Valuing Genocide

[Husar]

I suggest squirrels as a race to exterminate for worldpeace.

[Watchman]

Isnt that what we did to the Nazis? Isnt that what were trying to do to communism?

Wiping out an ideology or a political entity is a damn lot different from wiping out a nation.

[Rodion Romanovich]

'Well again the romans are an example of extreme military superiority - a set of legions and auxilia which in total numbered 500,000 men with proper difficult to pierce armor against poor weapons from smaller, separated tribes conquered one at a time.'

Which time period are you looking at? You'll find that their enemies normally had decent weapons and armour too, and when they didn't, it was normally due to Roman oppression or aggression earlier.

'And I oppose to your view on the roman empire case being an exception. Surely it fell after centuries, but over that period many more romans than non-romans got slaughtered per population size.'

This seems unlikely. You also neglect that those killed of the populations of those other people are too dead to breed, and many of the survivors no longer have property, a high standard of life, or often liberty. Numbers of deaths over the entire history of the empire/republic may well be higher than for their enemies, but that was generally because their enemies ceased to exist as independent peoples in the long term.

'The romans elected the strongest of their population to man the legions, these got killed en masse. Other people did the same, but while suffering more casualties in total, suffered fewer per population size. The roman empire also caused a dramatic change in world politics outside the empire - smaller tribes which had previously had no reason to ally did so. Out of smaller Germanic tribes, the Franks and Allemanni were formed, for instance. No doubt the romans suffered more in the end.'

No. There were plenty of nations, not 'smaller tribes' at the time they started. The Celts also selected their best men. Thanks to the attrition of the Roman war machine and their own civil war, they almost all died.

That's what Caesar's prppaganda "De bello gallico" says. I don't consider it a very reliable source for figures. He even claims to have killed a million Gauls in the Gallic wars, which is an unreasonably high percentage of world population at that time (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html). Moreoever, don't you think the organization of smaller tribes into larger to fight the romans would have occured quite fast if the romans would have carried out a true genocide each time they conquered an area? Surely terror may have been used to lure out armies avoiding engagement and such, but the ancient figures are as little trustworthy as figures can be - limited plundering is not the same as a genocide. If terror had really been nearly as large scale as the ancient sources imply, then we would damned sure have seen every little child and woman that could walk cut spears to fight the romans. Surely Caesar used terror in his plans, but not nearly to the amount that sources such as "De Bello Gallico" implies, and he hardly had much benefit from it. Even though Caesar's terror was limited, it was enough for the germanic peoples, who had previously been very little united, to unite and massacre the romans in the Teutoburg forest, and the proceed to continually kill roman soldiers along the border. The constant fights on the roman borders led to massive losses of roman lives. The romans also found that they couldn't hold the provinces under roman culture, without allowing the provincial culture to affect rome to a great degree, and let high offices eventually end up in the hands of non-romans. So there was never any total assimilation. In fact, many regions today have several pre-roman rituals and traditions preserved. This couldn't have occured if roman terror had been nearly as bad as in "de bello gallico". I don't know what the DNA guys say either, but my guess is that they'll also find that total destruction of entire peoples as described in some less than reliable ancient sources are vastly exaggerated descriptions of conquests resulting in either integration of the conquered, or their movement to another area.

Again I appeal to common sense: if you have many enemies, say 10, you need to kill 10 times as many of them as you lose yourself, in order to not lose more than them. However, if you can get such good loss ratios, you have certainly no need to use terror to win the war, so if you in such a situation still end up using genocide, you'll send a clear signal to all other countries that you're an absolute maniac that must be dealth with as soon as possible. All neutrals with any desire to live, and any intelligence, will immediately either join an alliance against you, or wait for a time when they can do so. Would you not? Or would you be among those who fall for propaganda such as: "this genocide is an exception, it will never strike you, because YOU are our friend, whereas the current victims are EVIL, UNUSUAL DANGEROUS people" that is so common among people who use genocide?

If you look at sources after the ancient period, the figures are more reliable. They support my model. I'm quite sure that any calculations for the ancient period, with serious figures, will yield the same result. If you have good sources, we could perform a similar calculation to the one I made above, and find out more precisely.

I do understand that it's easy, when looking at history at first glance, to think genocide gives any gains. It's probably cold rationality combined with this incorrect assumption that is the main cause of genocide in history, even though genocides are so harmful for those who carry them out. I've demonstrated here that genocide doesn't give gains, and that more often than not the guilty end up suffering more in the end as a result of their crimes. Hopefully this be clear enough to future potential massmurderers, and more importantly their potential supporters, so that genocides can be prevented at an earlier stage. No dictator can come to power without important initial support to settle in his position. I'm surprised by the eagerness of so many in this thread to show that genocide would come with any gains for the perpetrator. IMO, if you truly believe genocide is rationally beneficial, you must either be a supporter of genocide, or an irrationalist.

[Watchman]

The Romans committed genocide often enough.
They completely wiped out Carthage as a nation, destroying the city, navy, army, culture, everything.
They also committed genocides in Iberia, Gaul, Italy (Alba Longa if I remember correctly), Asia Minor, Middle East. It's just that it was so common that it wasn't recorded as a horrible event, just a way to win.

I'm pretty sure you're confusing massacres and terror tactics for genocide here. Those aren't the same thing; the latter is a specific attempt to entirely extinguish an entire populace, not mere bloodbath for the Hell of it or so all the potential enemies can see what happens if you're messed with.

Damn, but has that term undergone an inflation...

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Wiping out an ideology or a political entity is a damn lot different from wiping out a nation.

What if the whole nation follows this ideaology? Besides whats the difference?

[Watchman]

Are you for real ?

[Ser Clegane]

That's what Caesar's prppaganda "De bello gallico" says. I don't consider it a very reliable source for figures. He even claims to have killed a million Gauls in the Gallic wars, which is unreasonable considering that world population at that time was estimated to less than 1 million (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html).

The source your are citing gives a range of 170 - 400 million for the year 1 AD.

[Ser Clegane]

Gawain, I might be wrong, but "wiping out" communism is not quite the same as wiping out communists. I wasn't quite aware that the latter was the goal of the United States.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I would also like to ask about the Armenian genocide. I'm sorry to the Turks here, but why isn't there anything about it, when it did occur?

This is another good example of genocide not paying off. This genocide, and the silencing of it rather than an apologetic and regretful official attitude to it, is probably the main reason Turkey isn't having any chance to be part of EU in the nearest future. As long as Turkish officials don't teach about it in Turkish schools, apologize for it publicly, try to repair the damage by paying damages to Armenians with just claims for it, and create memorial monuments over the dead Armenians, very few people I know would support Turkey entering the EU, even if a clear majority of the Turkish people may be against the Armenian genocide today. The government and country officials not vehemently apologizing for it is IMO the same as the current administration saying it doesn't exclude the possibility of repeating similar actions.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I'm pretty sure you're confusing massacres and terror tactics for genocide here. Those aren't the same thing; the latter is a specific attempt to entirely extinguish an entire populace, not mere bloodbath for the Hell of it or so all the potential enemies can see what happens if you're messed with.

Damn, but has that term undergone an inflation...

Agreed. Limited terror has been a common strategy to lure out an army that avoids combat into battle. It surely has its similarities, but it's drastically differences in consequences and what is necessary to do in response to it.

[Watchman]

The usual purpose, I understand, was to simply terrify enemies into submission. A pretty common technique actually, and somewhat perversely may actually well more often than not spared human lives. Goes as follows: Ming the Merciless ruthlessly sacks Stubbornly Resisting Enemy Town A and has the inhabitants massacred. When his army then arrives before Now Very Scared Enemy Town B he tells the inhabitants they will be spared but for some provisions for his army and monetary "contributions" to his glorious war effort, if they but surrender peacefully. If they give him trouble, he'll do a rerun of Town A here.

Unless the defenders of Town B are damn confident in their ability to withstand the siege, guess what they're wont to choose sooner or later (most "rules of war" stipulated that fortresses that capitulated before being taken by storm received lenient terms; there's sound military and political logic behind this) ?

Naturally, reneging on such terms is conversely a brilliant way to ensure desperate defenders will fight to the last, since they'll figure themselves dead anyway...

Variations of the theme have considerable strategic value by deciding battles without fighting.

Agreed. Limited terror has been a common strategy to lure out an army that avoids combat into battle. It surely has its similarities, but it's drastically differences in consequences and what is necessary to do in response to it.

You're confusing it with the standard devastation of enemy territory to supply your own army, damage the foe's economic base and incite him to fight rather than watch quietly when you burn his fields so he starves next winter.

Which is what most warfare throughtout history mainly consisted of, really.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Gawain, I might be wrong, but "wiping out" communism is not quite the same as wiping out communists. I wasn't quite aware that the latter was the goal of the United States.

My point is that if a certain group of individuals could be designated as the cause of evil in the world would you favor their genocide be it that they all believe in the same ideology or nation. Millions would have to die in either case. Personaly I dont care if it would take 20 million of the finest people on earth to have to die to achieve such a goal. Why should it always be the youngsters?

[Watchman]

May I humbly suggest you stop defiling my computer screen with that garbage ?

I also want to pose the question, "where does this hypothetical certainty of their death bringing about eternal world peace come from - a burning shrubbery ?"

[ajaxfetish]

To return to the original question, Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer lists six things that he feels make the event unprecedented (he doesn't say unique because he feels that it would be possible for such a thing to happen again, but it is different from anything that came before) in human history.

First, genocides usually take place on frontiers, away from the central lands of the perpetrators, while 'the Holocaust took place in the center of what was probably the most advanced civilization of the twentieth century.'

The second and third reasons are very similar, and have to do with the universal nature of the Holocaust. Second, the Nazis targeted all those they identified as Jews among them, not just part of the group. Third, Jews were to be exterminated wherever the Germans were in control, which was eventually supposed to be the entire world. All Jews must die, everywhere in the world. 'Never before had there been a universally-conceived genocide.'

Fourth, the annihilation of the Jews was purely ideological, with no rational social or political basis. It flew in the face of reason, providing no pragmatic benefit to Germany and costing it a lot of manpower and resources.

Fifth, it was built on the Nazi brand of racism, a revolutionary concept 'to establish a new world order based on a hierarchy of races,' while previous genocides had more traditional roots and causes.

Sixth, and this one seems a bit of a stretch to me, he claims that 'the Nazis wanted to destroy the civilization from which they came, [including] liberalism, conservatism, socialism, democracy, and pacifism,' and with Athens and Rome both fallen, the Jews were 'the last remnant of the roots of European civilization.'

For what it's worth. (from the paper "On the Holocaust and Other Genocides," available from the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies)

Ajax

[Gawain of Orkeny]

I also want to pose the question, "where does this hypothetical certainty of their death bringing about eternal world peace come from - a burning shrubbery ?"

Why the flying spagehitti monster of course.

Let me try to make it easier. Would you consider wiping out all the radical Islamics as genocide?

[Tribesman]

Would you consider wiping out all the radical Islamics as genocide?

wouldn't that just radicalise all of Islam and just about all of the world

[Watchman]

genocide
1944, apparently coined by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin in his work "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" [p.19], in reference to Nazi extermination of Jews, lit. "killing a tribe," from Gk. genos "race, kind" (see genus) + -cide, from L. -cidere "kill," comb. form of caedere "to cut, kill" (see concise). The proper formation would be *genticide.

From Online Etymology Dictionary. And "genus" is

(pl. genera), 1551 as a term of logic (biological sense dates from 1608), from L. genus (gen. generis) "race, stock, kind," cognate with Gk. genos "race, kind," and gonos "birth, offspring, stock," from PIE base *gen-/*gon-/*gn- "produce, beget, be born" (cf. Skt. janati "begets, bears," janah "race," jatah "born;" Avestan zizanenti "they bear;" Gk. gignesthai "to become, happen;" L. gignere "to beget," gnasci "to be born," genius "procreative divinity, inborn tutelary spirit, innate quality," ingenium "inborn character," germen "shoot, bud, embryo, germ;" Lith. gentis "kinsmen;" Goth. kuni "race;" O.E. cennan "beget, create;" O.H.G. kind "child;" O.Ir. ro-genar "I was born;" Welsh geni "to be born").

...so, no. It would be a most heinous violent persecution and mass murder of an ill-defined group of people based on their beliefs, however.

And feel free to try to define "radical" in this context with any degree of operative usefulness. Wears a beard ?

Why the flying spagehitti monster of course.

Right. Now, kids, what do we call people who encourage the extermination of entire populaces on the basis that some crackpot supernatural entity told them so ? Yes, you with the cap. Dangerous religious fanatics and general basket cases ? Right you are, sit down.

It bites both ways, you know.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

wouldn't that just radicalise all of Islam and just about all of the world

No as if they radicalised they would be dead.

Right. Now, kids, what do we call people who encourage the extermination of entire populaces on the basis that some crackpot supernatural entity told them so ? Yes, you with the cap. Dangerous religious fanatics and general basket cases ? Right you are, sit down.

It bites both ways, you know.

It seems sarcasm is lost on you. Lighten up a bit.

And feel free to try to define "radical" in this context with any degree of operative usefulness. Wears a beard ?

One who believes that killing the unbeliever is all fine and well man woman or child.

[Watchman]

It seems sarcasm is lost on you. Lighten up a bit.

What sarcasm ? My question was in no way rhetorical, and I rather fail to see how you could give an answer that did not ultimately amount to as much.

One who believes that killing the unbeliever is all fine and well man woman or child.

Right. And how would you propose to identify those merry fellows once they catch up with the program ?

Plus these days they're mainly occupied with their own "heretics" anyway.

[Tribesman]

No as if they radicalised they would be dead.

So you would have to kill them all just in case they radicaslised .
Are you free-basing again Gawain ?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

What sarcasm ? My question was in no way rhetorical, and I rather fail to see how you could give an answer that did not ultimately amount to as much.

I was being sarcastic about the flying spagehitti monster.

Right. And how would you propose to identify those merry fellows once they catch up with the program ?

Ill give them the benifit of the doubt until proven differrntly. Remember this is hypothetical. Like a story in the bible. Why do you all have to complicate it with reality

So you would have to kill them all just in case they radicaslised .

Dont put ideas in my head

Are you free-basing again Gawain ?

Now was that called for? You know i quit years ago But have you had one too many again ?

[Tribesman]

Now was that called for?

sorry .
its just that your hypothetical is so obviously self defeating I wondered how it had sprung to mind ?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

its just that your hypothetical is so obviously self defeating I wondered how it had sprung to mind ?

Its not self defeating. The whole world would attack this nation not just us and they would be wiped out to a man. No one to retaliate. Its strictly hypothetical. Theres a huge IF in there in case any of you didnt realise it. I know its not possible lol.

[Watchman]

I was being sarcastic about the flying spagehitti monster.

Which is about what any conceivable source for the certain fact about bringing about world peace and free popcorns for everyone would amount to, as far as credibility goes.
Methinks your hypotethical scenario has a big hole in it - could probably fit that proverbial camel through, actually.

[Tribesman]

Methinks your hypotethical scenario has a big hole in it

A hole that would fit several hypothetical camels and a whole herd of elephants too .

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Methinks your hypotethical scenario has a big hole in it - could probably fit that proverbial camel through, actually.

Again your just complicating things. I asked a simple question, If wipping out a certain race nation or ideology would garuntee world peace forever would you favor it, Its a simple yes or no question. There are no holes in it. No maybes. No other what ifs. You wipe them out no more wars. Forever.

[Watchman]

Sure, but where does our hypothetical subject get the assurance this is indeed so, and he will not just be committing a horrible act for naught ? Because even if this objectively were so, human actors never have access to hundred proof objective data... so it really just comes down to blind faith when all is said and done.

And we have several rude terms for people who think like that back at my farm.

As for why I keep insisting on complicating the scenario, it's simple enough. The way you've kept stacking tendentious conditionals on it to railroad the question to the very specific dicothomy you're looking for annoys the snot out of me on general principles, so I might as well undermine the whole effigy by solidly kicking the rather glaring weakness inherent in the premises.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Sure, but where does our hypothetical subject get the assurance this is indeed so

Lets say god comes down in person and tells everyone. Thats why i say If you knew. Were taking it for granted that you know. There is no doubt.

[Watchman]

And you know, I have absolutely no reason to just accept that premise at face value.

Plus, there's certain terms used of people who talked to God in person and were told to go forth and lay waste to the, uh, whoever. They're not terribly polite either, I think.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

And you know, I have absolutely no reason to just accept that premise at face value.

Plus, there's certain terms used of people who talked to God in person and were told to go forth and lay waste to the, uh, whoever. They're not terribly polite either, I think.

Your obvuscating here. Were talking god came to you personally , proved he was god and told you this. And you believed him lol