Data on Mass Murder by Government in the 20th Century

Communists killed the most, followed by fascists.

This post presents the data for the mass murders by the Nazi regime and its allies, by Communist regimes and their allies, and by other governments. This week is an especially appropriate time to reflect on mass murder by government. Kristallnacht was 84 years ago today, November 9, 1938. Two days ago, November 7, was the National Day for the Victims of Communism.

During the 20th century, governments murdered over 200 million people. This figure excludes battle deaths from wars. The tables below are from my just-published article Guns Kill People, and Tyrants With Gun Monopolies Kill the Most, 25 Gonzaga Journal of International Law 29 (2021). The data cover 1900 to 1987 and are mainly based on the scholarship of the late University of Hawaii political science professor Rudolph J. Rummel. The few instances in which different figures are used are explained in my article.

The tables below do not used the word "genocide," because that term, as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is too narrow. At the insistence of Josef Stalin, the Genocide Convention applies to some mass murders by government (e.g., targeting racial, ethnic, or religious groups) but not to others (e.g., targeting victims for class warfare or ideological reasons). Hence, prof. Rummel coined the term "democide" to describe noncombat mass murders for any reason.

As the tables indicate, mass murders are perpetrated by dictatorial regimes of various stripes. Communist regimes are far away the most murderous. The tables list 17 communist regimes that murdered at least 100,000 people. Overall, the communists murdered approximately 168,759,000 from 1900 to 1987.

On the whole, the most-murderous fascist regimes proved to be less durable than their communist counterparts, so their killing sprees did not last as long. The 1900-87 murder count by fascist regimes was 27,848,000.

Fascist regimes are those that were explicitly aligned with the political theories of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini had been a socialist, but he broke with the party because of its internationalist class perspective and its opposition to World War I. Mussolini recast the totalitarian side of (some) socialist ideology into a nationalist mold.

All these figures are rough midpoint estimates. They come from a scholar who dedicated his outstanding career to quantifying mass murder by government and examining it causes.

TABLE 1

Mega-Murders—Over 1 Million Victims

Regime Years    Democide (000,000s)      Summary

A. Dekamurders (over 10 million victims)

People's Republic of China. 1949-87. 87.6 million people murdered. Mao et al. communist regime. Does not include 3.5 million murders by Chinese communists during the 1927-49 civil war.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 1917-87. 61.9 million people murdered. Communist regime. Includes 54.8 million within the Soviet Union, plus 6.9 million in areas conquered by the USSR. Josef Stalin's rule (1929-53) accounts for 43 million. On an annualized basis, the pre-Stalin regime founded by Lenin was more murderous than the post-Stalin one.

Germany. 1933-45. 20.9 million people murdered. National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi). Includes Hitler regime's murders throughout occupied Europe. Does not include WWII battle deaths.

China, 1928-49. 10.1 million people murdered. Kuomintang party. Although the party was originally Leninist in orientation, I did not count them in the communist total.

B. Megamurders  (over 1 million victims)

Japan. 1936-45. 6.0 million people murdered. Military dictatorship. Principally, war crimes perpetrated by the Japanese army against civilians in occupied nations, such as China or the Philippines. Although the ideology was not derived from Mussolini, the regime allied with the European fascists in WW II, and Japan is counted as a fascist regime.

China. 1923-49. 3.5 million people murdered. Communist revolutionary army before victory in 1949. As with all the data, there are no battle deaths. The killings were of civilians in areas controlled by the communist army.

Cambodia. 1975-79. 1.5 million people murdered. Khmer Rouge communist regime. Per capita, the largest democide against a domestic population. Includes murders of ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and dissidents, plus deaths from slave labor.

Turkey. 1909-18. 1.9 million people murdered. Young Turks regime. Military dictatorship killings of Armenians and other Christians.

Vietnam. 1945-87. 1.7 million people murdered. Communist. Includes 1.1 million in Vietnam and 0.6 million in Laos and Cambodia. Does not include battle deaths.

Poland. 1945-48. 1.6 million people murdered. Communist regime, post-WWII. Ethnic cleansing of German population, including in former German areas given to Poland after the war. Deaths mainly from subhuman conditions of deportation.

Pakistan. 1970-71. 1.5 million people murdered. Islamist military dictatorship. A 267-day military attack by West Pakistan on East Pakistan (which is now the independent nation of Bangladesh). The attacks were ended by Indian military intervention. The figure does not include battle deaths.

Yugoslavia. 1944-63. 1.1 million people murdered. Josip Broz Tito communist dictatorship. Mass killings of ethnic groups and non-communists in 1944-46, plus deaths in slave labor camps through 1963.

Suspected megamurders (Data are less certain, so estimates are rougher.)

North Korea. 1948-87. 1.7 million people murdered. Sung family's communist absolute monarchy. Includes killings of prisoners of war and civilian South Koreans during the Korean War (1950-53).

Mexico. 1900-20. 1.4 million people murdered. Porfiro Díaz authoritarian regime till 1911; revolutionary regimes and warlords thereafter. Deaths of Indians and peons on slave labor haciendas, plus massacres of civilians and conscription into slave labor by various forces in the civil wars of 1911-20.

Russia. 1900-17. 1.1 million people murdered. Czarist regime. Includes about 0.5 million from Russian Empire Armenian irregulars slaughtering Kurds in Turkey in WWI, in reprisal for genocide of Armenians in Turkey. Most of the rest from deaths of prisoners of war in WWI. Some from Jewish pogroms.

Total death toll of megamurders: 203.5 million.

TABLE 2

Next-Largest European Domestic Mass Murders

Regime Years    Democide   Summary

Albania. 1944-87. 100,000 people murdered. Communist. Ultra-totalitarian regime of Enver Hoxha.

Balkan Christians. 1912-13. 10,000 people murdered. Targeted by various governments.

Bulgaria. 1944-87. 222,000 people murdered. Communist.

Czechoslovakia. 1945-48. 197,000 people murdered. Coalition government including democrats and communists. Primarily reprisals and ethnic cleansing of German-speaking population. The figure is not included in the communist total above.

East Germany. 1945-87. 70,000 people murdered. Communist.

Hungary. 1919-44. 138,000 people murdered. Authoritarian. Includes 79,000 in Yugoslavia in areas temporarily annexed by Hungary in WWII. Included in the fascist total, because Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany.

Rumania. 1941-87. 919,000 people murdered. Fascist then communist after 1944. For simplicity, half the deaths are assigned to communists and half to fascists.

Spain. 1936-75. 452,000 people murdered. Fascist Francisco Franco dictatorship. Mutual democide of 202,000 by Fascists and Republicans during Civil War. 250,000 by Franco thereafter. For simplicity, half the Civil War deaths are assigned to fascists. Although many communists fought in the Civil War against Franco, the deaths from the anti-Franco side are not assigned to communists.

Total of other European mass murders: 2,108,000

 

TABLE 3

Selected Centi-Kilomurders (over 100,000)

Regime Years    Democide          Summary

Afghanistan. 1978-87. 483,000 people murdered. Does not include battle deaths. Includes democides by pre-1979 regime, by the regime installed in 1979 by Soviet coup, by the imperial Soviet army, and by other forces.

Angola. 1975-87. 125,000 people murdered. By communist regime following independence from Portugal.

Burundi. 1964-87. 175,000 people murdered. Tutsis vs. Hutus.

China. 1917-49. 910,000 people murdered by warlords. Independent warlord regimes not under the control of the Republic of China or of the communist revolutionaries.

Ethiopia. 1941-74. 148,000 people murdered. Haile Selassie monarchy.

Ethiopia. 1974-87. 725,000 people murdered. Communist.

Guatemala. 1956-87. 122,000 people murdered. Military.

Indonesia. 1965-66. 509,000 people murdered. Killings of communists by the military, the select militia, and others following a failed communist coup attempt.

Indonesia. 1965-87. 729,000 people murdered. Against East Timor secessionists.

Iraq. 1968-87. 187,000 people murdered. Ba'ath party. Although the party had explicitly Stalinist and Hitlerist roots, the deaths are not assigned to either ideology.

Mongolia. 1916-87. 100,000 people murdered. Communist.

Mozambique. 1975-87. 323,000 people murdered. 198,000 by communist regime after 1975 independence from Portugal. Remainder by opposition RENAMO forces (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana).

Nigeria. 1967-70. 777,000 people murdered. By government and Biafran forces during Biafra's failed war of independence.

Sudan. 1956-87. 627,000 people murdered. Islamist military dictatorship. Against various ethnic or racial minorities.

Turkey. 1919-23. 878,000 people murdered. Atatürk regime. Post-WWI attacks on Armenians and other minorities.

Uganda. 1971-79. 300,000 people murdered. Idi Amin military regime. Mainly against minority tribes and Ugandans of Asian descent.

Uganda. 1979-87. 255,000 people murdered. Post-Amin regimes.

Total: 7,373,000

Grand total: 212,981,000.

The figures are for 1900-87, and therefore do not include mass murders by governments in the last 35 years, such as the ongoing Chinese Communist imperialist genocides in Central Asia against Tibetans, Uighurs, and other groups.

As detailed in my article and the citations therein, the overwhelming majority of the above murders were perpetrated against victims who had been assiduously disarmed by dictatorships before the killing began. The behavior and statements of mass-murdering regimes indicate that armed victims are a serious impediment to mass murder by government. As also detailed in the article, the historical record indicates that resistance by intended victims who do have arms can save many lives, even when the targeted groups lack the power to overthrow the regime.

Comments

[David Bhear]

Excuse me. The lockdown of 2020 dropped the world GDP by $4 trillion. That caused millions to starve to death. US billionaires scored an extra $1.7 trillion and those of China $2 trillion. The corporate media hyped a weak cold virus, and Dem Governors shut down the economy to prevent the sure fire re-election of Trump.

That is the greatest fraud crime and mass murder in history.

[David Bhear]

https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000114546/download/

[David Bhear]

This is very frustrating to a utilitarian. It is maddening. The cause of aggression and of mass slaughter is weakness. It should become the military policy, not just of victims, but of the USA. The first deaths should be among the leadership, their families, down to the last kitten, the oligarchs that put them in power, their families, down to the last kitten. How could the Jews have gone up against the Wehrmacht? They could not. They should have believed the Nazis about their intentions. They should have killed the entire Nazi hierarchy, their families, and the 20 oligarchic families that put it in power. Five of those were in the USA. How hard is it to kill Henry Ford? To deter.

[David Bhear]

Instead, the scumbag lawyer profession has immunized this vile oligarchy. The US hanged a few Nazi unfortunates. The families responsible for and who greatly profited from the war were recruited to rebuild the German economy and further enriched by the USA. That is despicable and morally disgusting. The basis of the immunity of these leaders is an Executive Order by scumbag Yale Law School graduate, Gerald Ford. That’s it. Stop spending $trillions to kill millions of working people who want to go home, and to achieve nothing except to enrich our oligarchs. To achieve that utilitarian goal, the lawyer profession must be crushed. It is pure evil.

[shawn_dude]

This is parody, right?!

[David Bhear]

You find millions of deaths by starvation to be funny?

[David Bhear]

Excuse me. KKK lynched 4000 people over 100 years. The excess murder rate of black young males has been 4000 a year for the past 50 years. 200000 murders to the American lawyer profession.

20000 white women are raped by the protected client of the lawyer. times 50 years, makes 1 million rapes of white women by the client of the lawyer in the US.

[Currentsitguy]

It had a mortality rate of .24% that mainly affected the very elderly and those with multiple comorbid conditions. Why were efforts not focused on protecting them instead of shutting doen the whole world?

[David Bhear]

Trump got played by the Deep State. He should have arrested, tried them, and summarily executed them all. Tech billionaires, journalists, their CDC enablers, Democrat governors.

You have a weak cold virus. You blow it up in the corporate media, by placing moribund people on the front page, day after day, and hiding the remedies way deep. Shut down the roads and the businesses. Wipe out local competition to the tech billionaires. Trash the market and the economy that would have carried Trump into a second term. Score $1.7 trillion extra income. Give the hospitals $35000 for each case. Get brought in with a shot to the head, and cough, another case.

Then the scumbag lawyer profession does nothing to stop the greatest crime in history that killed millions by starvation, a really rough way to go, you piece of shit, heartless traitors.

The village of Vo Euganeo tested its 3000 residents in Feb., 2020. Three hundred were positive. Half of them were asymptomatic. They quarantined for 2 weeks, not the whole village, the positive for Covid. The epidemic was ended in a location in Lombardy, an epicenter of the epidemic. Why no one copied them is another element of the greatest crime in history.

[Clayton Cramer]

"He should have arrested, tried them, and summarily executed them all. "

Now, that would have truly been fascist.

[Krayt]

This is horrible and great to point out, but corruption, dictatorship, and other policies hurting business, causing a slowdown in technical progress, kill a magnitude or more than active murdering.

As the tech and medical cutting edge is delayed, deaths due to not quite having a cure yet, adds up like compounding interest.

A halfway decent heart drug might save 60,000 lives a year in the US, and 20x that worldwide. Delay it four years, yikes! With only a fraction of the worldwide population in relatively free societies that produce things apace, that’s bad enough. But overbearing FDA-like orgs delay things, too.

The number who die due to drugs getting to market too fast is a fraction of those who die from delays.

Of course, nobody wants to be the risky guinea pig who died, but you sure all wish someone would volunteer as N deaths is way less than N * some large number from delays.

This is where lawyers and politicians lining their pockets over drug issues join the mass murderer club.

They even have a meme for that, “The unconstionable profits of drug companies” and “this makes companies be more careful”.

But outcomes studies would show many more deaths with their (coincidental) pocket lining “care” than without. But a death in front of the cameras they can feel your pain about is worth 100,000 dying as ongoing lack of new tech.

[David Bhear]

The biggest impact on mortality reduction is from reaching 2000 cals a day. Thank you farmers. That has a huge effect. Sewers have a small impact. Vaccines have a tiny impact that is still measurable. Medical care has no impact, but does improve quality of life. The lawyer profession? It is totally toxic to humanity. It is imperative to replace it as soon as possible, and to get rid of this glorified crime crew destroying our nation.

[shawn_dude]

The difference between a pharmaceutical company not finishing drug trials, which potentially harms many potential customers, and authoritarian governments is intent to kill. The pharmaceutical researchers are working on a life saving drug, not a weapon.

Which do you think killed more people in the last 2+ years:
- the 6 month delay for testing and approval to get a COVID vaccine out...
OR
- the overt politicalization of COVID that convinced some people the disease was a hoax and the vaccine a threat?

[DWB]

Focusing on people NOT at risk of dying from Covid instead of focusing like a laser beam on the unhealthy, overweight and infirm killed many more than talk of "hoaxes."

Not to mention putting Covid patients in nursing homes!!!

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

This is horrible and great to point out, but corruption, dictatorship, and other policies hurting business, causing a slowdown in technical progress, kill a magnitude or more than active murdering.

You're claiming 2 billion deaths from ... what? Even including your overlap from "dictatorship", that still leaves 1.8 billion from ... what?

It doesn't pass the smell test.

[Dan Schiavetta]

There's a difference between letting people die and rounding them up and putting them in ovens.

[Mr. Bumble]

Dead is dead. Stalin didn't have to "round" people up to starve them.

[not me]

He didn't have to.
But he did, anyway.

[Currentsitguy]

Depends. He pretty much let them starve in place in the Ukraine.

[Clayton Cramer]

Elsewhere, he worked them to death in frozen wastes where poor diet killed them in the process; much like German concentration camps where they were given just enough food to work but still eventually starve to death or die of diseases attacking weakened bodies. Intent and results matter more than method.

[markm23]

Don't you mean "Results matter more than intent and method"? It's idiotic to give anyone points for good intentions when anyone but a fool or idealogue could tell that the results would be terrible.

[Dan Schiavetta]

It's hard to draw the line between deliberately letting people starve, and looking the other way knowing they will starve, and doing a half-assed effort to keep them from starving, and incompetence that resulted in them starving.

Seeking them out, pushing them into vans, and then to gas chambers, is different.

[Mr. Bumble]

There is no line to draw. The intent was the same.

[Ed Grinberg]

They (the Soviet Government) "requisitioned" peasants' grain. Then they put them under a blockade (so they couldn't escape). Then they waited for the peasants to starve to death. Prof. Kopel's analysis is solid; you're either misinformed or are trying to whitewash Soviet government's crimes (for whatever reason).

[bevis the lumberjack]

Not to the dead guys it ain’t.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes it does. At least insofar as we can tell from their survivors.

[bevis the lumberjack]

So shooting your children is a crime, but locking them in their rooms and letting them starve to death is…..better somehow. Even though starvation is a much more difficult death than a bullet to the head.

It’s intent. If you intended for millions of people to die the method really doesn’t matter.

A better argument for you would be to point out that the Nazis also starved a lot of their victims to death. There was a “starvation cell” at Auschwitz, so the Germans could watch.

But go ahead and defend your comrades if it makes you feel better.

[David Kopel]

This question is addressed in Rummel's work, and explained in my article. In brief, he distinguishes starvation due to government ineptitude from starvation due to, at the least, reckless disregard for human life. Stalin's Ukraine famine was definitely intentional. Rummel's early work classified the tens of millions of Chinese deaths starvation deaths during the Great Leap Forward as ineptitude, and hence not part of his democide total. Later, based on further research, he determined that the starvation deaths were due, at the very least, to reckless disregard, so he counted those deaths among Mao's democide.

[Aunt Teefah]

Neither did Churchill, yet he seems to always be given a pass. Wonder why …

[Bob from Ohio]

"There’s a difference between letting people die and rounding them up and putting them in ovens."

It was intentional starvation. No different at all.

Plenty of camp inmates starved to death or died of disease. I guess they weren't murdered.

FYI, the ovens were not the murder method, its how they disposed of the already dead bodies.

[Sarcastr0]

The key with these jingoistic exercises is to ignore negligent and reckless deaths, lest you loop in some events maybe you shouldn't.

I do think Communism sucks, and it killed a lot of people. But this kind of dive is just Two Minutes Hate right here.

Well, that and an inevitable bludgeon to use in American partisan politics.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I do think Communism sucks"

Yet every time a post like this goes up, you and your kindred [captcrisis here for instance] always minimalize the Red terror the best you can.

Two Minutes Hate was bad because it attacked non-existent external enemies as a diversion, that is not the case here. Reds did murder many, many people.

[Sarcastr0]

Guess what: Communism is a dumb and wrong ideology, not even able to rise to the point of becoming a non-existent enemy.

Not wanting Two Minutes Hate against it must mean I support Communism, it seems.

Very Ingsoc of you, Bob!

[DWB]

Communism is evil -- as is your minimizing of its horrors.

[Sarcastr0]

And I can see below your actual agenda is bashing the left with this.

Way to prove my point about Communism being awful but redbaiting also being bad.

[DWB]

Somehow this history and these truths seem to bother you -- as with slavery -- the truth needs to be taught and know.

Evil

[Sarcastr0]

No, I'm not bothered by the fact that Communism has proven to be a horrorshow every time it's tried.

I just don't think it has a lot to do with American partisan politics in 2022, except for a few outliers wishing for a return of the Cold War.

[Ed Grinberg]

I do think Communism sucks, and it killed a lot of people. But this kind of dive is just Two Minutes Hate right here.

There're some things that are hateful (deserving of hate). Communism is one of them.

Well, that and an inevitable bludgeon to use in American partisan politics.

Prof. Kopel said nothing about U.S. politics. You did. You know why you did. Everyone knows why you did.
Like I said above, there's some things (ideas, political movements, ideologies) that ought to be "bludgeoned."

[Clayton Cramer]

So you are claiming that Democrats are similar to genocidal dictators?

[ILK]

As a thought exercise, if you tallied up "murders" by the US Government in the 20th century as objectively as one possibly could (which, granted, is going to be very difficult), what number would one get to? Just curious what our enemies could plausibly say about us.

[Mr. Bumble]

Define the "murders" you are referring to.

[ILK]

Whatever definition Kopel is using. I'm not trying to be cute about it. If the answer is 0 because Kopel's definition would require intent to kill and the US Government has never had that, great. But I tend to doubt that rational outsiders would say as much.

[Martinned]

Zero? Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfla1

[Clayton Cramer]

Execution of criminals is not murder, by the definition of the word.

[Seamus]

So if capital punishment is murder, then I guess imprisonment must be kidnapping, and fines are theft, right?

[Don Nico]

Definitely not zero. Our drone program has definitely intent to kill.

[Clayton Cramer]

Mass murders in the U.S. seldom involve our government with a few exceptions often Indians who resisted. Many state governments stood idly by while mobs lynched people (both black and white).

I have gathering all U.S. mass murders for several years: close to 2000 so far since 1657. Some do involve governments disarming the victims. See https://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-being-disarmed-is-bad-idea.html Most big mass murders are individual acts. We have a more decentralized government.

[David Kopel]

This is addressed in my article, which explains Rummel's classifications. His fullest work data compilation is book "Statistics of Democide." His methodology does not count capital punishment, if there's a functioning judicial system with fair trials. For the U.S., his democide figures include lynchings, and also include civilian deaths from some of the U.S. and U.K. bombing in WWII. He treats war deaths the same as international law does: if you're trying to bomb an enemy military base, but you miss and hit a hospital, that doesn't count as deliberate killing of civilians. If you bomb a populated area that has no military value, that does count as intentional killing of civilians, and would be included in Rummel's democide statistics.

[not me]

Nonzero, but quite low.

Now, if you were to include the 19th century, then the US would have some significant entries on the list, such as the Trail of Tears and other forced relocations of native populations. But due to the lower population levels of 19th century North America, it still won't approach the numbers of the 20th century mass killings.

It also gets harder and harder to get accurate numbers the farther back you go in history.

[perlmonger]

I think there's a reasonable case to be made for some measure of culpability for the USA in the events in Central and South America during the 20th century. We certainly did not cover ourselves in glory down there.

[Squirrelloid]

Quite low? Really?

I mean, the problem is that there’s so many disparate causalities of civilian deaths by the US government, that simply identifying all of them to tally would be hard. But when you kill 100 at a time a lot of times, that adds up.

Tuskagee experiment had over 100 deaths, for example. That deserves to be on the list.

1,862 Japanese-Americans interred during WW2 died, primarily from malnutrition and lack of proper protection from the elements.

150,000-200,000 civilians died in the Guatemalan civil war, in which the US trained, funded, and supplied the government forces engaged in killing civilians. The US also installed that government in 1954, after overthrowing a democratically elected government. Surely a large share of that blame is on the US.

And that’s just a smattering of civilian killings the US has been responsible for.

Rummel, the source of the OP’s data, has calculated US democides. See: https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM (And he leaves a lot of things out, so take his numbers as a low estimate. His biggest US numbers are from the Philippine war for independence, WW2 bombings, and Vietnam, which does seem about right).

[tkamenick]

This is why it gets difficult. "Caused death" =/= "murder". Kopel is excluding deaths in war. Anything like Trail of Tears is closer, but are we using the strict legal sense of murder of killing with intent (and absent privilege, e.g. execution for crimes, self-defense)? Was there a strict intent to kill numbers of people there? Maybe, but is there good evidence of it? Or will we go a little lower to recklessness? That would probably count - they knew or should have known that significant numbers of people would die. That would cover Tuskegee too. Would probably need to go down to negligence to include Japanese and other internment camp deaths.

Using the strictest of definitions, you would probably count: 1) police convicted of murder; 2) CIA and other covert operation killings. Maybe some more, but those were the big things that struck my mind.

[Squirrelloid]

No, he's excluding combat deaths. Civilian deaths during war are definitely included (otherwise the Nazi death total would be substantially lower).

So non-military deaths at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the carpet bombings of Dresden or Tokyo, are definitely fair game.

Also, 'democide' doesn't require it to legally be 'murder'. 'Caused death' appears to be enough. The link I gave is literally the same author, using the same methods, as the author relied on by Kopel in the OP.

[Seamus]

The Trail of Tears is certainly comparable to the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia, which was counted above among the Megamurders and the "Next-Largest European Domestic Mass Murders."

[Clayton Cramer]

The deaths on Trail of Tears was a combination of factors, not all intentional. They got a late start on the forced march. Intentionality is not at all clear.

[Martinned]

I'm not sure why our heroic amateur historian felt the need to investigate something so obvious, but I guess the 18th Brumaire is as good a day as any to blog about it.

[SRG]

Very good!

[Michael D]

And you folks think I am crazy for suggesting the state is worse than anarchism.

[Clayton Cramer]

In an anarchy, shopkeepers during the “mostly peaceful protests” would have hired guards with machine guns to kill rioters and sell the prisoners into slavery. The abuses of the state are an alternative to somewhat less restrained actions.

[DWB]

WOW -- leftist are good at one thing at least -- committing mass murder!

[SRG]

What a surprise - extreme authoritarian regimes are responsible for 100% of mega-murders, with most coming from the far left but some coming from the far right.

[Stephen Lathrop]

David Kopel, how many deaths in China do you attribute to the Nationalist Chinese during the 20th century?

[Squirrelloid]

Would you care to reread the OP and take a guess? He gives an estimate for the Kuomintang.

[Jerry B.]

This can't be right as the United States is nowhere on your table. Everyone knows of the billions we've killed since 1619.

[Squirrelloid]

See the link I give above. Same author estimates the US in the ballpark of 500,000 for 1900-1987.

[Clayton Cramer]

Billions? Care to give a list? Until 1804 there were not even one billion people on the entire Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Milestones_by_the_billions Recent college graduate?

[Number 2]

I think Jerry B. was being sarcastic.

[Mike45]

A professor at the U of Hawaii has tallied 262 million deaths in the 20th century. The research can be found here:
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM

[Number 2]

Interesting that fascist Italy did not make the list.

[Clayton Cramer]

Fascist Italy for all its faults did not organize death camps. Much of the Italian Jewish population was deported by the Germans after the collapse of Mussolini's government. The Italian military's actions in Ethiopia deserve attention.

[Number 2]

Maybe, but it is surprising that the domestic death toll for fascist Italy was still under 10,000. Particularly given the length of time that Mussolini was in power.

[David Kopel]

Mussolini was awful, but very different from Hitler. Given the diversity of the Italian population (e.g., Sicilians vs. Lombards vs. Venetians), he could never get into the whole racial issue the way Hitler did. Albania was colonized by Mussolini, and after the Mussolini regime collapsed, the Germans took over Albania. By all accounts, German rule in Albania was much harsher than Italian rule.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Please stop replying to yourself. It got you blocked before, it will again. Your comments are more intelligible when you pause long enough on the first one.

[santamonica811]

Á àß,
To be fair to David; I think he is replying to the voices screaming in his head, and is not trying to reply to himself. So, maybe cut him some slack? (Mental illness is not a laughing matter, and I have tremendous empathy for David. It can't be a fun way to have to live one's life.)