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The New Age of Genocide
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16 October 2025

The Israeli destruction of Gaza has returned the idea of genocide to the centre of world politics, with sharp conflicts between protesters and lawyers who invoke it and governments and media that deny it. This book, by the foremost sociological theorist of genocide, defends the idea against thinkers who have questioned it, and argues that it is essential to the understanding of mass atrocities. It maintains that Gaza has opened a new age in which the West not only fails to prevent, but also participates in genocide.
As well as discussing the genocide idea, the book analyses the Gaza genocide in the context of the longer histories of the problem, both globally and in Palestine. Further chapters deal with "forgotten genocides", the attempted Russian elimination of Ukraine, and the history of British complicity. The New Age of Genocide brings the debate up to date and is essential reading.
HISTORY / Military / General, Genocide and ethnic cleansing, LAW / International, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / Holocaust, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Genocide & War Crimes, Forced assimilation or acculturation, Forced displacements, removals or population transfers, The Holocaust, International law, War crimes
In his compelling new book, Martin Shaw argues that the destruction of Gaza and Ukraine in different ways indicate that genocide is 'returning to the centre of a brutal new constellation of world politics'. A pioneering scholar of war and genocide, he shows how and why the pursuit of permanent security drives the mass destruction of civilian populations and their cultures.
1. The return of the genocide idea
PART I Twenty-First Century Genocide
2. Genocide in history and in our time
3. Dynamics of war and genocide in Ukraine
PART II Gaza and the Structure of Genocide in Palestine
4. The Gaza War-Genocide
5. The structure of genocide in Palestine
PART III Conceptual and Historical Challenges
6. In defence of the genocide idea: a critique of Dirk Moses
7. “Political groups”, class and genocide
8. Britain and genocide: structures of complicity
Conclusion: theses on genocide thought and action after Gaza