Ugur Ümit Üngör critiques the U.N. definition:
The genocide convention of 1948 was drafted as a result of deliberation and negotiation
between the western Allies and the Soviet Union. Raphael Lemkin, the man who invented the concept of genocide, wanted to include social classes, but the Soviets lobbied the UN and succeeded in excluding this aspect from the definition – probably because they knew that they had committed genocide based on social class.
But genocide has not only been about ethnic groups but also about social groups, elites, peasants, any social or economic class you can think of.
Norm Geras comments:
It's often asked why being an apologist for Nazism puts the person who is that beyond the pale of respectable opinion, so to speak, whereas doing the same for Stalinism, while widely regarded as a bad choice, still falls inside the boundary of respectability. Might this differentiation cease to be as sharp once the meaning of genocide is extended so that it encompasses every 'mass elimination of a group based on its collective identity'?
I would hope so. The double standards, perpetuated by ageing lefties, are repellent. And next time you see a freshman in a CCCP t-shirt, ask him why he doesn't wear a swastika. You know: ironically.
Update: A reader sends an image that nails it:
The Dish 