Death by Government

Rating:
Summary: Good, difficult but necessary read.
Review: -
In a time when we frantically legislate against crime and terrorism, and grapple with accidents and suicides, it is important to realize the degree to which genocide dwarfs all these other concerns. As Zelman and Simkin have shown, these genocidal deaths are exclusively seen in nations where seemingly-benign "gun control" laws were enacted, only to be followed by a cascade of events transitioning from a republican democracy to police-state tyranny. Rummel steers clear of the firearms law implications, but his text authoritatively sets the stage for evaluation of all facets of government "control" - which must be seen for not only their theoretic benefits, but their very likely misuse and harm, as well. Zelman and Stevens' "Death by Gun Control" compliments this work, and anyone interested in public policy would do well to add both to their library.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Important History Book You've Never Heard Of .
Review: And with reason. There is none of the sacrifice, drama or nobility reported in battles. It's not about Thermopylae or Gettysburg.

This is an account of what humanity has done to itself--and continues to this day. It's a book on comparitive demonology. One almost gets the impression that a soldier ripping a baby from his mother's arms, tossing it in the air and catching it on the point of his bayonet is the rule, not the exception. Ditto for POW's captured by front line troops.

The author is a professor of Political Science who finds it amazing that his colleagues write texts on the purposes of government, yet fail to mention that (with the possible exception of the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide) instead of protecting citizens from "the savagery of the jungle" by rule of law, governments have and continue to be, THE greatest killers of all.

"Democide" is the word he coins to combine genocide (murdering because of membership in a hated race, ethnicity,or religion,) plus politicide ( murdering for political purposes, e.g; dissidents ) and mass murder (indiscriminate killing).

Democide is always committed by governments. It is as organized as taxation or road building. Discounting civilians accidentally killed in cross-fires, or even in the aerial bombardments of cities, this still leaves horrifying numbers.

Pre-Twentieth Century? An estimate of 169,198,000 human beings massacred. Since this includes the victims of Genghis Khan, Incas, Conquistadors, etc., There's an obscene tendency to see them as not quite human, not quite real due to the distance in time. So Tarmelane, the Turkish conqueror slaughtered 100,000 people outside of Delhi and he liked to make pyramids of human heads?--Who cares?--Just stuff in history books. . .

Is WW2 is close enough? We all know about the 6 million Jews, but did you know that constituted only aprox 13% of the victims of The Nazi Genocide State?

Overall, by genocide, euthanasia, killing of hostages, reprisal raids, starvation, forced labor camps and so forth the figure is anywhere from 15 to 31 million, most likely 21 million. Rummel admits he may be off somewhat in numbers, but certainly not as to the State's intentions. The Nazis still head the list when it comes to killing people in occupied territories, with the Imperial Japanese Military being second.

As to murdering one's own people, it's estimated some 35,236,000 for the Communist Chinese Anthill. The author notes that those who were shocked by the 1989 Beijing massacre of students, really shouldn't have been--it's the norm. But even that figure is topped by 54,800,000 victims of The Soviet Gulag State.

(Not counting an additional 5-7 million comprised of German POW's plus non-combatants deliberately murdered by The Red Army).

For sheer numbers, Stalin is our grand prize winner in brutality. In terms of percentage, however, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot beats his insanity--they wiped out nearly one third of all Cambodians.

The chapter on The Vietnamese War State is most instructive, not just for the total toll of 1,670,000 victims but for the inferences Rummel draws: Before the U.S. entered the war, the Viet Minh were already as hardened a bunch of mass killers as the most disciplined SS units under Himmler. America had no idea what it was getting itself get into.

The Balkans are something else. Off the scale.

Required reading.

Rating:
Summary: Democides, Genocides, and Holocausts
Review: Death by Government examines democides (definition below) of one million or more in the 20th century and before. The author, R. J. Rummel, shows that totalitarian regimes commit most of the democides. The underlying principle is that the less freedom people have, the greater the violence; the more freedom, the less violence. Rummel says, "The problem is power. The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom."

To understand the book, it is worthwhile to remember the following definitions:

DEMOCIDE: the intentional government killing of an unarmed person or people, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder. Note: "demos" = people. "cide" (caedere) = kill

GENOCIDE: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, and language).

POLITICIDE: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.

MASS MURDER: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.

HOLOCAUST: a thorough destruction, especially by fire. A type of genocide.

Although the book examines democides (definition above) of one million or more in the 20th century and before, the rest of this review will focus on the ten worst democides in the 20th century.

We all know the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. Most American do NOT know that the ten worst totalitarian governments murdered more than 136 million OTHER people during the 20th century. The following is a list of the ten governments responsible for all those deaths.

(* = about 2 million MURDERS)

Soviet Gulag (1917-87)
-Executions during collectivization, etc.
61,911,000
* ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Communist Chinese State (1949-87)
-Executions of landlords, peasants, etc.
35,236,000
** ***** ***** *****

Nazi State (1933-45)
-6 mil Jews, 5 mil Poles, 10 mil others
20,946,000
***** *****

Chinese Nationalist (1928-49)
-Purges of communists, etc.
10,214,000
*****

Japan's military (1936-45)
-Nanking massacre, etc.
5,964,000
***

Khmer Rouge (1975-79)
-Khmer Rouge kill 1/3 of Cambodians
2,035,000
*

Turkey's Young Turks (1909-18)
-Slaughter of Turkey's Armenians
1,883,000
*

N. Vietnamese (1945-1987)
-S Vietnam's democide = 90,000.
1.670,000
*

Poland killed ethnic Germans
-8 million fled Poland (1945-1948)
1,585,000
*

West Pakistan (1958-87)
-E. Pakistan Hindus killed or expelled
1,503,000
*
TOTAL # Murdered = 142,000,000+

Rating:
Summary: This has profoundly affected my political and social views
Review: It is not posible to say how deeply this book has affected the way I think about my life, the politicians I vote for, and the political views I hold or condemn. In high school I saw a black and white documentary on the Holocaust. I was revolted by it! I was shocked at how cruel humans could be towards others. Having read Dr. Rummel's book and seeing how widespread and common government murder of civilians is was almost more than I could handle. Why these acts of government mass murder are not taught or even refered to in school or college is a mystery to me. I guess governments are embarassed by it? The knowledge that not only is the savagery documented in the book possible, but prevalent is very disturbing. There is no way I could say this book is a pleasure to read, but I couldn't hardly put it down til I was finished. I've told several friends about it and loaned it to my brother, who has loaned it to a friend of his. You'll read this book, you'll discuss, you'll loan it friends, so its definitely worth your money. I feel the lesson's I've learned reading this book have made those many millions of lost lives a little less wasted. Rummel has done a great service to those many victims by preventing their lives and deaths from being forgotten.

Rating:
Summary: A list of horrors
Review: R. J. Rummel shows that over the last century, a person was almost twice as likely to be killed by their own government than by a force from outside their country. He also reveals that most of the killing of innocent citizens was done by communist regimes in their pursuit of the Utopian Communist State. A process which continues to this day in North Korea.

I was never taught that in school. I was taught that wars kill people and that governments protect people. The present multi-cultural teaching in this country tells us that all governmental systems and cultures are equally valid and that none of us has a right to condemn any system other than our own, no matter how evil that other system might appear from the outside. R. J. Rummel teaches us lessons about Government murder that give us a reference point from which we can judge all governments and cultures... if you kill innocent people then your system is bad. For example: Communism is bad because the policy requires killing anyone who disagrees with the state, and relies on terror to control its citizens. I wonder if any high school student would give those reasons to choose capitalism over communism?

He offers many other insights into how killing and terror become everyday tools for governing in some countries, and how a peaceful country can end up committing genocide against its own people.

This book provides a perspective that can not be found anywhere else!

My only complaint about this book is that he never seems to find a word strong enough to describe the horror created when a government kills large numbers of its own people. He immediately throws out "Genocide" in favor of "Democide", but that just doesn't seem harsh enough. My first thought was that if war is hell, then Big Government is death. So I guess "Death by Government" is as close as our language can get.

Rating:
Summary: If war is hell ... then what is Big Government?
Review: R. J. Rummel shows that over the last century, a person was almost twice as likely to be killed by their own government than by a force from outside their country. He also reveals that most of the killing of innocent citizens was done by communist regimes in their pursuit of the Utopian Communist State. A process which continues to this day in North Korea.

I was never taught that in school. I was taught that wars kill people and that governments protect people. The present multi-cultural teaching in this country tells us that all governmental systems and cultures are equally valid and that none of us has a right to condemn any system other than our own, no matter how evil that other system might appear from the outside. R. J. Rummel teaches us lessons about Government murder that give us a reference point from which we can judge all governments and cultures... if you kill innocent people then your system is bad. For example: Communism is bad because the policy requires killing anyone who disagrees with the state, and relies on terror to control its citizens. I wonder if any high school student would give those reasons to choose capitalism over communism?

He offers many other insights into how killing and terror become everyday tools for governing in some countries, and how a peaceful country can end up committing genocide against its own people.

This book provides a perspective that can not be found anywhere else!

My only complaint about this book is that he never seems to find a word strong enough to describe the horror created when a government kills large numbers of its own people. He immediately throws out "Genocide" in favor of "Democide", but that just doesn't seem harsh enough. My first thought was that if war is hell, then Big Government is death. So I guess "Death by Government" is as close as our language can get.

Rating:
Summary: "Death by Government & by good intentions" by RexCurry.net
Review: R. J. Rummel's book "Death by Government" is an jaw-dropping head-turner. It is about time someone addressed altogether the socialist trio of worst atrocities (and others): the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 62 million deaths? People's Republic of China, 35 million? the National Socialist German Workers' Party, 21 million? The numbers are too vast to know with certainty.

Many authors only harp on the atrocities of either "Nazis" or "Communists." This book addresses them all. After all it was the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics and it was the National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party (Nazis). Let's face it, they were all the same, and this great book proves it. Socialists are nuclear bombs. Socialism is nuclear war.

The book provides interesting comparisons in its death toll to that of Stephanie Courtois' book "The Black Book of Communism" also at Amazon. Courtois and Rummel have lots of info on what the journalist Rex Curry calls "deniers of the socialist 'Wholecaust'" of which the monstrous Holocaust was a part.

The book provides a lot of information that explains why media use the word "Nazi" to cover-up for the horrid "National Socialist German Workers' Party," in a vain effort to rehabilitate socialism. Most media will not fully identify the atrocious "National Socialist German Workers' Party" and use abbreviations in a hackneyed lazy manner, so that there is now rampant ignorance of the full phrase in the public, and now even in the media. I hope this book helps to end some of the ignorance.

The media and the general public seem unaware that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the National Socialist German Workers' Party were allies upon entering WWII.

Indeed, it is frightening how close the U.S. came (and is still coming) to deadly socialism in that the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag was written by a self-proclaimed National Socialist in the U.S. and had a straight-armed salute which was the origin of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

An easy way to remember that Nazis were self-proclaimed socialists is that the swastika resembles two "S" letters overlapping and the Nazis often used stylized "S" lettering in their symbols.

Many writers attempt to minimize the horror of the socialist Wholecaust by only mentioning the part of the horrid National Socialist German Workers' Party. That doesn't occur in this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Nation of the Dead
Review: That paragon of liberal virtue, President Bartlet of TV's "The West Wing", likes to say "give me the numbers." Well, here they are. Rummel is a mainstream sociologist, not a so-called right-wing zealot. He has examined on a case-study basis the most notable examples of government violence against citizens in the 20th century from Africa to Europe to Asia, from Pol Pot to Idi Amin. His conclusion: government is the great killer of ordinary human beings, because of the lethal comination of a monopoly of force within a nation's borders along with the natural instinct for social engineering that people with authority have. Some startling facts: Stalin was much more proficient at murder than Hitler, despite the latter's more demonic reputation. The champion genocidal leader of the 20th century: Mao, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of his countrymen, and who still has a good reputation among many Western academics and is still officially revered by the Chinese regime. The total number of dead during the last century as totaled up by Rummel: 100 to 120 million. In other words an entire nation of victims. Rummel is a readable writer and a respected social scientist, so his is a valuable perspective. See also Robert Conquest's, "Reflections from a Ravaged Century."

Rating:
Summary: The Blood-Soaked 20th Century...
Review: This book touches on a subject that is often ignored that over 150,000,000 people have been killed in the 20th century, not in wars, but in democidal and genocidal purges by statist and totalitarian regimes. Beyond the detailed statistical analysis, some of the conclusions drawn seem to miss the mark. Have we really learned any lessons from history? Rommel makes an observation that more democracy is the answer. Is this really the most prudent conclusion we can draw. However, given that every dictatorship clings to a populist mass ideology (e.g. Hitler's Volkisk ideology, Qadhafi's Jamahiriya or state of the masses) to give it a locus of legitimacy, can any lessons be learned from the 20th century where democracy is held to be sacrosanct? The Weimar Germany of the 1920's was said to have the most democratic constitution in all of Europe, yet it could not fortify the rule of law and the avoid lawlessness and dissent into political radicalism. Shortly thereafter the Nazis rose to fill the vacuum of power. Total democracy has a tendency to yield to the most totalitarian systems, because it runs roughshod over the rule of law and some demagogue rises while espousing a general will for the masses. Hitler loathed federalism, because its essence was a diffusion of power, and it was anemical to securing his party and ideology in place. Perhaps we should recognize that a relatively decentralized federal system such as that of Switzerland or the U.S. is the key to avoiding the horrors of the authoritarian system since only centralized statist regimes proved themselves capable of getting away with so much mass murder. The great crisis of liberal democracy has been its' unfettered faith in the people and its' rosy views of human nature. This ideology of democratism views democracy not liberty or community as an end in itself. Not surprisingly, there has been a drive in the name of democracy for more centralization and erosion of checks and balances which hinder the implementation of a supposed will of the people. Thus, Rummel's assertions that we need more democracy may be missing the mark when trying to assess what we can learn from history. Rediscovering the federal principle of subsidiarity, which is in essence a difusion of power remains the key to structuring viable political systems that are most conducive to freedom are less likely to be plagued by corruption and historically the least likely to subject its people or any other nation to mass murder. If one retorts that this what Rummel means in his conception of democracy than he certainly fails to define it.

So, if Rummel's simplistic thesis is that more 'democracy' is the answer to avoid repeating the blood-soaked 20th century's mistakes than we've learned nothing. The 20th century was the most democratic of all, but political systems failed to fortify themselves against its excesses, which gave rise to dictators, demagogues and populist mass ideology that ran roughshod over the rule of law and individual liberty. This is an otherwise intriguing reference on a sad series of episodes in human history.

Rating:
Summary: Big Government: Catalyst for the blood-soaked 20th century
Review: ~Death by Government~ touches on a subject that is often ignored that over 150,000,000 people have been killed in the 20th century, not in wars, but in democidal and genocidal purges by statist and totalitarian regimes. Beyond the detailed statistical analysis, some of the conclusions drawn seem to miss the mark. Have we really learned any lessons from history? Rommel makes an observation that more democracy is the answer. Is this really the most prudent conclusion we can draw. However, given that every dictatorship clings to a populist mass ideology (e.g. Hitler's Volkisk ideology, Qadhafi's Jamahiriya or state of the masses) to give it a locus of legitimacy, can any lessons be learned from the 20th century where democracy is held to be sacrosanct? Stalin committed heinous crimes in the name of the people. The Weimar Germany of the 1920's was said to have the most democratic constitution in all of Europe, yet it could not fortify the rule of law and the avoid lawlessness and dissent into political radicalism. Shortly thereafter the Nazis rose to fill the vacuum of power. Total democracy has a tendency to yield to the most totalitarian systems, because it runs roughshod over the rule of law and some demagogue rises while espousing a general will for the masses. Hitler loathed federalism, because its essence was a diffusion of power, and it was anemical to securing his party and ideology in place. Perhaps we should recognize that a relatively decentralized federal system such as that of Switzerland or the U.S. is the key to avoiding the horrors of the authoritarian system since only centralized statist regimes proved themselves capable of getting away with so much mass murder. The great crisis of liberal democracy has been its' unfettered faith in the people and its' rosy views of human nature. This ideology of democratism views democracy as an end in itself. Not surprisingly, there has been a drive in the name of democracy for more centralization and erosion of checks and balances which hinder the implementation of that alleged "will of the people." Thus, Rummel's assertions that we need more democracy may be missing the mark when trying to assess what we can learn from history. Rediscovering the federal principle of subsidiarity, which is in essence a difusion of power remains the key to structuring viable political systems that are most conducive to freedom are less likely to be plagued by corruption and historically the least likely to subject its people or any other nation to mass murder. If one retorts that this what Rummel means in his conception of democracy than he certainly fails to define it.

So, if Rummel's simplistic thesis is that more "democracy" is the answer to avoid repeating the blood-soaked 20th century's mistakes than we've learned nothing. The 20th century was the most democratic of all, but political systems failed to fortify themselves against its excesses, which gave rise to dictators, demagogues and populist mass ideology that ran roughshod over the rule of law and individual liberty. Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn avowed, "Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic." This book is an otherwise intriguing reference on a sad series of episodes in human history.