Some of the Gaza commentary you're reading and sharing is created by people who are serial genocide deniers and atrocity minimizers. Don't support them. Here are two simple tests you can run to vet your sources, followed by examples. A 🧵 First, who are the people I'm talking about? They're known as pseudo-antimperialists. I'll call them pseuds for short. They look vaguely leftist but support authoritarian regimes in the name of anti-imperialism. You can spot them in two steps.
positionspolitics.org/gerald-roche-r…

It's @UN Intl' Day of Commemoration & Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide & Prevention of this Crime. Let's check in on the genocide research centres of the world to see how they're reacting to the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza 🧵

https://twitter.com/UNOSAPG/status/1733157758621348290

The Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust & Genocide Studies (@UoLSBC) at University of Leicester (@uniofleicester) has nothing to say about Gaza.

I'm currently getting ready to teach a new semester at La Trobe University. Every semester, I start with an acknowledgment of country & when I do that I also talk about the role played by the uni's namesake, Charles La Trobe, in colonization. Here's what I tell students 🧵 Charles La Trobe arrived in Melbourne in September 1839, and departed in May 1854. He held the position of both Superintendent of Port Philip District (1839 - 1850) and Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria (1851- 1854). Key achievements include:

Packing up books to move is like doing a stratigraphic mapping of my autistic hyperfixations. The bedrock is, for whatever reason, local mammals. Feeling autistic, might delete later, but for now I’m going to show five extremely wonderful mammals of Papua New Guinea. I promise only five (5).

Publication day! My article ‘The Necropolitics of Language Oppression’ has just been published in Annual Review of Anthropology (thanks @AnnualReviews!). In this thread I’ll walk you through the main argument & the sections of the article. 1/11
doi.org/10.1146/annure… @AnnualReviews The article explores how the coerced loss of language (language oppression) contributes to physical, bodily death. To put it another way, when the state forces some people to stop using certain languages, those people are slowly killed. 2/11

At the University of Perpinya, opening today’s proceedings and getting ready for the keynote by James Costa. The professor introducing James (I missed his name), said “Sociolinguistics is a combat sport.”

Packed house to hear about Living Languages journal and how it helps connect scholars, communities, and activists working in language revitalization. The journal is multilingual - specifically people are encouraged to submit in languages that they are revitalising.

Here's another one for my thread on backlash against Indigenous languages in Australia. 4 June 2022, @SatPaper publishes a story about Peter Dutton opposing dual naming using Indigenous languages. What's the reaction? @SatPaper Most of the replies on this are about Dutton. Most are criticisms of him, but there were supporters too...

OK, first pass at summarizing the Oct 25th meeting at which the cultural genocide article was removed from the genocide convention. Will keep it in one 🧵 this time. So, regarding the issue of language, which is my central concern in looking at these materials, one things that is interesting is that several countries which supported the retention of the cultural genocide article sought to remove language from the article.

It's important to remember that the genocide convention as we know it today contains a clause on 'mental harm' at China's insistence, prompted by their experience of 'genocide by narcotics' under Japanese occupation. "The representative of China called the attention of the Commission to the fact that during the second World War the Japanese built a huge opium extraction plant in Mukden, which could process some 400 tons of opium annually, producing fifty tons of heroin..."

OK, this is a thread collecting my tweets about the Ad Hoc Committee's discussion of cultural genocide👇

https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1532836704289075200

Essentially, the French position on cultural genocide was "I don't know what it is but I resolutely oppose it."

https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1532836704289075200

French delegation: "One of the most delicate aspects of the question of genocide was that it raised the general problem of the rights of the State with respect to minority groups and the rights of minority groups with respect to the State."

So I'm back looking at the genocide convention debates again, focusing on two key meetings which first defined cultural genocide, and then removed it from the convention... And the position of the French delegate at the meeting to define cultural genocide is typical of the sort of brain worms that prevailed.

Short thread on academic writing, based on a writing retreat I recently did. Bear with me. I promise it is about academic writing.

Global Language Advocacy Day is coming up in just over a week, on February 22nd. Here comes a thread with a sample of some the events that will be taking place. Pls visit our website and follow @GlobLangRights for more information #GLAD22

coalitionforlanguagerights.org @GlobLangRights Keep an eye out for a blog post by @NaomiFillmore

mini thread on language oppression, genocide, and shibboleths of death... in Sudan:

https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1458912770322153490

Burundi:

https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1458914458395312128

have you eaten? > how are you?

like, i don't know how i am but i do know if i've eaten lol i remember reading an argument that 'the Chinese' greet each other with 'have you eaten yet' because of the frequent famines in China, and asking if you've eaten was supposed to be a sign of concern in the context of persistent scarcity...

On the banning of the Cham language during the Cambodian genocide. 1/n Krauchhmar. 1975. "...many local Chams... rebelled when they learned of the DK plan to ban their religion and language, to make them eat pork, and to break up Cham communities." 2/n

"How could it be possible to know a person's identity with certainty enough to kill?" asked Liisa Malkii when she interviewed Hutu refugees who had fled slaughter in Burundi. "There are symbols for recognizing a Hutu," one man replied 1/n One - the hands. Two - ankle bones. Three - the calves. Four - gums. And "the fifth symbol was the language spoken - since the Tutsi do not speak like the Hutu." 2/n

For NAIDOC, Channel 10 did the weather using Indigenous place names. Let’s have a look at some of the reactions. (CW - racism). 1/n Some bloke I’ve never heard of and won’t link to decided to write a blog post about the use of Indigenous place names on the weather map. Here’s the post in full. Snide, condescending, ignorant and hateful. 2/n

It’s the same whataboutisms every time. part two