The term cultural appropriation was birthed in progressive and academic circles as a tool to critique power imbalances.
And yet, one of the most troubling contemporary illustrations of appropriation today is not in fashion or pop culture but in the name of a once credible social science subdiscipline — genocide studies — that is being co-opted by those intent on exploiting the language of atrocity for ideological ends.
Enter, stage left, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (LIGP).
By standard definitions, cultural appropriation occurs when a dominant group adopts elements from a marginalized culture in a way that is exploitative, disrespectful, or strips those elements of their original meaning.
It often involves a power imbalance, erasure of credit, or reinforcement of harmful stereotypes. The irony is that LIGP may be responsible for something far more audacious: appropriating the name and legacy of Raphael Lemkin — one of the 20th century's most tireless advocates against genocide — contrary to their wishes and with reportedly "no personal or other connection to Raphael Lemkin or the Lemkin family."
LIGP's seeming misuse of Lemkin’s name illustrates how moral authority and academic credibility, can be appropriated to advance partisan narratives.
Their distortions cheapen genocide prevention, eroding public trust in human rights discourse itself.
Lemkin was a Polish-Jewish lawyer and passionate Zionist who lost 49 family members to the Holocaust. Fleeing to America, he helped persuade the world to name the crime that consumed his people: genocide.
He advised the U.S. legal team at Nuremberg, lobbied the United Nations, and strove to institutionalize prevention. Yet LIGP — today employing his mantle as a marketing device to peddle their wares — proudly issues "red flag alerts," supplying them to activists and advocates to advance nakedly political endeavors.
The organization’s misplaced priorities underscore their principal shortcoming.
No red-flag alert was issued for Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, despite reports of mass murder, rape, torture, arson, and the abduction of 250 people and in spite of the fact that some prominent scholars believe the attack met the criteria for genocide.
It seems that LIGP's director — whose past publications include "The Devil in the Details: 'Life Force Atrocities' and the Assault on the Family in Times of Conflict" — is oblivious, indifferent, or perhaps both.
Neither did LIGP flag the humanitarian implosion in Yemen.
Genocide Watch reports that more than 200,000 civilians have died in that country’s ongoing civil war since 2015 – deaths the group would presumably call out if they fit a politically appealing narrative.
Nor did LIGP raise alarms about Iran’s malignant rhetoric or its missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, even though such actions arguably fall within the scope of mass atrocity risk.
Instead, its recent alerts have mostly focused on the United States.
In 2025 alone, LIGP flagged the U.S. in February, March, June and September; in April it labeled the U.S. part of an "Axis of Genocide" along with Azerbaijan, Turkey, Israel, and Russia.
To be clear, if genocide identification or prevention were metrics of organizational success, LIGP would receive a failing grade.
The United States, Israel, and Azerbaijan do not engage in genocide under internationally accepted definitions — and though Turkey's conflict with Kurdish groups has led to serious civilian harm, it too is not textbook genocide.
Nevertheless, LIGP wields its red flags as political cudgels: labeling allies and governments it opposes, while remaining silent when it comes to actual atrocities.
Exhibit A is a recent LIGP X post castigating Israel in a telling manner: “Since the UN is weak and the West complicit, a concerted intervention for peace and justice must be made by a broad coalition from the Global South.”
LIGP doesn't simply warn, it seemingly preaches, while its pulpit skews to a specific ideology. Is it any wonder that the Lemkin family has appealed to Pennsylvania authorities by seeking to prevent the Institute from using their name as a cloak for what could be deemed as manipulative purposes, as well as deliberately hijacking the concept of genocide?
Consider that in the wake of Oct. 7, Hamas deployed avowedly genocidal messaging across social media — and onto Western campuses — piggybacking on the Red-Green (Left-Islamist) alliance, therein co-opting the language of atrocity to target one side.
This Orwellian inversion — war as peace, freedom as genocide, victim as aggressor — remains a potent weapon in cognitive warfare.
The Lemkin family isn't about to have it.
Raphael Lemkin, in his moment, strove to name a crime that had no name.
He defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
He didn't coin the term to facilitate party politics or ideological campaigns.
He invented it so the world could see — in law and conscience — mass killing as crime. That name is not fodder, nor should it be cause for posturing.
Legitimate genocide studies must be grounded in rigorous scholarship, not politics masquerading as moral urgency.
A precautionary principle must not be inverted into perpetual condemnation of one side, especially when that condemnation aligns far too neatly with activist agendas.
To assert this is not to defend Israel unreservedly but rather to oppose the willful distortion of genocide, and ensure that it remains conceptually bounded.
I trust the Lemkin family will succeed in defending their namesake's legacy, and I hope that the broader community of atrocity scholars will reject LIGP's (or any other organization’s ) partisan cherry-picking and political theater.
The cost of allowing such appropriation is not merely semantic — it's moral. In the end, it diminishes the very cause we should all be committed to: the prevention of genocide.
(The Lemkin Institute was contacted by the author and did not respond by the time of the publication of this opinion column.)
Col. (Retired) Wes Martin - a retired U.S. Army colonel, has served in law enforcement positions globally. He holds a MBA in International Politics and Business. Read reports from Col. Wes Martin — More Here.
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