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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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Democide, or populicide, is "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". The term democide, coined by Holocaust historian and statistics expert R. J. Rummel in his book Death by Government, has been described by Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer as a better term than genocide to refer to certain types of mass killing.[1][2] According to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims, extrajudicial summary killings, and mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect, such as in deliberate famines like the Holodomor, as well as killings by de facto governments, such as killings during a civil war.[1][2] This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.[1][2]
Rummel coined 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]
Democide is the murder of any person or people by their government (normally the one under whose jurisdiction they live), 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.[1][2]
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 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 democide for this third meaning.[5]
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 labor 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 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 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 colonial, democratic, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.[7] He defined totalitarianism as follows:
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 constitutionally or by countervailing powers in society (such as by a church, rural gentry, labor unions, or regional powers); is not held responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections; and employs its unlimited power to control all aspects of society, including the family, religion, education, business, private property, and social relationships. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. Totalitarianism is then a political ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), 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]
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 that while "these figures amount to little more than informed guesses", he thought "there is enough evidence to at least indict these authoritarian regimes for megamurder."[9] 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 democracies have much less democide than authoritarian regimes.[2] 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 diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity. According to Rummel, "[t]he more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom."[10] Rummel argued that "concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth."[11]
Rummel's estimates, especially about Communist democide, typically included a wide range and cannot be considered determinative.[1][2] Rummel calculated nearly 43 million deaths due to democide inside and outside the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime.[10] This is much higher than an often quoted figure in the popular press of 20 million, or a 2010s scholarly figure of 9 million.[12] Rummel responded that the 20 million estimate 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 Rummell, Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths before 1936 and after 1950, executions (1939–1953), the forced 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 Cheka (the 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.[13] After decades of research in the state archives, most scholars say that Stalin's regime killed between 6 and 9 million, which is considerably less than originally thought,[14] while Nazi Germany killed at least 11 million, which is in line with previous estimates.[15]
Edward J. M. Rhoads cited as inaccurate Rummel's description of the 1911 Revolution in China as a "very minor affair ... no more than 1,000 to 2,000 died," citing a death toll multiple times the number 2,000 among the Manchu ethnic minority.[16] According to Sara M. Butler: "Rummel claims that 350,000 Jews were killed in the Spanish Inquisition, which is 1.7 times higher than the actual Jewish population of Spain at that time."[17][18]
In historian William Rubinstein's opinion, almost all of Rummel's estimated numbers were false.[19]
Rummel applied the concept of democide to Communist regimes.[6][20] In 1987, Rudolph Rummel's book Death by Government Rummel estimated that 148 million were killed by Communist governments from 1917 to 1987. The list of Communist countries with more than 1 million estimated victims included:
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 Nazis. We cannot expect near this accuracy for the victims of communism. We can, however, get a probable order of magnitude and a relative approximation of these deaths within a most likely range."[6] In 1994, Rummel updated his estimates for Communist regimes at about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, killed by Communist democide from 1900 to 1987.[22] 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,[23][24][25] using their estimate of 38 million famine deaths.[26]
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[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]
Estimates by Rummel for fascist or right-wing authoritarian regimes include:
Estimates for other regime-types include:
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).[21] Rummel wrote that "even though the Nazis hardly matched the democide of the Soviets and Communist Chinese", they "proportionally killed more".[35]
In response to David Stannard's figures about what he terms "the American Holocaust",[36] 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 "[e]ven 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."[37]
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
Foreign policy and secret services of democratic regimes "may also carry on subversive activities in other states, support deadly coups, and actually encourage or support rebel or military forces that are involved in democidal activities. Such was done, for example, by the American CIA in the 1953 coup against Iran Prime Minister Mossadeq and the 1973 coup against Chile's democratically elected President Allende by General Pinochet. Then there was the secret support given the military in El Salvador and Guatemala although they were slaughtering thousands of presumed communist supporters, and that of the Contras in their war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in spite of their atrocities. Particularly reprehensible was the covert support given to the Generals in Indonesia as they murdered hundreds of thousands of communists and others after the alleged attempted communist coup in 1965, and the continued secret support given to General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan of Pakistan even as he was involved in murdering over a million Bengalis in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)."[8]
According to Rummel, examples of democratic democide would include "those killed in indiscriminate or civilian targeted city bombing, as of Germany and Japan in World War II. It would include the large scale massacres of Filipinos during the bloody American colonization of the Philippines at the beginning of this century, deaths in British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War, civilian deaths due to starvation during the British blockade of Germany in and after World War I, the rape and murder of helpless Chinese in and around Peking in 1900, the atrocities committed by Americans in Vietnam, the murder of helpless Algerians during the Algerian War by the French, and the unnatural deaths of German prisoners of war in French and American POW camps after World War II."[8]
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.
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.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Democide, or populicide, is "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". The term democide, coined by Holocaust historian and statistics expert R. J. Rummel in his book Death by Government, has been described by Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer as a better term than genocide to refer to certain types of mass killing. According to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims, extrajudicial summary killings, and mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect, such as in deliberate famines like the Holodomor, as well as killings by de facto governments, such as killings during a civil war. This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government. Rummel coined 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.
Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014) was an American political scientist, a statistician and professor at Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Contrasting genocide, Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, such as the genocide of indigenous peoples and colonialism, Nazi Germany, the Stalinist purges, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, and other authoritarian, totalitarian, or undemocratic regimes, coming to the conclusion that democratic regimes result in the least democides. Rummel estimated that a total of 212 million people were killed by all governments during the 20th century, of which 148 million were killed by Communist governments from 1917 to 1987. To give some perspective on these numbers, Rummel stated that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed in combat around 41 million. His 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. In his last book, Rummel increased his estimate to over 272 million innocent, non-combatant civilians who were murdered by their own governments during the 20th century. Rummel stated that his 272 million death estimate was his lower, more prudent figure, stating that it "could be over 400,000,000." Rummel came to the conclusion that a democracy is the form of government which is least likely to kill its citizens because democracies do not tend to wage wars against each other. This latest view is a concept, which was further developed by Rummel, known as the democratic peace theory. Rummel was the author of twenty-four scholarly books, and he published his major results between 1975 and 1981 in Understanding Conflict and War (1975). He spent the next fifteen years refining the underlying theory and testing it empirically on new data, against the empirical results of others, and on case studies. He summed up his research in Power Kills (1997). His other works include Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocides and Mass Murders 1917–1987 (1990), China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (1991), Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder (1992), Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (1994), and Statistics of Democide (1997). Extracts, figures, and tables from the books, including his sources and details regarding the calculations, are available online on his website. Rummel also authored Applied Factor Analysis (1970) and Understanding Correlation (1976).
Mass killings under communist states occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, starvation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated a potential link between the killings and the perpetrators' status as communist states. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticised. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Povolzhye famine, the Holodomor, the Asharshylyq, the Great Purge, the expulsion of Germans and the population transfer in the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China, the Cambodian genocide in Democratic Kampuchea (now Cambodia), and the Arduous March in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Estimates of individuals killed range from a low of 10–20 million to as high as 148 million. The concept of connecting these killings to the ideology of the states that committed them has been both supported and criticized by the academic community. Some academics view this connection as causal in nature, and thus as an indictment of communism as an ideology, while other academics view such analyses as being overly simplistic and rooted in anti-communism. There is academic debate over whether the killings should be attributed to the political system, or primarily to the individual leaders of the communist states; similarly, there is debate over whether all the famines which occurred during the rule of communist states can be considered mass killings. Mass killings committed by communist states have been compared to killings which were committed by other types of states. Monuments to individuals and groups considered to be victims of communism exist in almost all the capitals of Eastern Europe, as well as many other cities in the world.
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital (lit. 'of the head', derived via the Latin capitalis from caput, "head") refers to execution by beheading, but there are various other methods of execution. Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as murder, assassination, mass murder, child murder, aggravated rape, terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements. However, states have also imposed punitive executions for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression. As of 2026, 53 countries retain capital punishment, 111 countries have taken a position to abolish it de jure for all crimes, 9 have abolished it for ordinary crimes (while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes), and 23 are abolitionist in practice. Although the majority of countries have abolished capital punishment, over half of the world's population lives in countries where the death penalty is retained. As of 2023, only 2 out of 38 OECD member countries (the United States and Japan) allow capital punishment. Capital punishment is controversial, with many people, organisations, religious groups, and states holding differing views on its ethical permissibility. Amnesty International declares that the death penalty breaches human rights, specifically "the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." These rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. In the European Union (EU), the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment. The Council of Europe, which has 46 member states, has worked to end the death penalty; no execution has taken place in its current member states since 1997. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, throughout the years from 2007 to 2020, eight non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with support for eventual abolition.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.
