The Antisocial Socialist

Don't worry about the background, I'll take your word for it or look myself -- you've got enough on your hands with school stress and I'll likely forget later. I do know that the US had official reservations about the "intent" part and kicked up quite a fuss about jurisdiction and dragged their feet for fucking ever, the jerks...

I don't think intent can be left to implication. Much like a criminal charge of homicide against a single person who's killed another, under which the killing may be found to be negligent, justifiable, reckless, all sorts of gradations. The gravest charge is that of premeditation. We impose additional penalties and judge the accused more gravely if it was also a hate crime, another category which depends on demonstrable pre-ëxisting patterns of action. These things are not self-evident, intent must be demonstrated. So same with genocide; otherwise I don't know how genocide differs from many other human interactions in which one group wiped out another.

I actually thought about state actors more broadly as the "acknowledged authorities" of whatever group was doing the organized killing -- here I was clearly imprecise and I appreciate the correction. In the case of the Biblical record, I quite agree what the Jews did to the original inhabitants of their promised land was a form of genocide from our perspective. They kept a very explicit record of their criminal enterprise, after all. The records say that the orders came from a magical sky-fairy, but we know they came from their ruling elites. God is just a substitute state actor here :/

Anyway, I think we agree about what qualifies as instances genocide and you don't seem to want to hit me with a bottle for my habitual nit-picking (I hope!), so I remain convinced the main problem with the guy you mentioned was that he was a) nit-picking in a bar and b) being factually wrong about his nits. And probably also c) unwillingness to listen. But in your LJ you come across as much too analytical to be a true nit-pick hater ;) (or maybe I am just having a definitional problem with the term)