“Rhino Genocide,” a construction which yields nearly a quarter-million Google hits.
Yes, we’re really sorry about the rhinos, especially because it’s happening so that Chinese men can achieve an erections through the placebo effect. It may result in the extinction of the rhino, and for these reasons it deserves our attention. But capturing that attention by using the word “genocide?”
We don’t blame the activists. They are entitled to their opinion that all animal life is equal to human life. They are also in the business of spreading their message, often an important one that nobody else is interested in championing. But we do blame the editors who receive their press releases, and only condense it for space before sending it along.
This is what passes for editorial oversight in the age of cyber journalism. The internet is so big that somewhere out there the opposing view will be posted, and so everything will balance out.
I’m not sure I’d use the term “genocide.” It implies that the extermination of the rhinos is planned and masterminded from a central source. This is not so.
“Hunting the rhinos to extinction” would be a more accurate phrase, but much less clickbaity.
What happens to the Rhinos does not fit. Genocide implies intent and in case of the Rhinos that is not what’s happening. The term Genocide in this context is mainly used to raise alarm. It’s not a tactic that I like very much, but on the other hand I do agree that the situation deserves attention.
Yes, “genocide” is stupid. “Holocaust” would be better, since in the general sense it just indicates mass killing, although using the word might be seen as trivializing the Holocaust of WWII.
If you want to be colorful, you could use something like “Armageddon.”
I would tend to agree with the OP. The term genocide here is excessive and probably specifically chosen to get clicks over actually being accurate. Really, I think a word like genocide should be used sparingly because it’s about the most serious charge one can make against a person or group of people; I can’t think of anything I’d consider fundamentally worse than committing genocide. But I also tend to think that genocide is intentional and malicious, where what’s happening to the rhinos is incidental and misguided. Unfortunately, extinction used to be a much scarier word, but it, too, got kind of worn out, so how else do people draw attention to species at serious risk of extinction other that calling it genocide.
That said, I could see calling a situation where people are deliberately trying to cause a species’ extinction as being called genocide, but how often does that actually happen?
But how many rhinos have been killed for the purpose of wiping them out? It’s not really important to me either, whether it’s to wipe out the species or to gather trophies and sell horns is just as bad.
Genocide SORT OF fits. There’s a certain monstrousness to genocide … evil and egocentrism swollen to the extent that it makes wiping out a people seem like a good idea … that’s echoed by the monstrous egotism that leads Chinese men to be totally indifferent to the fate of the rhinoceros vs. their need to get an erection. It also, perhaps, is indicative of a huge flaw in Chinese culture.
However much money they’ve been making from selling powdered rhino horn is trivial compared to how much money they think they’ll make selling the last powdered rhino horn. Once they’ve extincted the rhino, they’ll come up with something else to sell as aphrodisiacs and set their sights appropriately. For my money, somebody should start circulating a rumor that all that rhino horn settles in the bones of the people who ate it, and those Japanese businessmen are the real mother lode.
If Anglos (for lack of a better word) in the US were killing millions of Mexican-Americans because they thought drinking their blood gave them eternal youth, we’d consider it genocide even if there was no coordinate effort to kill them all. No?
According to Cecil,
[ol]
[li]Traditional Chinese Medicine does not consider rhino horn to be an aphrodisiac or an impotence cure. That’s a Western myth.[/li][li]TCM does use rhino horn as a cure for lots of other things, especially fever.[/li][li]A lot of rhino horns aren’t ground into powder for use in Chinese medicine, but are sold in the Middle East for use as dagger handles.[/li][/ol]
Not directly relevant to the OP’s main point, but might as well fight a little ignorance while we’re at it.