Ban “Ethnic Cleansing”

by | Mar 28, 2024

I propose that we defenders of individual rights stop using the term ethnic cleansing. Why? Because it is the sort of euphemism bad people would use to disguise what they are doing when they expel or annihilate large numbers of people viewed as members of the wrong group. The Nazis used the word hygiene when writing about “purifying” the Aryan “race.” That word was meant to soften the truth and dress it in scientific garb. But we all know what it meant. Ethnic cleansing would fit well into that lexicon.

Remember, it was the Nazis who talked like that — not the victims or outraged onlookers. They wouldn’t have called what the Nazis were doing ethnic cleansing. Why sanitize it? Cleansing is usually a good thing, isn’t it? They would have called it mass murder or mass deportation.

Why are we talking in Nazi euphemism?

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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