Complicity of Social Media Companies in Inciting Genocide
Hakim
(4) the inciter must have the specific intent to cause genocide.78 The seminal cases
illustrate how incitement’s criminalization serves to prevent the “stigmatisation”
and “dehumanisation” that compose the early stages of genocide.79
a) IMT Caselaw
Two IMT cases, Streicher and Fritzche, provide an early window into
incitement doctrine.80 They were decided after WWII, prior to the ratification of
the Genocide Convention. Accordingly, the prosecution did not seek convictions
for “incitement to genocide” but rather for crimes against humanity.81
Nonetheless, these cases established the foundations of incitement upon which
the ICTR later built.
In Streicher, defendant Julius Streicher was the editor of an anti-Semitic
German weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer, a publication which in 1935 had a
circulation of 600,000.82 From 1923 to 1945, he played a role in the routine
dissemination of content which encouraged violence towards the Jewish people.83
For example, in twenty-three different articles, Streicher called for their
extermination “root and branch.”84 He commonly used dehumanizing phrases
such as “germ,” “pest,” or “parasite” when referring to Jews.85 In 1940, Streicher
published a letter from one of his readers that “compared Jews with swarms of
locusts which must be exterminated completely.”86 Streicher continued publishing
propaganda even as the mass execution of Jews was ongoing.87 The IMT
concluded that “[i]n his speeches and articles, week after week, month after
month, [Streicher] infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and
incited the German people to active persecution.”88 Streicher was convicted for
crimes against humanity and subsequently put to death.89
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
Id.
See Can the World Stop Genocide?, supra note 49.
United States v. Streicher, Judgment, 301 (Int’l Military Trib. Oct. 1, 1946), http://perma.cc/6JURL9TZ; United States v. Fritzsche, Judgment, 336 (Int’l Military Trib. Oct. 1, 1946),
http://perma.cc/6JUR-L9TZ.
Benesch, supra note 77, at 509.
Streicher, Judgment at 302.
Benesch, supra note 77, at 509.
Streicher, Judgment at 302.
Id.
Id.
Id. at 303.
Id. at 302.
Benesch, supra note 77, at 510.
Summer 2020
95