Freethought & Rationalism Archive

thentian · 07-24-2008, 03:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyndis

Quote:

Originally Posted by thentian

Meanwhile, I have read up on King Leopolds activities in Belgian Congo. Various sources give different numbers:

British diplomat Roger Casement's 1904 report estimated the death toll at 3 million for the first twelve years of Léopold's regime.
Investigative reporter and author Peter Forbath estimated at least 5 million deaths.
Adam Hochschild in his book (King Leopold's Ghost) estimated 10 million.
The Encyclopedia Britannica gives a total population decline of 12 million to 22 million. (Eight million survivors from a starting population of 20-30 mill)
Wikipedia says "most sources" estimate about 10 million.

I think France and Portugal may also have some skeletons in their colonial closets. French Sudan, maybe?

Using absolute numbers will almost always skew the body count towards recent events simply due to the fact that the world's population has ballooned in the last century. There were around 2 billion people in 1900, and today we're closing in on 7 billion.

Rather than just going for absolute numbers, percentage of the population might make for a more fair figure, which would factor in the overall increased population. After all, one cannot kill 6 million of one's own people if there are only 5 million people living in said country at that particular time.

I agree, and if we compare King Leopold's death toll to that of Mao, we find that while the king offed between 33% and 50% of the congolese people, Mao killed only about 5% of the chinese (provided the numbers given by dlb is correct, which I have not seen substantiated).

Still, looking only at King Leopold II, we find that he alone was responsible for more deaths than the total number of people dlb claims were killed by 1700 kings (8 million). I say it is time to demand the same standard of evidence of dlb as we demand of everyone else.

thentian · 07-24-2008, 04:21 AM

To the OP: the most reliable paper I have found on Stalin's death toll is this:

http://www.etext.org/Politics/Stalji...s/AHR/AHR.html

It was made by an international group of history professors studying the russian archives of the GULAG.

Having read that I find it hard to see how one can arrive at a number as high as 20 million without adding the number of persons who starved to death during the famines, and even so a number in the range 10-15 million seems more reasonable to me. Anyway, if famine victims are to be included in a "blame-list" for Stalin, then it must be fair to include the victims of the various famines in the religious countries, at least when these famines were clearly a result of incompetence,sheer stupidity, and neglect. The Irish "Great Famine" comes to mind with a death toll of about 1 million out of a population of 8-9 million.

Demon · 07-24-2008, 07:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thentian

Having read that I find it hard to see how one can arrive at a number as high as 20 million without adding the number of persons who starved to death during the famines, and even so a number in the range 10-15 million seems more reasonable to me.

I also know of no evidence that the mass starvation in Stalinist Russia had anything to do with the fact that he was an atheist. The majority of the killings done by socialist regimes had nothing to do with religion. Stalin killed his friends for being too popular, he slaughtered intellectuals, he slaughtered anyone who gave the slightest hint of dissent. The Khmer Rouge killed everyone with glasses or who otherwise gave off the sign of being an intellectual. Mao sent the farmers to the hospitals and the doctors to work on the farms. The end result was the worst starvation in history with a body count of tens of millions. All to make people equal and to form a classless society.
I don't see how any of this has to do with the fact that Stalin, Mao and Polpot were atheists. Saying that atheism caused all of those deaths is either extremely ignorant or just dishonest.

dr lazer blast · 07-24-2008, 09:48 AM

The facts and evidence can be boiled down to this simple point, if it were true that atheism has nothing to do with it then we would have seen many more mass murders by governments in the nonatheist groups than we have. That simply isn't true, in any case I'll be back to comment on this later.

Stephen T-B · 07-24-2008, 10:23 AM

Stalin was a psychopathic monster who happened to be an atheist.
Do we blame "atheism" for those he killed, or his psychosis?

During the reign of Queen Mary (Tudor) of England, 274 people were burnt to death at the stake.
She was a religious fanatic.
Do we blame religion for those who died so horribly, or her fanaticism?

Perhaps dlb can give us an answer?

Noe Sandoval · 07-24-2008, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thentian

To the OP: the most reliable paper I have found on Stalin's death toll is this:

http://www.etext.org/Politics/Stalji...s/AHR/AHR.html

It was made by an international group of history professors studying the russian archives of the GULAG.

Having read that I find it hard to see how one can arrive at a number as high as 20 million without adding the number of persons who starved to death during the famines, and even so a number in the range 10-15 million seems more reasonable to me. Anyway, if famine victims are to be included in a "blame-list" for Stalin, then it must be fair to include the victims of the various famines in the religious countries, at least when these famines were clearly a result of incompetence,sheer stupidity, and neglect. The Irish "Great Famine" comes to mind with a death toll of about 1 million out of a population of 8-9 million.

Thanks for the link! Very interesting read. I had always assumed the majority of detainees were political prisoners.

thentian · 07-24-2008, 01:09 PM

I found the site of a professor who seems to be specializing in genocide!

(No, no! He is not the ultimate mad professor! He is studying them, not committing them!)

RUDOLPH J. RUMMEL, b, 1932, BA and MA from the University of Hawaii (1959, 1961); Ph.D. in Political Science (Northwestern University, 1963); Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Omicron Delta Kappa. Taught at Indiana University (1963), Yale (1964-66), University of Hawaii (1966-1995); now Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii

Link to site is here.

From the tons of useful information I'll just quote what he has to say on motives for genocide:

Quote:

There has been considerable research on why a perpetrator should want to destroy a group or, if not destroy the group as such, murder people because of their group membership. Motives are often complex and intertwined, but one can usually pull out among the mix a major motive.

One such motive is to destroy a group that is perceived as a threat to the ruling power. Such, for example, was the 1970 parliamentary elections in Pakistan that showed the political power of East Pakistan and threatened the control over it by West Pakistan, and the power of the military government. They thus militarily seized East Pakistan and murdered over a million Bengali leaders, intellectuals, professionals, and any Hindus that the military were able to capture.

Such was also the case with the strong resistance of the Ukrainian farmer to Stalin's program of collectivization in 1931-32 coupled with the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to communist control. So, when what would have been a mild famine hit the region in 1932, Stalin magnified the famine many fold by seizing food and its sources (livestock, pets, seed grain, shooting birds in the trees, etc.) and boycotting the import of food to Ukraine. Even visitors to Ukraine were searched and food taken away from them before they entered the Soviet Republic. About 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death.

And such was the case when the Rwandan Hutu majority government undertook to murder all Tutsi within their reach at the time when there was turmoil resulting from a major 1991 incursion of the Tutsi expatriate Rwandan Patriotic Front in the northern part of the country.

A second motive is deeply emotional and involves the destruction of those who are hated, despised, or conversely are envied or resented. The genocide of Jews throughout history and in particular the Holocaust was fundamentally an act of religious and ethnic hatred mixed with envy and resentment over their disproportionate economic and professional achievements. Similarly with the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, 1915-18, where Armenians enjoyed wealth and professional status far beyond their numbers, but also were hated as Christians in a Moslem society.

A third motive for genocide is the pursuit of an ideological transformation of society. Such have been the genocides and democides carried out by communist societies, for example, where those resisting or perceived to be enemies of the ideology are murdered, such as landlords, Kulaks, nationalists, "right-wingers," and "counterrevolutionaries."

A fourth motive is purification, or the attempt to eliminate from society perceived alien beliefs, cultures, practices, and ethic groups. "Ethnic cleansing," "waste disposal," or "prophylaxis," are terms for this. Examples are the systematic attempt of Mao Tse-tung and Stalin to eliminate disbeliveers from their communist societies; the attempt to do the same by Christianity during the Middle Ages; the elimination of Christian groups and Moslem "blasphemers" in many current Islamic countries such as in Iran and Saudi Arabia; the ethnic cleansing that the Serbians practiced in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s; and the war that the Myanmar (Burmese) military have been carrying out against the Karen and other ethnic groups.

And a fifth motive is that of economic gain. Thus, rapacious colonial powers or individuals (as of Belgium King Leopold who personally owned the Congo Free State) mass murdered tens of millions in their colonies who got in the way, resisted the rape of the colony's wealth, or were worked to death; and similarly for the mass murder of Indians in the Americas that continues to this day. And thus many millions were so murdered in the process of capturing, transporting, and maintaining slavery.

dr lazer blast · 07-24-2008, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen T-B

Stalin was a psychopathic monster who happened to be an atheist.
Do we blame "atheism" for those he killed, or his psychosis?

During the reign of Queen Mary (Tudor) of England, 274 people were burnt to death at the stake.
She was a religious fanatic.
Do we blame religion for those who died so horribly, or her fanaticism?

Perhaps dlb can give us an answer?

thats the problem stephen. People don't mind blaming religion when it comes to the crusades etc. but are up in arms when atheism is blamed for stalin despite the mountain of evidnece that supports that assertion.

Stephen T-B · 07-24-2008, 03:11 PM

miss post

dr lazer blast · 07-24-2008, 03:12 PM

what thenetian fails to understand is that atheists kill a lot more people than religious dictators in a shorter amount of time, posting why people commit genocide does nothing to absolve the correlation, furthermore your post also has no mention of religion causing genocide. One wonders if thenetian will take his own post to heart and realize that the crusades, and all the other atrocities commited under religious monarchs can't be blamed on religion. 100 E bucks says he won't.

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07-24-2008, 04:21 AM	#102
thentian Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Norway Posts: 694	To the OP: the most reliable paper I have found on Stalin's death toll is this: http://www.etext.org/Politics/Stalji...s/AHR/AHR.html It was made by an international group of history professors studying the russian archives of the GULAG. Having read that I find it hard to see how one can arrive at a number as high as 20 million without adding the number of persons who starved to death during the famines, and even so a number in the range 10-15 million seems more reasonable to me. Anyway, if famine victims are to be included in a "blame-list" for Stalin, then it must be fair to include the victims of the various famines in the religious countries, at least when these famines were clearly a result of incompetence,sheer stupidity, and neglect. The Irish "Great Famine" comes to mind with a death toll of about 1 million out of a population of 8-9 million.

07-24-2008, 09:48 AM	#104
dr lazer blast Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: charleston sc Posts: 1,622	The facts and evidence can be boiled down to this simple point, if it were true that atheism has nothing to do with it then we would have seen many more mass murders by governments in the nonatheist groups than we have. That simply isn't true, in any case I'll be back to comment on this later.

07-24-2008, 10:23 AM	#105
Stephen T-B Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Leeds, UK Posts: 5,878	Stalin was a psychopathic monster who happened to be an atheist. Do we blame "atheism" for those he killed, or his psychosis? During the reign of Queen Mary (Tudor) of England, 274 people were burnt to death at the stake. She was a religious fanatic. Do we blame religion for those who died so horribly, or her fanaticism? Perhaps dlb can give us an answer?

07-24-2008, 03:11 PM	#109
Stephen T-B Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Leeds, UK Posts: 5,878	miss post

07-24-2008, 03:12 PM	#110
dr lazer blast Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: charleston sc Posts: 1,622	what thenetian fails to understand is that atheists kill a lot more people than religious dictators in a shorter amount of time, posting why people commit genocide does nothing to absolve the correlation, furthermore your post also has no mention of religion causing genocide. One wonders if thenetian will take his own post to heart and realize that the crusades, and all the other atrocities commited under religious monarchs can't be blamed on religion. 100 E bucks says he won't.

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