Genocide justification, as opposed to genocide denial, does not deny the events which constitute a genocide, instead, it argues that the genocide was morally excusable or necessary. Philosophically, it can be debated if genocide is ever justified, however, that question is not often asked. The distinction between denial and justification is often blurred.
According to W. Michael Reisman, "in many of the most hideous international crimes, many of the individuals who are directly responsible operate within a cultural universe that inverts our morality and elevates their actions to the highest form of group, tribe, or national defense". Bettina Arnold observed, "It is one of the terrible ironies of the systematic extermination of one people by another that its justification is considered necessary." She also argued that archaeology and ancient history was sometimes used to justify genocide. Robert Zajonc wrote, "I was not able to find any accounts of massacres not viewed by their perpetrators as right and necessary." According to the Encylopedia of Genocide, eugenics advocate Francis Galton bordered on the justification of genocide when he stated: "There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race."
Examples
Haiti
According to the historian Philippe R. Girard, the genocide of French Creoles after the Haitian Revolution was justified by its perpetrators based on the following rationales: 1) the ideas of the French Revolution, that revolution justified massacre, 2) atrocities committed by French troops in Haiti permitted revenge, 3) radical measures were necessary to secure victory in the war and emancipate the slaves, 4) that whites were dehumanized, and 5) black leaders hoped to take over plantations previously owned by whites. Girard notes that after the massacre, the man who ordered it, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, stated, "We answered these cannibals’ war with war, crime with crime, outrage with outrage." For Dessalines, Girard writes, "genocide merely amounted to vengeance, even justice". Historian C. L. R. James wrote that massacre was only a tragedy for its perpetrators because of the brutal practices of slaveholding. Adam Jones and Nicholas Robinson have classified this as a subaltern genocide, meaning a "genocide by the oppressed", and that it contains "morally plausible" elements of retribution or revenge. Jones points out that this type of genocide is less likely to be condemned and may even be welcomed.
Justification and rationalization are common with regard to the Armenian genocide, as Turks portrayed the killings as legitimate defense against traitors. In the interwar era, many Germans believed that the Armenian genocide was justified. Stefan Ihrig argues that, in the early 1920s, the Germans who had denied the Armenian genocide switched to justifying it after accepting the historicity of the events.
The Holocaust
The Nazis preferred to justify the killing of Jews rather than deny it entirely. Hitler's prophecy was used to justify the Holocaust. Another example of Nazi justification is the 1943 Posen speeches, in which SS chief Heinrich Himmler argued that the systematic mass murder of Jews was necessary and justified, although an unpleasant task for individual SS men. During the Einsatzgruppen trial, Otto Ohlendorf, responsible for the deaths of 90,000 Jews, did not deny that the crimes occurred or that he was responsible for them. Instead, he justified the systematic murder as anticipatory self-defense against the mortal threat supposedly posed by Jews, Romani people, Communists, and others. Ohlendorf argued that the killing of Jewish children was necessary because, knowing how their parents died, they would grow up to hate Germany. Ohlendorf's claims were not accepted by the court and he was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. Since the end of World War II, cases of justifying the Holocaust have also been observed in Iran, the Arab world, and Eastern Europe, in which the alleged behavior of Jews is claimed to cause antisemitism and justify the killing of Jews. Some Moldovan historians have claimed that the Holocaust in Romania was justified by the lack of loyalty shown by Jews to the interwar Romanian state.
The Rwandan genocide was justified by its perpetrators as a legitimate response to the military campaign of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, including by its mastermind, Théoneste Bagosora, who repeated these arguments at the trial which resulted in his conviction for genocide.
Bosnian genocide
The Srebenica massacre is justified by Serbian nationalists who argue that it was necessary to defend against the Muslim threat, or a justified revenge for the 1993 Kravica attack. However, Serbian nationalists do not acknowledge that genocide occurred in Bosnia despite the ICTY verdict, and argue that the Bosnian death toll is substantially lower than historians and the ICTY have concluded. Conducting interviews with Serbs in Bosnia, Janine Natalya Clark found that many interviewees endorsed the idea "that those killed in Srebrenica were combatants and therefore legitimate military targets", alongside beliefs that the massacre was exaggerated.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has defended the military's actions during what has been described as the Rohingya genocide, however she denies that genocide has taken place in Myanmar. Already in 2017, The Intercept reported that she was "an apologist for genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass rape". Following her December 2019 remarks in the International Court of Justice, American political scientistWilliam Felice writes that she uses "the same arguments that organizers of genocide and ethnic cleansing deployed throughout the 20th century to validate mass murder". Physicians for Human Rights states that Myanmar "continues to justify their mass extermination as a reasonable response to 'terrorist activities.'" Refugees International said that she was "defending the most indefensible of crimes"—genocide.
