Democide
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Democide refers to "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by
Rummel created democide as an extended term to include forms of government murder not covered by genocide. According to Rummel, democide surpassed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.[3][4]
Definition
Democide is the murder of any person or people by their government, including
According to Rummel, genocide has three different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty on genocide, the
In "How Many Did Communist Regimes Murder?", Rummel wrote:
First, however, I should clarify the term democide. It means for governments what murder means for an individual under
extrajudicial executions, death by torture, government massacres, and all genocidal killing be murder. However, judicial executions for crimes that internationally would be considered capital offenses, such as for murder or treason (as long as it is clear that these are not fabricated for the purpose of executing the accused, as in communist show trials), are not democide. Nor is democide the killing of enemy soldiers in combat or of armed rebels, nor of noncombatants as a result of military action against military targets.[6]
In his work and research, Rummel distinguished between
There is much confusion about what is meant by totalitarian in the literature, including the denial that such systems even exist. I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that is unlimited
Marxism-Leninism as in former East Germany, and Nazism. Even revolutionary Moslem Iran since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978–79 has been totalitarian—here totalitarianism was married to Moslem fundamentalism. In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power. State socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, and Moslem fundamentalism have been some of its recent raiments. Totalitarian governments have been its agency. The state, with its international legal sovereignty and independence, has been its base. As will be pointed out, mortacracy is the result.[8]
Estimates
In his estimates,
Rummel's estimates, especially about Communist democide, typically included a wide range and cannot be considered determinative.
Application
Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes
Communist regimes
The concept of democide has been applied by Rummel to
- China at 76,702,000 (1949–1987),
- the Soviet Union at 61,911,000 (1917–1987),
- Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) at 2,035,000,
- Vietnam(1945–1987) at 1,670,000,
- Poland (1945–1987) at 1,585,000,
- North Korea (1948–1987) at 1,563,000,
- Yugoslavia (1945–1987) at 1,072,000.[18]
In 1993, Rummel wrote: "Even were we to have total access to all communist archives we still would not be able to calculate precisely how many the communists murdered. Consider that even in spite of the archival statistics and detailed reports of survivors, the best experts still disagree by over 40 percent on the total
Rummel's figures for Communist governments have been criticized for the methodology which he used to arrive at them, and they have also been criticized for being higher than the figures which have been given by most scholars[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] (for example, The Black Book of Communism estimates the number of those killed in the USSR at 20 million[31]).
Right-wing authoritarian, fascist, and feudal regimes
Estimates by Rummel for
- Nazi Germany at 20,946,000 (1933–1945),
- Nationalist China (1925–1949) and later Taiwan (1949–1987) at 10,214,000,
- Empire of Japan at 5,964,000 (1900–1945).
Estimates for other regime-types include:
- the Ottoman Empire at 1,883,000 (Armenian genocide and Greek genocide),
- 1971 Bangladesh genocide),
- Porfiriato in Mexico at somewhere between 600,000 and 3,000,000 and closer to 1,417,000 (1900–1920),[9]
- the Russian Empire at 1,066,000 (1900–1917).[18]
Democide in Communist and Nationalist China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union are characterized by Rummel as deka-megamurderers (128,168,000), while those in Cambodia, Japan, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia are characterized as the lesser megamurderers (19,178,000), and cases in Mexico, North Korea, and feudal Russia are characterized as suspected megamurderers (4,145,000).[18] Rummel wrote that "even though the Nazis hardly matched the democide of the Soviets and Communist Chinese", they "proportionally killed more".[32]
Colonial regimes
In response to
- Rummel stated that his estimate for those killed by colonialism is 50,000,000 persons in the 20th century; this was revised upwards from his initial estimate of 815,000 dead.[35][36]
Democratic regimes
While democratic regimes are considered by Rummel to be the least likely to commit democide and engage in wars per the democratic peace theory,[2] Rummel wrote that
- "democracies themselves are responsible for some of this democide. Detailed estimates have yet to be made, but preliminarily work suggests that some 2,000,000 foreigners have been killed in cold blood by democracies."[8]
According to Rummel, examples of democratic democide would include "those killed in indiscriminate or civilian targeted
See also
- Classicide
- Communal violence
- Cultural conflict
- Cultural genocide
- Crimes against humanity
- Environmental killings
- Ethnic cleansing
- Ethnic conflict
- Ethnic hatred
- Ethnic nationalism
- Ethnic violence
- Ethnocide
- Extrajudicial killing
- Extrajudicial punishment
- Famine
- Genocide
- Genocides in history
- Hate crime
- Hate group
- Killing gender and sexual minorities
- List of genocides by death toll
- List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll
- Lynching
- Nuclear warfare
- Pogrom
- Police brutality
- Policide
- Political cleansing of population
- Political violence
- Population cleansing
- Sectarian violence
- Social cleansing
- Religious violence
- Terrorism
- The Holocaust
- Vigilantism
- War crime
References
- ^ JSTOR 206491.
- ^ ISBN 9783319544632.
- ISBN 9783825840105. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Power Kills.
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (1 February 2005). "Democide Vs. Other Causes of Death". Democratic Peace. Archived from the original on 9 May 2021. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (May 1998). "Democide versus Genocide: Which Is What?". Power Kills. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
- ^ a b c Rummel, Rudolph (November 1993). "How Many Did Communist Regimes Murder?". Power Kills. Archived from the original on 25 August 2018. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
- S2CID 145155872.
- ^ ISBN 9781351294089.
- ^ ISBN 9783825840105. Retrieved 31 August 2021 – via Power Kills.
- ^ a b "An Exclusive Freeman Interview: Rudolph Rummel Talks About the Miracle of Liberty and Peace". The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. No. 47. July 1997. Retrieved 2 November 2021 – via Power Kills.
- ISBN 9780765801517.
- ^ Snyder, Tymothy D. (27 January 2011). "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who was worse?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (26 April 2005). "How Many Did Stalin Really Murder?". Freedom's Peace. Archived from the original on 26 October 2007. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
- ISBN 9783825840105. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Power Kills.
- (PDF) from the original on 4 July 2007.
For decades, many historians counted Stalin' s victims in 'tens of millions', which was a figure supported by Solzhenitsyn. Since the collapse of the USSR, the lower estimates of the scale of the camps have been vindicated. The arguments about excess mortality are far more complex than normally believed. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (London, 1992) does not really get to grips with the new data and continues to present an exaggerated picture of the repression. The view of the 'revisionists' has been largely substantiated (J. Arch Getty & R. T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993)). The popular press, even TLS and The Independent, have contained erroneous journalistic articles that should not be cited in respectable academic articles.
- ^ Snyder, Timothy D. (10 March 2011). "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
- ISBN 9780803988293.
- ^ ISBN 9781560009276. Retrieved 25 November 2021 – via Power Kills.
- ISBN 9781560009276. Retrieved 31 August 2021 – via Power Kills.
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (20 November 2005). "Reevaluating China's Democide to be 73,000,000". Democratic Peace. Archived from the original on 1 November 2007. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (30 November 2005). "Getting My Reestimate of Mao's Democide Out". Freedom's Peace. Archived from the original on 20 December 2005. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (1 December 2005). "Stalin Exceeded Hitler in Monstrous Evil; Mao Beat Out Stalin". Hawaii Reporter. Archived from the original on 17 September 2009. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
- ISBN 9781442254367. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Google Books.
- JSTOR 206491.
- S2CID 49573923.
- JSTOR 40260182. Retrieved 31 August 2021 – via Wilson Quarterly Archives.
- S2CID 142217169.
- S2CID 145120734.
- ISBN 9789197748728. Archived(PDF) from the original on 15 September 2016. Retrieved 17 November 2021 – via Forum för levande historia.
While Jerry Hough suggested Stalin's terror claimed tens of thousands of victims, R.J. Rummel puts the death toll of Soviet communist terror between 1917 and 1987 at 61,911,000. In both cases, these figures are based on an ideological preunderstanding and speculative and sweeping calculations. On the other hand, the considerably lower figures in terms of numbers of Gulag prisoners presented by Russian researchers during the glasnost period have been relatively widely accepted. ... It could, quite rightly, be claimed that the opinions that Rummel presents here (they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history) do not deserve to be mentioned in a research review, but they are still perhaps worth bringing up on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere.
- ISBN 978-3-319-54463-2. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
- ISBN 9780674076082.
- ISBN 9781412821476. Retrieved 28 November 2021 – via Power Kills.
- ISBN 9780195085570. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Google Books.
- ISBN 9781560009276.
- ISBN 9783825840105.
- ^ "Commentary: Exemplifying the Horror of European Colonization: Leopold's Congo". www.hawaii.edu. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
Further reading
- Bibliography of Genocide studies
External links
- Power Kills – the website of Rudolph Rummel