Lest we forget.
[One warning: unless you like Donovan, turn the sound down.]
In Death by Government R.J. Rummel estimated that more than 169 million people were murdered by governments in the 20th century, over 138 million in totalitarian states, 28 million by authoritarian regimes, and 2 million in democracies (mostly due to the aerial bombing of enemy cities during wartime). He recently increased this figure to 262 million due to further research into deaths in China and Africa. The reason for this century's high death toll is due to the increased population and the industrialization of mass murder, notably by the Chinese and Russian communists and Nazi Germany.
Rummel's research into state violence (Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence, 1997) found that there is a solution to war and democide. It is to foster democratic freedom and democratize coercive power and force. He found that mass killing and mass murder carried out by government is a result of the indiscriminate, irresponsible use of centralized power. The more unaccountable power at the center, the more killing. His research revealed a clear continuum - the less democratic and liberal a nation, the greater the incidence of war and democide.
3 comments:
Ya know I watched that video, forwarded it and then wondered why nobody has ever done a popular documentary on the matter of 200 odd million people dead by the idea that still infests minds.
Communist megadeath is about at topical for most people as the Spanish Civil war! Sadly it's locked in historical tomes such as Gulag Archpeligo, Conquest's Terror, or most recently Martin Amis's Koba the Dread. Fortunatly for the Communists no one can read and if they do they don't read 1000 page Nobel prize winners.
Hm, atheism at work.
No, that would be totalitarianism, which comes in many flavours .. even religious.
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