A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War

Anton Weiss-Wendt

ISBN 10: 0813594650 / ISBN 13: 9780813594651

Published by Rutgers University Press, 2018

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Seller Inventory # B9780813594651

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813594650
• ISBN 13: 9780813594651
• Binding: Paperback / softback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 382 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The Genocide Convention was drafted by the United Nations in the late 1940s, as a response to the horrors of the Second World War. But was the Genocide Convention truly effective at achieving its humanitarian aims, or did it merely exacerbate the divisive rhetoric of Cold War geopolitics?

A Rhetorical Crime shows how genocide morphed from a legal concept into a political discourse used in propaganda battles between the United States and the Soviet Union. Over the course of the Cold War era, nearly eighty countries were accused of genocide, and yet there were few real-time interventions to stop the atrocities committed by genocidal regimes like the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. 

Renowned genocide scholar Anton Weiss-Wendt employs a unique comparative approach, analyzing the statements of Soviet and American politicians, historians, and legal scholars in order to deduce why their moral posturing far exceeded their humanitarian action.  
 

About the Author

ANTON WEISS-WENDT is a research professor at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, Norway. He is the author of many books, including The Soviet Union and the Genocide Convention, 1945–1954.