What Would a Trans Genocide Look Like? A Holocaust Educator Says We’re Already Seeing It.

Earlier this year, a bombshell claim ripped through the news cycle: the founder of Genocide Watch — and former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a body that monitors genocide and mass human rights abuses — warned that transgender people in the United States are in the “early stages” of genocide.

The assessment moved fast, jumping from academic circles to podcasts, social media influencers, and finally activist spaces, where it was amplified, flattened, and — in some cases — distorted. What was supposed to be a warning grounded in decades of genocide scholarship became something closer to a moral Rorschach test, dismissed outright or escalated into apocalyptic rhetoric. 

I wanted to slow that moment down and ground it. 

What does “early stages” actually mean? What does it not mean? And as Arizona lawmakers introduce, hear, and advance more than a dozen bills aimed squarely at regulating how trans people access health care, move through public space, and live their lives, does it comport with the framework of how genocide scholars describe a mass extinction of a people?

So, I spoke with Lori Shepherd, executive director of the Tucson Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center, whose work centers on Holocaust education and the warning signs of genocide. Shepherd doesn’t argue that the U.S. is replaying history beat for beat. What she does say is more unsettling: that the mechanisms, patterns, and justifications she teaches every day — not only from the Holocaust, but from more recent genocides — are increasingly visible here, embedded in local politics, bureaucratic language, and laws that quietly strip people of the right to exist as themselves.

In the conversation that follows, Shepherd walks through how genocide is defined, how it develops, and how it can be stopped — long before mass violence becomes undeniable. 

Drawing from the framework of the ten stages of genocide used by scholars and educators worldwide, she explains why policies that may appear abstract, bureaucratic, or “merely political” are often the earliest warning signs. We talk about how dehumanization works, how governments manufacture fear to consolidate power, and why waiting for an official declaration of genocide has historically meant waiting too long. 

This isn’t a thought experiment or a history lesson sealed in amber. It’s a practical framework for understanding the present — and a reminder that what happens at school board meetings, statehouses, and city councils can matter just as much as what unfolds on the world stage.

Here’s our conversation:

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
For people who may not be familiar with the museum, what role does it play in Tucson? Who is it for?

Lori Shepherd:
The Tucson Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center is a regional history museum that focuses on Holocaust education. We have a fourfold mission.

The first aspect of our mission is to teach the Holocaust and other genocides in order to help create a more peaceful future. The second is to educate and enlighten people about the history of Jews in Southern Arizona and their involvement in the settlement of the region. The third is to preserve the oldest synagogue in Southern Arizona, built in 1910, when Arizona was still a territory.

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And finally, we work with our diverse communities to help create a safer, stronger Southern Arizona for all of us. Some days that feels like a lot, but all of it is vitally important.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
When people hear the word “genocide,” it’s often immediately associated with Jewish history. Why do you think that is, and what happens when we try to apply that word more broadly?

Lori Shepherd:
I think that association makes sense. The Holocaust — the Shoah — was the largest genocide in history. While there were genocides before it, and sadly many after it, nothing reached the magnitude of devastation of the Holocaust.

So when people hear the word genocide, it’s understandable that their minds go first to the Jewish people of Europe. But of course, there were genocides before — the Armenian Genocide, for example — and genocides that are still happening today.

The word genocide itself didn’t exist before the Holocaust. It was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 because existing terms like “mass murder” or “war crimes” did not adequately describe what had happened to the Jewish people. He began developing the term before the Holocaust had even ended. By December 1948, the United Nations adopted his definition in the Genocide Convention, which established how we would define and understand genocide going forward.

A genocide can begin anywhere along these stages, but it can also be stopped anywhere along them.
- Lori Shepherd

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
You spend a lot of time teaching this history. When you talk about genocide today, how do you define it — especially given how often the word gets used?

Lori Shepherd:
First, it’s important to understand the definition of genocide. As a journalist, yourself, you have to ask yourself when it’s appropriate to use that word. It gets used frequently — by politicians, on social media — but it has a very specific legal definition.

Genocide is the intentional, systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That word “intentional” is crucial. It is the intent to destroy a targeted group.

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For an act to constitute genocide, it includes killing members of the group, intentionally causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, or forcibly transferring children to another group. These are very specific guardrails.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
Beyond the definition, you also teach about the stages of genocide. Can you walk us through that framework?

Lori Shepherd:
After the Holocaust, Dr. Gregory Stanton developed what were originally called the eight stages of genocide, now expanded to ten. He is the founder and director of Genocide Watch and continues this work today. These stages don’t always happen in a strict order, but all of them occur in genocides.

The first stage is classification — dividing people into “us” and “them.” Then comes symbolization, where groups are forced into identifiable categories. During the Nazi genocide, that meant yellow stars, but symbolization can take many forms.

Next come discrimination and dehumanization. Discrimination must be systematic — driven by governments and institutions — not just individual prejudice. Dehumanization follows, when people are equated with animals or vermin. Jews were depicted as rats during the Holocaust; during the Rwandan genocide, people were called cockroaches.

After that comes organization, where governments create groups — police, military, paramilitary — to enforce discriminatory policies.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
When you say “organization,” does that include local governments and law enforcement, not just national leaders? I think of the local state laws and elected leaders who are passing similar laws and trying to do the same thing that the federal government has been attempting to do, sometimes to a harsher degree. 

Lori Shepherd:
Absolutely. In fact, one thing we share here that not everyone likes to hear is that the Nazis developed the Nuremberg Laws by studying Jim Crow laws in the United States. They examined how Black Americans were legally classified and discriminated against. Some of those laws were actually considered too extreme for Nazi Germany to implement.

This is why honest, non-revisionist history matters. The United States went down a path that could have led to genocide, but the difference is that we eventually stopped it — through the Civil Rights Act and other pushbacks. A genocide can begin anywhere along these stages, but it can also be stopped anywhere along them.

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Joseph Darius Jaafari:
Recently, genocide scholars like Dr. Gregory Stanton have said that trans people are experiencing early stages of genocide. What was your reaction when you first encountered that idea?

Lori Shepherd:
My first reaction was remembering a school tour. When I asked students who they saw being dehumanized today, they mentioned people of color, immigrants, and then almost unanimously said the trans community. That was painful but also eye-opening.

I looked into it further and shared with students that in 2024, hundreds of laws were introduced at state and local levels to police how trans people access health care, use bathrooms, and live their lives. Trans people make up less than one percent of the population. The sheer volume of legislation targeting them is dehumanization.

It’s also polarization — when governments use propaganda to turn the majority against a group. Polarization makes societies easier to control. It distracts people from corruption and broader harm, and it leads to persecution and, ultimately, extermination.

When I asked students who they saw being dehumanized today, they mentioned people of color, immigrants, and then almost unanimously said the trans community. That was painful but also eye-opening.
-Lori Shepherd

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
A lot of people think extermination only means mass killings. Is that the only way genocide manifests?

Lori Shepherd:
If we go back to Lemkin’s definition, genocide includes deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to destroy a group. That doesn’t require mass murder. It can mean preventing people from living as their authentic selves.

Another key stage woven throughout all ten stages is denial. Denial starts at the beginning — “That’s not what we’re doing” — and continues all the way through extermination. It’s constant.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
Do you think our culture is too rigid in how we understand genocide? For example, there is the term “femicide” to address the intentional murder of women and girls. Do we need to look at what’s happening right now and give it a different definition? 

Lori Shepherd:
Usually I say it’s up to the UN Genocide Convention to decide what constitutes genocide. And we’re working within the definitions of what we have right now. But the problem is that if we wait for someone else to make that determination, it may already be too late.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
Historically, that seems to be the case.

Lori Shepherd:
It is. When students ask what they would have done during the Holocaust, I tell them: what you’re doing right now is what you would have done then. Are you standing up against antisemitism? Against identity-based hate? That’s your answer.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
Given where we are now, do you think it’s possible — or even useful — to pinpoint exactly which “stage” we’re in?

Lori Shepherd:
You know, I saw a meme this morning and it had the stages of genocide with step 7 circled and said “we are here.” And I don’t think it’s our place to say that, because I don’t think anyone can definitively say, “You are here.” What I do know is that we are in frightening times, and this is a moment where we must be using our voices.

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Joseph Darius Jaafari:
With all of that in mind, where do you find hope?

Lori Shepherd:
I find hope in young people. I see it in students, protests, and community actions. People are pushing back. That gives me hope.

Joseph Darius Jaafari:
As we wrap up, is there anything else you want people to be thinking about right now?

Lori Shepherd:
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day — 81 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. It’s heartbreaking that we’re still fighting these same battles. But our survivors remind us there is a better world, and that’s why we keep doing this work.