It Can’t Happen Here: R.J. Rummel’s Documentation of Democide

Scholar R.J. Rummel has engaged in extensive work on the murder of civilians, by agents of their own government. During the twentieth century he has documented well over two hundred million civilians killed by their own government. This number is far greater than the number of soldiers killed during the same time. 

One of the problems of dealing with such large numbers is that it is impossible to really imagine such quantities. Stalin was fond of saying that “twelve deaths was a tragedy, one million is a statistic.”  Also, our media is very leftist in its world view. Therefore you are likely to see dozens of movies portraying the Nazis for the murdering thugs they were, but rarely do they show anything which casts a negative light on the communists. This is an indisputable fact.

For Genocide or Rummel’s term Democide to occur one common factor is found in all cases. That is the disarmament of the common people. While not all societies that disarm their citizens commit genocide, all societies which commit genocide first disarm their populace. The German Jews could not imagine that the society which had produced Beethoven could be capable of committing the atrocities which occurred, none the less it happened. Who can understand what Pol Pot did in Cambodia? But, America is not without guilt and is quite capable of committing atrocities given the right situation.  Otherwise, how can you explain that Japanese citizens lost not only their freedom but everything they owned?

One of the dirty little secrets of WW II is how many French nationals willingly cooperated with the Nazis. How many Czech or Polish or Hungarian citizens cooperated with the communists?  While I love America with all of my heart, I am not foolish enough to believe that there is something so special about the American people who under the right circumstances they would not commit atrocities. What happened after Katrina, especially the governments own response of disarming its citizens who only wanted to be left in peace or firing upon others who simply wished to flee the terrible situation

Few people today know about the FBI operation known as COINTELPRO. This occurred primarily during the Hoover administration. Here agents, who had sworn to uphold the law, routinely violated it. This includes numerous cases of burglary, warrantless wiretapping, mail tampering, conspiracy to get people fired from their jobs or evictions from places of residence as well as complicity in murder occurred.  Their only crime was membership in legal organizations or oppositions to governmental policies, like war. During WW I the government imprisoned Mennonites and Jehovah’s Witnesses, because they were pacifists.  So next time, you hear someone say that only the police should have guns, think about this article.

Criminals have proven time and time again that they can get their hands on firearms. These kinds of policies only disarm the law-abiding citizen.