Episode 204 – Is the word ‘genocide’ becoming meaningless?
Humans are capable of the most heinous crimes. Think the Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust during WWII, the massacres of Rwanda in the 1990s and just about everything ISIS did in its self-styled ‘caliphate’. The world has classified the deliberate attempt to eliminate an entire people as genocide, a truly abominable act. Given the seriousness of this atrocity, however, it cannot be used flippantly. The recent attempt by South Africa to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza is one such instance. Borealis has a chat with a true expert in all things genocide-related.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide | OHCHR
About my guest
Kyle Matthews is the Executive Director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) at Concordia University. He joined MIGS as Lead Researcher of the Will to Intervene Project in 2008 and was appointed Senior Deputy Director in 2011. At Concordia he founded the Raoul Wallenberg Legacy of Leadership project as well as the Digital Mass Atrocity Preventing Lab, which works to counter online extremism and study how social media platforms are being used as a weapon of war.
CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE EH!
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world. In these half-hour podcasts, 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specialising in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. He is the author of six books on terrorism, including the most recent The Peaceable Kingdom: A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present.
