I can’t speak to Germany, but in the UK the government had to be forced to use the lifeguard to save drowning people because they wanted to let refugees die, and had to be forced to stop sending people to Rwanda (even if they’re not from Rwanda) just to get rid of them.
Both stories are easily googlable.
That’s not a genocide. There is a big difference between refusing to expend resources to save peoples life and actively expending resources to destroy lives.
I dont particularly care about defining what is and isn’t a genocide, I care about not killing people.
And the Nobel Peace Prize you get for that will be mailed to you. Until it arrives, let’s do discuss about definitions, nuances, and all these other annoying details that set a principled debate apart from blind virtue signalling.
I, for one, really care about the distinction between initiating something evil and merely not doing enough™ to stop it. The UK did not made them refugees. Sure, the old British empire caused trouble all around the globe, but modern refugees are mostly escaping from regional wars and totalitarian governments. One could say that it’s still their fault because that’s the aftermath of them leaving, but that would imply that the UK should have kept occupying these countries, so you probably don’t want to go there.
So they did not cause them to be refugees. Both the refusal to save them from drowning and the deportation are an expression not of a deliberate attempt to kill them, but of a refusal to help them. The UK government does not want these refugees to be in the UK.
If we take this issue and place in the OP template, it’d look something like this:
Right: Let’s not let refugees in.
Left: Let’s let all the refugees in.
Center: Guys, you’re gonna have to compromise, let’s just let /some/ of the refugees in.
…
One should notice that:
- Unlike the original post, this is not a strawman. You don’t have to go very far to the right to find plenty of people who want to let no refugee in, and you don’t have to go very far to the left to find plenty of people who want to let them all in.
- Once the strawman is removed - the centrist position does not seem that absurd anymore.
- If you keep insisting that “not accepting refugees” equals “genocide” - people will stop taking your claims about genocide so seriously. Because you don’t care about definitions, so it could mean anything.
