The United Nations was founded in 1945 to promote international peace following the devastation of World War II. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the UN’s first human rights treaty, and genocide was defined as “acts that are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”
The UN’s mission was to prevent another Holocaust. More importantly, all UN members were duty-bound to stop genocide wherever it occurred, but the UN failed to do so in Cambodia (1970s), Rwanda (1990s), and Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia (1990s).
How did that happen?
UN members with no national stake in these regions colluded not to label the atrocities as genocide so that they would not be obligated to intervene. The term “genocide” is never used when it happens, but it’s frequently used to describe other situations that don’t fit the definition. Therefore, the skeptic’s rule states that if there is a public outcry over genocide, it has most likely not occurred, because actual genocides are met with silence.
In 2019, nationally recognized attorney Benjamin Crump published the book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People. Crump said that America is systematically killing Black people with police bullets or long prison sentences, which is equal to genocide.
The Washington Post launched its police shooting database in 2015. Between 2015 and 2019, there were 4,923 fatal police shootings. There were 111 unarmed Black victims, accounting for 1% of the total. There is no indication that the police officers purposefully killed 111 people because they were Black. Nonetheless, Crump invoked genocide.
The skeptic’s rule definitely applies here.
Every year, American police shoot and kill more than 1,000 people. The vast majority of the victims were armed. If activists like Crump believe these figures are too high, they should collaborate with the police to develop strategies to reduce the number of fatal shootings.
Allegations of genocide may sell books, but they do nothing else.
In December of 2023, South Africa went before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and charged Israel with committing genocide against the Palestinians following Hamas’s October 7 attack. South Africa alleged when Israel carried out air strikes, they failed to prevent harm to civilians, proving their genocidal intent. The Hamas-run health ministry estimated that Israel’s war effort had killed over 35,000 Palestinians at the time South Africa made its case.
Israel called South Africa’s charges baseless.
Israel stated that their intentions are to eliminate Hamas, not the Palestinian people. Israel insisted that it was fighting a war of self-defense and had taken all necessary precautions under international law to avoid civilian casualties, such as airdropping flyers warning of impending attacks, calling civilians’ phones to urge them to leave targeted buildings, and aborting some strikes when civilians were in the way.
The ICJ has no power to enforce its ruling, but it found in favor of South Africa. Did the ICJ’s ruling represent an official declaration of genocide, and were UN members expected to help prevent it, or did the skeptics’ rule still apply?
The ICJ’s president clarified that the court did not rule on the plausibility that Israel’s military campaign amounted to genocide, but that South Africa had the right to present the case to the court. The ICJ ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide.
In other words, the ICJ directed Israel to maintain its current course of conduct.
However, if Israel is pursuing a war of retribution rather than self-defense, the absence of genocidal intent does not relieve Israel of responsibility for every Palestinian death; charges of genocide are not required to make that case.
Last month, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa met with US President Donald Trump, who claimed that there was an ongoing genocide against White farmers in South Africa. Ramaphosa denied the charges. He stated that the violence experienced by White farmers impacts all South African communities because South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world.
Reports on the violence Ramaphosa referenced go back decades.
A 2003 report by the South African Police Service National Operational Coordinating Committee said that “farm attacks” refer to acts aimed at residents, workers, and visitors to farms, whether with the intent to murder, rape, rob, or inflict bodily harm. Moreover, ideology, labor disputes, land issues, and revenge motivate all actions aimed at disrupting commercial farming activities.
In 2018, Newsweek reported that activists claimed South African authorities were tacitly approving attacks on the country’s white farmers, resulting in one murder every five days, while the police were ignoring the violence. The White nationalist lobbying group AfriForum said that when lawmakers passed a motion that could see land seized from farmers without compensation, it sent a message that landowners could be attacked with impunity. The Head of Safety at AfriForum declared, “A crime war has engulfed our rural areas.”
AfriForum described the violence as a “crime war,” not genocide. Therefore, it’s the South African government’s responsibility to prevent crime, not the international community’s.
Trump invoked genocide to justify granting White South Africans refugee status while barring refugees from countries such as Sudan, but the Biden administration determined in January 2025, before Trump’s inauguration, that the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary rebel group, had committed genocide during Sudan’s ongoing civil war.
The skeptic’s rule applies to Trump’s claim of White genocide in South Africa, but it appears Trump gave the previous administration’s determination of genocide in Sudan a moment of silence.
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