surely more “racist” still - how absurd!). And yet I believe both of those slurs were pushed into the Wikipedia article at some point by activist editors, even into the title. Now that seems to be corrected. Hallelujah. The lab leak theory is a theory, not a conspiracy. Contrary to your belief, a bunch of reputable sources (now) accept that it is at least possible if not the most likely cause. Again, it hardly matters who’s right, what matters is that Wikipedia should be in the business of laying out the facts, not pushing readers towards pre-judged conclusions.
Oh the “I made it the fuck up” is actually a very popular meme, so although it’s aggressive, it was more a tongue-in-cheek reference than a direct attack to you as a person. The meme for reference
Anyway, the lab theory isn’t the most insane theory as it stands, and as you say, it’s not crazy at all to think of technicians being irresponsible. However, it does tend to share a lot of room with the actual conspiracy that COVID was a coordinated man-made attack, and in fact, the two were almost completely undistinguishable for a good chunk of the pandemic. To the point where I thought you definitely meant COVID being lab-grown as a coordinated attack, and not an accident, which I do believe is far more likely.
So yeah, Wikipedia is written by humans who do either have biases or who are too quick to judge situations. But overall, it is still one of the most impartial and reputable sources we have online.
As for Gaza, I definitely don’t think most people who feel icky calling it a genocide would be so hesitant if Israel weren’t a US ally, or allied with western values in general. Like I said, there is virtually no world where other non-allied governments doing the same thing wouldn’t be almost unanimously called a genocide, as shown by the Rohingya genocide, which is almost never questioned as such.
Interesting. All is provisionally forgiven.
On the lab-leak boredom-fest, yes I agree that the intent-vs-accident distinction is crucial and that the intent variant absolutely qualifies as conspirationism given that there’s zero evidence for it either empirical or rational. You’re right that the two were conflated problematically.
BTW it would be hard to be less conspirationist than me. I am about as skeptical as they come. I’m not even down for JFK, i.e. the starter-level conspiracy. Imagine that!
On Gaza, that’s an interesting counterfactual about the Rohingya, I admit that it’s somewhat persuasive. Personally I just hate emotion-charged words which are impossible to falsify because they require insight into other people’s minds. I share Orwell’s take: words should have clear meanings, agreed upon by all, or they should just be avoided (except in poetry). But of course the emotional valency is exactly why most people love the word genocide. Who cares about accuracy, it feels so good! Similar situation for “racist”, “fascist”, “woke” and bunch of others.
BTW I read recently that the framers of the genocide crime did not predict the power it would take on. They thought the other universal crimes (i.e. war crime, crime against humanity, and - especially - aggression) were all at least as bad as genocide. Maybe the fact that it’s a neologism gave it extra power.