« Hemingway's Bacon-Wrapped Trout | Main | And of course Islam and Allah's got nothing, nothing at all, to do with it. »

October 23, 2014

Men have for millennia destroyed each other,

but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath:
the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters, but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.
- - Isaiah Berlin quoted at Had Enough Therapy?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at October 23, 2014 7:22 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

BULLSHIT! The first person to get their nose cut off is going to be that shrink, for sticking into a place not wanted.

When those leaders went out for blood and treasure, no one but no one was telling them you can't do that, except the guy that has a bigger army.

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 24, 2014 4:52 AM

Then you have a phenomena like what happened in Rwanda:

The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority. During the approximate 100-day period from April 7, 1994 to mid-July, an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed,[1] constituting as much as 20% of the country's total population and 70% of the Tutsi then living in Rwanda. The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite known as the akazu, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police (gendarmerie), government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, and the Hutu civilian population.

That's a lot of people killed, mostly with machetes. You have to really want to kill someone if you use a machete. The Hutu leaders didn't get much profit from it and it was public knowledge. Human rights groups were all tsk tsk but there were no dire consequences.

Posted by: chasmatic [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 24, 2014 5:16 AM

So, die in the camps, or die when they come for you?

I'll take the latter, thank you.

Posted by: leelu [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 24, 2014 8:55 AM

Its a question of reach. Man has since the fall been evil and destroying each other in spirit, mind, and body. It is only recently that there's been the power and technology to do so in a greater manner. You can kill a man with a sword, or a gun. But you can kill thousands with a bomb, tens of thousands with a disease, and millions with a nuke.

You can fool some people with a religion or a lie, but you can manipulate nations with the modern media. The evil has not changed, only the tools.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 24, 2014 4:32 PM

Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)