Borrowed fame
Wikipedia on the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities:
The Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG), formerly the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation,[1] is a non-profit organization devoted to genocide and mass atrocity prevention.[2][3] The institute is best known for its Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention held annually at the Auschwitz concentration camp,[4][5][6][7] and for serving as the technical secretariat of the Latin American Network for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention.[8]
So. It looks to me as if the “Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention” has helped itself to the prestige of the above mentioned institute and seminar. It looks to me as if it’s hoping to sound more established and respected than it actually is. That needn’t mean it’s worthless or fraudulent; it has put out some informative and sensible statements. On the other hand it has also put out a statement accusing feminist women of inciting genocide, so I’m not feeling particularly charitable about it.
It is a bit weird and more than a bit creepy, now that I think of it, to name one’s ‘institute’ after a famous person you have no actual connection with. I mean, I could go set up a website this afternoon for the Mohandas Gandhi Institute for the Promotion of Feline Vegetarianism and who could stop me?
Ahhhh, that makes sense. But it also makes my head spin.
guest,
Tell that to the Susan B. Anthony List.
Ya it needn’t necessarily be creepy…but if it’s just two obscure academics and a laptop and they’re calling it an “institute” it is at least deceptive. It’s reminding me of Edwina Rogers and “The Secular Policy Institute” – that was just some lists of names and a laptop. It’s the combination of obscurity and manipulative little tricks to pretend not to be obscure that’s creepy.
Or [thinking aloud here] it’s the combination of that with the Holocaust. If Rogers had called it the Carl Sagan Secular Policy Institute that wouldn’t have been much worse, but Lemkin is a different kind of famous name. As is Gandhi. If you’re invoking notorious massacres…ah the hell with it, I’ll make it a post.