Death by Government

[boedicca]

The conversation in the Price of Oil thread has included a discussion regarding the morality of Capitalism vs. other systems.

I offer a bit of data from Death by Government:

Trends in Democide by Democracies vs. Totalitarians:



The body count of Totalitarians dwarfs that of free nations. There's a reason for that. Would love to see your interpretations.

[Vautrin]

Some comments:

I assume that civilian deaths in war have been excluded, as I see little indication that alleged collateral damage has been included in the graph. You are not going to tell me the British and allies sucked at hitting Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden etc. during WW2. A single bombardment of Dresden alone caused 6000 deaths. Same holds for other bombardments.

In case of extended civil war, it gets tricky. There have been quite a few civil wars, sometimes as part of larger geopolitical conflicts. Has the post 1917 Russian civil war been included? That alone accounts for millions of deaths.

Have civil wars been included? Independence wars? I doubt it, and that is heavily skewing the data.

Can I mention various ethnic groups that have been succesfully wiped out by the Germans, the French, the British, etc., all as a matter of business as usual during the colonial era? If you claim to own the land (as colonial powers did), then actually you have a responsibility for whomever lives there. And thus killing local population should be represented in the graph. A responsibility that most former colonial powers still flat out refuse to accept (the Dutch are quite proud of looting Indonesia, but don't question whether that was just).

I don't see a representation of the civilian deaths in Korea, in Vietnam, to name but some obvious post WW2 places of death. And there are numerous other conflicts, which had a huge toll on the civilian population, such as in the Middle-East, Central America, quite a few African states, and son on. Some of them may have been included, such as Idi Amin's rule. As an aside, Forrest Whitaker did an excellent job in 'The Last King of Scotland', if your stomach can handle it, I recommend that movie.

I would happily comment on Stalinist Russia, Hitler Germany, but it is hard to make out what has and has not been included. With constant claims of 0 - 20,000 civilian deaths in democracies it is easier to see what has and has not been included for the death count of democracies.

About 90% of the population of Namibia was wiped out during German rule. I see no representation of the fact whatsoever in the graph. I suspect the concentration camps were included, but a lot of deaths were not of German citizens, so they should be excluded (if killing foreigners does not count, that goes for dictatorships as well). I see no representation of the British use of concentration camps after WW2. Kenya springs to mind.

Colonialism and the direct hangovers such as hungers they caused have not been included. The Mass Hungers in British controlled India, etc, which are estimated to have cost 30-60 million lives, as a direct result of colonial rule. Cash crops were deemed more important than actually feeding the local population. Something as ghastly holds for the effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

No representation of that whatsoever in the graph. The effects of colonial rule in large parts of Africa (by democratic countries!), South-East Asia, etc.; I simply don't see any representation of that whatsoever.

So basically it is just adding up some dictators like Pol Pot, and some post-independent African dictators, and some other randomly included things, and we exclude basically anything Western countries have done, and we have a fancy looking, but otherwise worthless graph.

What is clear though, is that in the 20th century the art of killing reached new heights. And that is a damning indictment of the state of the world today.

[boedicca]

I suggest you go to the website and check for yourself. The author includes breakdowns by regime of Democide statistics.

Just to be clear, democide is defined as:

The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.

Here are some of the major totals:

I 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS

4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime

III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS

8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing
13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito's Slaughterhouse

Now see if you can find anything remotely similar in terms of magnitude in the 20th Century regarding Democracies which practice a reasonable amount of Free Markets.

Also, making comparisons to past Colonial exploits is specious. Colonialism is neither democracy nor Capitalism, and often involves collaborating with despotic local totalitarians.

[patrick]

Originally Posted by boedicca

Also, making comparisons to past Colonial exploits is specious.

No more or less "specious" than what you posted, I'm afraid. Not that I agree with everything Vautrin said, and I certainly dislike the way he throws around generalizations, but what you put up is clearly some of the weirdest datamining I think I've ever read. On that point I must agree with him.

Colonialism is neither democracy nor Capitalism,

It certainly can be approved of by the former, and has been many times, from the idea of "Manifest Destiny" in the US to the elevation of Queen Victoria to Empress of India in the 19th century, to the desire of the average German for a "place in the sun" early in the 20th. (And, yes, I do think Germany under the Kaiser was close enough to it to use the term democracy.)

And as to the latter, It probably can be a part of capitalism, depending upon how you define the term "Capitalism." Certainly the pages of Milton Friedman don't reflect the reality of any country calling itself capitalist that I'm aware of. Not even pre-unification Hong Kong, whose central bank manipulated their currency in a truly grotesque fashion on at least one occasion.

and often involves collaborating with despotic local totalitarians.

Okay. And? Are you implying democracies have historically had problems with doing this? Seriously?

[Vautrin]

Originally Posted by patrick

No more or less "specious" than what you posted, I'm afraid. Not that I agree with everything Vautrin said, and I certainly dislike the way he throws around generalizations, but what you put up is clearly some of the weirdest datamining I think I've ever read. On that point I must agree with him.

For your information, I just threw some questions out, as I am not too certain what was included and not. Some things like the Nazi concentration camps, Pol Pot, the Gulag definitely qualify as democide. I simply get the impression that the killing of non-nationals (or rather in the case of European countries, "non-Europeans" / enemy civilians) does not qualify as democide if practiced by a certain type of government in the graph. Thus you can make the argument that the Nazis killing the Dutch or the Polish citizens should not have been included either. Which is of course madness; but given the value the graph lists for democratic states, you would hard pressed to include these atrocities as well.

As you apty qualified my ramblings the issue for me with the graph is selective datamining.

I don't care what type of government kills its own people or foreign subjects. It is not something you can justify. We in Europe have a hard time to actually discuss that subject. Both of nazism, as of our colonial pasts. The US gets a lot of flak for its involvements in various conflicts in Europe, but that is Europe's selective memory.

(And, yes, I do think Germany under the Kaiser was close enough to it to use the term democracy.)

If pre-WW1 Germany would not qualify, I don't see many nations qualify as a democracy at that time.

[caddis]

Is it fair to add many colonialism deaths since the totalitarian regemes you are referring to didn't exist at the time? Nambia was the early 1900's wasn't it???

And as to the starvation deaths in India, was this because weather?

[boedicca]

Originally Posted by patrick

No more or less "specious" than what you posted, I'm afraid. Not that I agree with everything Vautrin said, and I certainly dislike the way he throws around generalizations, but what you put up is clearly some of the weirdest datamining I think I've ever read. On that point I must agree with him.

Please provide anything that refutes the massive body counts of Stalinist Russia or Communist China - or provide an equivalent example of a real democracy in recent times that systematically imprisons and kills millions of its citizens for thought crimes.

Here's a clue - you can't.

It certainly can be approved of by the former, and has been many times, from the idea of "Manifest Destiny" in the US to the elevation of Queen Victoria to Empress of India in the 19th century, to the desire of the average German for a "place in the sun" early in the 20th. (And, yes, I do think Germany under the Kaiser was close enough to it to use the term democracy.)

And as to the latter, It probably can be a part of capitalism, depending upon how you define the term "Capitalism." Certainly the pages of Milton Friedman don't reflect the reality of any country calling itself capitalist that I'm aware of. Not even pre-unification Hong Kong, whose central bank manipulated their currency in a truly grotesque fashion on at least one occasion.

You are continuing to make the mistake of confusing colonialism on the part of Monarchies on the decline with democracy and capitalism.

Okay. And? Are you implying democracies have historically had problems with doing this? Seriously?

No, I'm not. But I'm not claiming we have any pure Capitalist Democracies on this planet. We have imperfect compromises with sliding scales of Freedom.

[Vautrin]

Originally Posted by caddis

Is it fair to add many colonialism deaths since the totalitarian regemes you are referring to didn't exist at the time? Nambia was the early 1900's wasn't it???

Namibia was in the early 1900's but there is no representation in the graph.

And as to the starvation deaths in India, was this because weather?

No, that was because cash crops were grown, instead of staple foods. And as useful as tobacco and cotton are, you can't really eat it. This was a conscious policy decision, much like the Chinese Cultural Revolution was a conscious and disastrous political decision. Both should be counted.

[Vautrin]

Originally Posted by boedicca

You are continuing to make the mistake of confusing colonialism on the part of Monarchies on the decline with democracy and capitalism.

Considering that the United Kingdom has been a democracy since about 1330 (in whatever limited form of the term), I find that argument a bit factually stretching things
.
Same holds for the Netherlands, which has been a democratic monarchy since 1815. Belgium, 1830. Need I go on, with the various monarchies as they have existed in Europe?

[PepsiChic]

i have no idea what this thread is about, but it somehow includes my home, the UK,

so
RULE BRITANNIA! <3

[Mondo]

Originally Posted by Vautrin

What is clear though, is that in the 20th century the art of killing reached new heights. And that is a damning indictment of the state of the world today.

I would hazard a guess but you could add all those totals together and it wouldn't match up to the number of people killed over the millenia in the name of religion.

[Vautrin]

That is tricky. In many cases religion is cited as a cause of the conflict when there were obviously political dimensions to it as well.

Just look at Europe post-1517. The conflict in Ulster, the 80 year war, the 30 year war, and a host of other conflicts that raged.