The United Nations’ Genocide Convention outlaws not only acts of genocide but “incitement” to genocide, an egregious offense whether or not genocide has yet occurred. The convention’s goal, of course, is to prevent genocide before it takes place. Those who incite genocide, and those who defend them, often invoke the freedom of speech. But no free-speech law condones threats of mass murder. The Nuremberg tribunal convicted and executed Nazi newspaper publisher Julius Streicher for inciting the murder of Europe’s Jews, even though he hadn’t committed murders directly.
Generally speaking, “incitement” means encouraging or persuading another to commit an offense by way of communication, for example by employing broadcasts, publications, drawings, images, or speeches. It is “public” under international law if it is communicated to a number of individuals in a public place or to members of a population at large by such means as the mass media. Among other things, its “public” nature distinguishes it from an act of private incitement (which could be punishable under the Genocide Convention as “complicity in genocide” or possibly not punishable at all). public incitement to genocide can be prosecutedeven if genocide is never perpetrated. Lawyers therefore classify the infraction an “inchoate crime”: a proof of result is not necessary for the crime to have been committed, only that it had the potential to spur genocidal violence.
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