DEMOCIDE: DEMOCRATS AND THE AWFUL TRUTH OF GENOCIDE
By J.R. Dunn, consulting editor of American Thinker.
American Thinker, AZ
_democrats_and_the_awf.html
July 26 2007
Since the first of the year, I’ve been working on a project dealing
with the connections between liberal policies and mass mortality –
the easily demonstrated (though somehow never mentioned) fact that,
since at least the 1950s, liberal policies taken to their logical
conclusion tend to create large piles of bodies in a process that
might be called mass negligent homicide. (The technical term for this,
one that I don’t care for, is "morticide".)
This project involves a considerable amount of research into several
distinct events in recent American history – domestic crime and
justice, the Vietnam War and its aftermath, Rachel Carson and DDT.
One of the pleasures of any form of deep research is the surprises
hiding in the material. For instance, in this case, the discovery
that Rachel Carson is not, as a number of observers claim, directly
responsible for the DDT ban – the credit for that and all the deaths
that followed, goes to a grim cabal of assorted bureaucrats. Or the
fact that William Shawcross, a British left-wing journalist whom I had
dismissed as a diehard America-hater, has in recent years rethought
his position in much the same sense as and far more consistently than
Christopher Hitchens.
Occasionally, you come across something more disturbing, some
collection of facts that takes shape out of the material and presents
itself as something bizarre, inexplicable, and utterly out of context,
but at the same time impossible to refute.
I call them "wild cards". You don’t go looking for wild cards –
by definition, there’s no way you can know that they’re there. They
have to come to you. You examine a particular data set, a collection
of documents, a study, and suddenly something jumps out at you.
Something skewed and strange, something nobody had seen before and
that you never expected to see. Something that gives rise to the
eureka response – but with a twist: I have found it, but what the
hell is it I’ve found?
With the exception of physics, wild cards are far from welcome in most
fields. Establishments like stability and consistency, and wild cards
are the enemy of both. Physics, the single great exception, began the
20th century with two of the most consequential wild cards of all
time, Planck’s identification of the quanta in 1900 and Einstein’s
Special Relativity in 1905. Physicists soon got used to wild cards
leaping out at them almost constantly, proving that you can get used
to them if you have no choice.
In any case, the card I was dealt this time went like this:
Almost all the large-scale genocides of the past century have occurred
during Democratic administrations.
Below appears a list of major genocides and democides (a word coined
by the master scholar of mass killing, Prof. R.J. Rummel, and meaning
any mass murder by government) occurring during the 20th century from
the 1930s on. Each of them accounted for something on the order of a
million lives, several of them many more. The approximate number is
followed by the date and the name and party of the U.S. president at
the time.
Ukrainian Famine 1.5 – 7 million 1932 -1933 FDR — Democrat
Rape of Nanking 1 million 1937 FDR — Democrat
Great Purge Up to 10 million 1937 – 1939 FDR — Democrat
The Holocaust 6 million Jews (+ 5 million others) 1942 – 1945 FDR
— Democrat
Operation Keelhaul 600,000 to 2 million 1945 – 1946 Truman — Democrat
Postwar Purge 1 million + 1946 – 1948 Truman — Democrat
Great Leap Forward Up to 45 million 1959 – 1962 Eisenhower —
Republican
Great Cultural Revolution 1 – 10 million 1967 – 1969 LBJ — Democrat
Biafran Crisis 1 million + 1966 – 1969 LBJ — Democrat
Cambodian Year Zero 2 million + 1975 – 1978 Carter – Democrat
Boat People 200,000 – 1 million 1977 – Carter – Democrat
Ethiopian Famine 1 million + 1984 – 1985 Reagan – Republican
Rwandan Massacre 800,000 1994 Clinton – Democrat
Out of thirteen of these atrocities, no fewer than eleven occurred
during the administrations of Democratic presidents. In fact, partially
excepting John F. Kennedy, there’s no Democratic president following
Franklin D. Roosevelt whose term was not marred by at least one massive
foreign bloodletting. In contrast, Republican administrations feature
only two: Mao’s Great Leap Forward, in which a nationwide artificial
famine wracked China from one end to the other, and the Ethiopian
famine, an almost identical episode that struck the ancient African
kingdom in the mid-80s.
Darfur — which straddles both the Clinton and Bush administrations
— may well make this list in due time, but has yet to reach the
level of enormity of the atrocities listed. This is not to slight the
magnitude of the human suffering involved. Darfur is an indictment of
the international system as it currently exists. It could, and should,
be rectified beginning tomorrow.)
Qualifications must be made in only two cases: while the Ukrainian
famine began in 1932, grain seizures started in late Fall, almost
simultaneous with Roosevelt’s election. And while the Cambodian Year
Zero massacres began during Gerald Ford’s term in 1975, Ford was a
caretaker president effectively overseeing a government controlled by
a Democratic Congress. Jimmy Carter’s first full year as president
coincides with the peak frenzy of the massacres. (While it’s true
that the boat people continued arriving into the 1980s, the Reagan
Administration defused the crisis by allowing several hundred thousand
into the U.S. as refugees.)
Another set of qualifications, having no effect on the premise itself,
has to do with numbers. Most of the mortality figures are ranges,
many of them no more than estimates, and that they will remain. Few
of the killers were as meticulous in their record-keeping as the Nazis
were with the Endlosung. That said, some of the estimates, such as that
of the Ukrainian Famine from Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow,
and the Great Leap Forward from Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts. Mao’s
Secret Famine, are very solid.
The figure for the rape of Nanking also includes the other massacres
in the Yangtze valley during 1937, as derived from Iris Chang’s The
Rape of Nanking.
Another troubling point is that in most cases, very little was done in
response to the crises. Many of the episodes, as we’ve grown used to
seeing, are accompanied by open denial or an almost willful refusal to
admit that any such thing is happening. Denial is usually the product
of individuals or groups sympathizing with or aiding the killers –
the Communist Party during the 1930s, the New Left following the
Vietnam War. Unwillingness to believe, though much more common,
is not often a product of evil intent, but simply an inability to
acknowledge that horror on such a scale is possible.
(This is best illustrated by Justice Felix Frankfurter’s response to
an eyewitness of the Holocaust in 1943: "I cannot believe you. I’m
not saying that you’re lying. But that I cannot believe you.") While
understandable, this remains a human failing and needs to be faced
as such.
Because the result is paralysis or hesitation in confronting such
events. While only one was carried out with the full cooperation of
Western governments (Operation Keelhaul, the forced repatriation of
Russian collaborators, prisoners, and expatriates at the close of
WW II. Cooperation was compelled by the text of the Yalta Treaty.),
a much larger number occurred with no intervention or often even
comment by the civilized world. These include the Ukrainian Famine,
the Rape of Nanking, the Great Purge, the Holocaust, the Soviet Postwar
Purge, the Cultural Revolution, the Year Zero, the first three years
of the boat people’s exodus, the Rwandan Massacre, and is now being
repeated in Darfur. Only two exceptions exist in which the killings
were matched by an extensive rescue effort – the Biafran civil war
and the Ethiopian Famine.
The correlation between large-scale atrocities and Democratic
administrations appears clear. There is no denying it. It is one
of the most disturbing things I have come across in twenty years of
writing history.
But what can it possibly mean?
Some of these events don’t require special explanation. The Holocaust
occurred because Hitler had a major war to cover the working out of
his ruling obsession, the destruction of the European Jews. Operation
Keelhaul and the events following the Vietnam War occurred because
the perpetrators had been effectively assured that there would be no
reaction – they could do whatever they pleased, and not a hand would
be raised to stop them.
But unless we’re willing to accept the most moronic level of conspiracy
theorizing, there is no straightforward explanation for the overall
pattern. It simply can’t be explained by conventional means. There
is no demonstrable connection between the Democratic Party and the
squalid crews responsible for these crimes. No easy correlation
involving behavior or ideology exists – these atrocities were
carried out by groups ranging from the right to the left to primitive
tribalists. Certainly not even the sleaziest American politician –
much less an entire political party – would make an attempt to benefit
from such events.
Which leaves us to fall back on sheer speculation, always keeping in
mind that these are stabs in the dark
* To take the most esoteric first: could it be something structural,
some process operating well below the current level of our awareness?
A Democrat gets elected and for totally unrelated reasons, as
a product of social or political forces of which we know little
or nothing, dictators are encouraged to deal mortally with their
perceived enemies. Global human society is a complex system, in the
mathematical sense, ruled by laws and relations as yet unknown to us.
Could this be a product of complexity?
* Could it be some sort of unconscious signaling? Some
misinterpretation of something completely unrelated by the dictators
planning these massacres? Or perhaps, not so unconscious? Did
somebody, God forbid, say something? Some remark that could have
been taken as approval by one set or another of these goons? (This
can happen. In1969, Henry Kissinger, generally despised as a war
hound of the first order, may well have halted WW III by refusing
to say anything at all to a Soviet diplomat who sidled up to him
to suggest that the U.S. and the USSR cooperate in a nuclear first
strike against China. Kissinger hurried away with a word – any answer
under the circumstances could have been taken as agreement. And let’s
not forget April Glaspie, whose diplomatic choice of words convinced
Saddam Hussein that the U.S. would overlook his invasion of Kuwait.)
* Or is it simply a matter of the record? Dictators know their history
– nobody better. They’re well aware that responses to such crimes
are rare, and rarest of all with a Democratic administration.
The record is perfectly clear on this, the point reiterated with
each failure to act. Dems are reluctant to get involved even when
they’re fully aware of what’s happening – look at Carter’s behavior
in reference to both the boat people and the Cambodian democide. In
neither case did Carter make a single move – even as much as an
official protest – before the rest of the world, in the form of the
UN and various NGOs, was already involved. And tyrants do in fact
think in such terms. Consider Hitler’s answer when asked about the
worldwide response to targeting the German Jews: "Who now remembers
the Armenians?"
Or could it be coincidence? Correlation, after all, does not
demonstrate causality. Overwhelming as the evidence seems, it could
be a product of pure chance. Though I have my doubts – it all fits
in too well with what we know to be true about the Democrats, their
weaknesses and failings, the kind of disasters and blunders that
accompany their rule.
The fact is, we don’t know. And we need to know. If a mass murder were
to occur every time the optometrists held a convention, somebody would
investigate. Here we have entire populations disappearing whenever
the donkeys blow through town. It deserves a closer look.
But it won’t get one. It won’t get one because the people most
qualified for the task – the academics – are almost uniformly
left-wing. Such a study truly requires the skills of specialized
historians and social and political scientists. But the chances
of such a group carrying out an in-depth historical investigation
involving their representative party is precisely nil.
But it won’t get one. It won’t get one because the people most
qualified for the task – the academics – are almost uniformly
left-wing. Such a study truly requires the skills of specialized
historians and social and political scientists. But the chances
of such a group carrying out an in-depth historical investigation
involving their representative party is precisely nil.
Contrast this with the attempts to associate the GOP with various
atrocities from the Holocaust to Darfur, always on dubious grounds.
(Recent examples include efforts to implicate the Reagan administration
in Saddam Hussein’s 1980s war crimes – a war in which a leading
Republican said, "We’d like to see both sides lose", and The Lancet’s
Iraqi "civilian casualty" survey, which produced results ten times as
high as estimates by the UN.) These claims have always been justified
as expressions of concern for the victims. We look forward to seeing
how strongly that sense of concern is maintained in this case.
So for the time being, the ghostly connection between the Democrats
and the wagers of genocide must remain a shadow on our knowledge
of history. A reminder of how complex things actually are, and how
little we truly know.
Though it does throw a new light on 2008, doesn’t it?