Democide is a concept proposed by U.S. political scientist Rudolph Rummel to describe ‘the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command.’

According to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labour and concentration camp victims; killings by unofficial private groups; extrajudicial summary killings; and mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect such as in deliberate famines as well as killings by de facto governments, i.e. civil war killings. This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.

Rummel created the term democide as an extended concept to include forms of government murder not covered by the term genocide. According to Rummel, democide surpassed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.

Definition: Democide is the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder. Democide is not necessarily the elimination of entire cultural groups but rather groups within the country that the government feels need to be eradicated for political reasons and due to claimed future threats.

According to Rummel, genocide has three different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by the 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 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes nonlethal acts that in the end eliminate or greatly hinder the group.

Looking back on history, one can see the different variations of democides that have occurred, but it still consists of acts of killing or mass murder. The generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. In order to avoid confusion over which meaning is intended, Rummel created the term democide for this third meaning.

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 municipal law. It is the premeditated killing of a person in cold blood or causing the death of a person through reckless and wanton disregard for their life.

Thus, a government incarcerating people in a prison under such deadly conditions that they die in a few years is murder by the state, democide, as would parents letting a child die from malnutrition and exposure be murder.

So would government forced labour that kills a person within months or a couple of years be murder. So would government created famines that then are ignored or knowingly aggravated by government action be the murder of those who starve to death. And obviously, extrajudicial executions, death by torture, government massacres, and all genocidal killing be murder.

However, judicial executions for crimes that internationally would be considered capital offences, 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 non-combatants as a result of military action against military targets.

Estimates: In his estimates, Rudolph Rummel relied mostly on historical accounts, an approach that rarely provides accuracy compared with contemporary academic opinion.

In the case of Mexican democide, Rummel wrote ‘these figures amount to little more than informed guesses’, but he thought that ‘there is enough evidence to at least indict these authoritarian regimes for mega-murder.’

In response to David Stannard’s figures about what he terms ‘the American Holocaust’, Rummel estimated that over the centuries of European colonization about 2 million to 15 million American indigenous people were victims of democide, excluding military battles and unintentional deaths in Rummel’s definition. Rummel wrote that ‘even if these figures are remotely true, then this still make this subjugation of the Americas one of the bloodier, centuries-long, democides in world history.’

Rummel’s estimates, especially about Communist democide, typically included a wide range and cannot be considered determinative. Rummel calculated nearly 43 million deaths due to democide inside and outside the Soviet Union during Stalin’s regime. This is much higher than an often-quoted figure of 20 million, or a more recent figure of 9 million. 

Rummel responded that the 20 million estimates is based on a figure from Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror and that Conquest’s qualifier ‘almost certainly too low’ is usually forgotten.

For Rummel, Conquest’s calculations excluded camp deaths before 1936 and after 1950, executions (1939–1953), the population transfer in the Soviet Union (1939–1953), the deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities (1941–1944) and those the Soviet Red Army and secret police executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during the 1944–1945 period. Moreover, the Holodomor that killed 5 million in 1932–1934 (according to Rummel) is also not included. 

According to Rummel, forced labour, executions and concentration camps were responsible for over one million deaths in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from 1948 to 1987.

According to Rummel, his research showed that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government-caused deaths, Rummel estimated that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century.

According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the actions of people working for governments than have died in battle.

One of his main findings was that liberal democracies have much less democide than authoritarian regimes. Rummel argued that there is a relation between political power and democide. Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffused, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity.

According to Rummel, ‘the more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom. ‘Rummel argued that ‘concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.’

Several other researchers have found similar results to Rummel’s, with one noting that ‘numerous researchers point out that democratic norms and political structures constrain elite decisions about the use of repression against their citizens whereas autocratic elites are not so constrained.

Once in place, democratic institutions, even partial ones, reduce the likelihood of armed conflict and all but eliminate the risk that it will lead to genocide/politicide.’

Related stories: The Cruel Sinking of the Liners Built for Joy , A fascinating Interview with German Survivors of Allied Atrocities, Inglorious End for a Mass Killer and LOER, German Survivors of Allied Atrocities, Karin Manion, July 2016

Researchers often give widely different estimates of mass killings or mass murders. They use different definitions, methodology and sources, with some including battle deaths in their calculations. Klas-Göran Karlsson prefers using the term crimes against humanity to include ‘the direct mass killings of politically undesirable elements, as well as forced deportations and forced labour.’

Karlsson acknowledges that the term may be misleading in the sense that the Communist regimes targeted groups of their own citizens, but he considers it useful as a broad legal term that emphasizes attacks on civilian populations and because the offences demean humanity as a whole. Michael Mann and Jacques Sémelin believe that crimes against humanity are more appropriate than genocide or politicide when speaking of killings or violence by Communist regimes.

Killings by Communist states: The concept has been applied to Communist states. According to Klas-Göran Karlsson, the discussion of killings by Communist states has been ‘extremely extensive and ideologically biased.

Any attempt to estimate the total number of killings by Communist states depends greatly on definitions, ranging from a low of 10–20 million to as high as 110 million. Nonetheless, attempts at documenting and estimating killings by Communist states have been made by several authors, scholars and anti-communist organizations.

In 1994, Rudolph Rummel’s book Death by Government included about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, killed by Communist democide from 1900 to 1987. 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 number of Jews killed by the National Socialists.

We can, however, get a probable order of magnitude and a relative approximation of these deaths within the most likely range. Due to additional information about Mao Zedong’s culpability in the Great Chinese Famine according to Mao: The Unknown Story, a 2005 book authored by Jon Halliday and Jung Chang, Rummel revised upward his total for Communist democide to about 148 million, using their estimate of 38 million famine deaths.

In 1999, Stéphane Courtois’s introduction to The Black Book of Communism gave a ‘rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates’ approaching 100 million killed. 

In his foreword to the book, Martin Malia wrote that ‘a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million.’ 

In 2005, Benjamin Valentino stated that Communist democide in the Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China and Cambodia alone ranged from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.

Citing Rummel and others, Valentino stated that the ‘highest end of the plausible range of deaths attributed to communist regimes’ was ‘up to 110 million.’ In 2010, Steven Rosefielde’s book Red Holocaust argued that Communism’s internal contradictions caused the democide of ‘approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more.’ 

In 2011, Matthew White published his rough total of Communist democide at 70 million, including ‘people who died under communist regimes from execution, labour camps, famine, ethnic cleansing, and desperate flight in leaky boats’, with 26 million people additionally dying in ‘Communist-inspired wars.’ In 2014, Julia Strauss wrote that while there was the beginning of a scholarly consensus on figures of around 20 million killed in the Soviet Union and 2–3 million in Cambodia, there was no such consensus on numbers for China. 

In 2017, Stephen Kotkin wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Communist democide resulted in at least 65 million people between 1917 and 2017, stating: ‘Though communism has killed huge numbers of people intentionally, even more of its victims have died from starvation as a result of its cruel projects of social engineering.’

The criticism of some of the estimates, especially those of Rummel and The Black Book of Communism which made use of Rummel’s estimates and analysis, is mostly focused on three aspects, namely that the estimates were based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable; that the figures were skewed to higher possible values; and that those dying at war and victims of civil wars, Holodomor and other famines under Communist governments should not be counted. 

According to Anton Weiss-Wendt, any attempts to develop a universally accepted terminology describing mass killings of non-combatants, especially those under Communist regimes, defined as any death by democides, famines and wars, was a complete failure. Weiss-Wendt wrote that the field of comparative genocide studies has very ‘little consensus on defining principles such as the definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe.’ Source

Related books: THE ALL LIES INVASION I and THE All LIES INVASION II, WITNESS TO HISTORY,  Reich and Wrong, Heroes Hang When Traitors Triumph, The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler, Heroes of the Reich, MY LAST TESTAMENT LET GOD JUDGE ME, ODYSSEY ADOLF HITLER,  FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT SPEAK, MEGACAUST, Trotsky’s White Negroes, THE RED BRIGANDS, RANSACKING THE REICH, and DEATH OF A CITY.

Art-related books: Sculptures of the Third Reich: Arno Breker and Reich Sculptors, Volume I, Sculptures of the Third Reich: Josef Thorak and Reich Sculptors, Volume II, Sculptures of the Third Reich: Porcelain and Reich Sculptors Volume III, Art of Adolf Hitler: Ultimate Album of the Fuhrer’s Artworks, The Red Brigands, Ransacking the Reich by Michael Walsh.

Think your friends be interested? Share or reblog this story!

MICHAEL WALSH is a journalist, broadcaster and the author of WITNESS TO HISTORY, RISE OF THE SUN WHEEL (Paperback / Ebook), TROTSKY’S WHITE NEGROES, MEGACAUST,  DEATH OF A CITY,  MY LAST TESTAMENT LET GOD JUDGE ME, THE ALL LIES INVASION Volume I (Paperback / Ebook), and THE ALL LIES INVASION Volume II (Paperback / Ebook), Odyssey Adolf Hitler, SLAUGHTER OF A DYNASTY, REICH AND WRONG, THE RED BRIGANDS, RANSACKING THE REICH, SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD RIECH: ARNO BREKER AND REICH SCULPTORS, SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD REICH VOLUME II Josef Thorak and Reich Sculptors, SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD REICH VOLUME III Porcelain and Reich Sculptors, Death of a City, and other book titles. These best-selling books are essential for the libraries of informed readers.

MICHAEL WALSH is an Irish British-born journalist. His 70 books include best-selling historical books THE ALL LIES INVASION (Paperback / Ebook), THE All LIES INVASION II (Paperback / Ebook), Odyssey Adolf Hitler, MY LAST TESTAMENT LET GOD JUDGE ME,  WITNESS TO HISTORY, TESTIGO DE LA HISTORIA: HISTORIA SIN CENSURA (SPANISH EDITION),  REICH AND WRONG,  HEROES HANG WHEN TRAITORS TRIUMPH, HEROES OF THE REICH, THE HOLY BOOK of ADOLF HITLER, The Reich Declaration of War on the USSR, TROTSKY’S WHITE NEGROES, MEGACAUST, THE RED BRIGANDS, RANSACKING THE REICH, SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD RIECH: ARNO BREKER AND REICH SCULPTORS, SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD REICH Volume II Josef Thorak and Reich Sculptors, SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD REICH VOLUME III Porcelain and Reich Sculptors and  DEATH OF A CITY.  Click REAL HISTORY.

MICHAEL WALSH is a journalist, author, and broadcaster. His 70 books include best-selling  Africa-related books THE LAST GLADIATORS Fiancés of Death (Paperback / Ebook); AFRICA’S KILLING FIELDS: African Victims of the Liberal-Left (Paperback / Ebook); RHODESIA’S DEATH EUROPE’S FUNERAL European to Wall Street Colonialism (Paperback / Ebook); THE FIFTH COLUMN VOLUME I and II, and many other book titles. These best-selling books are essential for the libraries of informed readers. Click Africa.

The dissident author’s books are available for purchase by visiting his website BOOKSTORE, and POETRY  links.

We are in debt to our donors who finance the distribution of spin-free real news and fearlessly expressed views.

BUY FROM AUTHOR

MEGACAUST Michael Walsh. R. J. Rummel,   Power Kills: Genocide and Mass Murder (Journal of Peace Research) 164 million people have been killed in cold blood this century by Capitalist / Communist governments. 

SLAUGHTER OF A DYNASTY Michael Walsh. Covertly sponsored by Wall Street banks and the White House Bolsheviks seized Tsarist Russia (regime change). For 36 years news of Bolshevik atrocities and 70 million martyred Christians were censored by Western media.  Lavishly illustrated, this expose reveals secrets removed from Western history books.

When ordering the book contact Michael Walsh by email euroman_uk@yahoo.co.uk to receive your signed copy.

KEEP REAL NEWS OPEN: Donate by using Western Union, MoneyGram, Ria, or contact Michael Walsh: at keyboardcosmetics@gmail.com or euroman_uk@yahoo.co.uk 2) Follow our blog. 3) Share our stories and 4) buy our author-signed books. 5) Receive free newsletters by writing and subscribing to euroman_uk@yahoo.co.uk

Art-related books: Sculptures of the Third Reich: Arno Breker and Reich Sculptors, Volume I, Sculptures of the Third Reich: Josef Thorak and Reich Sculptors, Volume II, Sculptures of the Third Reich Volume III: Porcelain and Reich Sculptors Volume III, Art of Adolf Hitler: Ultimate Album of the Fuhrer’s Artworks, The Red Brigands, Ransacking the Reich by Michael Walsh.

BOOKS THAT CHALLENGE, INSPIRE, INFORM Michael Walsh, ‘Writer of the Year’ with a strong global following. Nearly 70 interesting book titles famed for changing and improving lives. CLICK TO VIEW

www.mikewalshwritingservices.wordpress.com

New stories every day!

EUROPE RENAISSANCE

https://europerenaissance.wordpress.com/