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This is my fourth book in a series on genocide and government mass murder, what I call democide. The previous works concentrated on the four regimes that have committed the most democide, specifically the Soviet Union, Nationalist China under Chiang Kai-shek, communist China, and Nazi Germany.¹ This study includes the core results of those works in addition to all other cases of democide in this century up to 1987.²

Given the extent and detail of these books, the reader may be surprised that the primary purpose was not to describe democide itself, but to determine its nature and amount in order to test the theory that democracies are inherently nonviolent. They should have no wars between them, the least foreign violence and government related or directed domestic violence (revolutions, coups, guerrilla war, and the like), and relatively little domestic democide. I have substantiated the war, foreign, and domestic violence parts of this theory in previous works³ and took up the research associated with this book and its three predecessors in order to test the democide component. As will be seen, the results here clearly and decisively show that democracies commit less democide than other regimes. These results also well illustrate the principle underlying all my findings on war, collective violence, and democide, which is that the less freedom people have the more violence, the more freedom the less violence. I 

put this here as the Power Principle: power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.

In developing the statistics for this and the previous three volumes, almost 8,200 estimates of war, domestic violence, genocide, mass murder, and other relevant data, were recorded from over a thousand sources. I then did over 4,200 consolidations and calculations on these estimates and organized everything into tables of estimates, calculations, and sources totaling more than 18,100 rows. My intent is to be as explicit and public as possible so that others can evaluate, correct, and build on this work. I give the appendices for the Soviet, Chinese, and Nazi democide in my books on them. The appendices for this book were too massive to include here (one appendix table alone amounts to over 50 pages) and are given in a supplementary volume titled Statistics of Democide. I also include therein the details and results of various kinds of multivariate analysis of this democide and related data.

Then what is covered here? This book presents the primary results, tables, and figures, and most important, an historical sketch of the major cases of democide--those in which 1,000,000 or more people were killed by a regime. The first chapter is the summary and conclusion of this work on democide, and underlines the roles of democracy and power. Following this, chapter 2 in Part 1 introduces the new concept of democide. It defines and elaborates it, shows that democide subsumes genocidal killing, as well as the concepts of politicide and mass murder, and then tries to anticipate questions that the concept may arouse. It argues that democide is for the killing by government definitionally similar to the domestic crime of murder by individuals, and that murdereris an appropriate label for those regimes that commit democide. Readers that are satisfied with the thumbnail definition of democide as murder by government, including genocidal killing,⁴ can ignore this chapter. It is essential, however, for those with a professional interest in the results or wish to question the conclusions.

Following this chapter is a rough sketch of democide before the 20th century. Although hardly any historical accounting has been done for genocide and mass murder, as for the Amerindians slaughtered by European colonists or Europeans massacred during the Thirty Years War, a number of specific democidal events and episodes can be described with some historical accuracy and a description of these provides perspective on 20th century democide. I have in mind particularly the human devastation wrought by the Mongols, the journey of death by slaves from capture through transportation to the Old and New Worlds, the incredible bloodletting of the Taiping Rebellion, and the infamous Paris executions and relatively unknown genocide of the French Revolution. The upshot of this chapter is to show that democide has been very much a part of human history and that in some cases, even without the benefit of modern killing technology and implementing bureaucracy, people were beheaded, stabbed, or sliced to death by the hundreds of thousands within a short duration. In some cities captured by the Mongols, for example, they allegedly massacred over 1,000,000 men, women, and children.

Parts 2 to 4 present all the regimes murdering 1,000,000 or more people in this century, a chapter on each. These are written so as to show which regime committed what democide, how and why. The emphasis is on the connection between a regime, its intentions, and its democide. Although each of the case studies drives toward some final accounting of the democide, the specifics of such figures and the nature and problems in the statistics are ignored. These are rather dealt with in each appendix to a case study (given in Statistics of Democide), where each table of estimates, sources, and calculations is preceded by a detailed discussion of the estimates and the manner in which the totals were determined. The historical description of a case given here is only meant to provide an understanding of the democide. For this reason many specific examples will be given of the kind and nature of a regime's killing. I have generally avoided, however, tales of brutal torture and savage killing unless such were useful to illustrate an aspect of the democide.

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Posted by tz town, Published at February 21, 2018 and have 0 comments