All the world knows that the worst genocide in history is occurring right now in Gaza, courtesy of the far-right Netanyanhu Israeli government. Or is it?
Genocide wasn’t really invented until World War I.
In 1915, during World War I, the concept of crimes against humanity was introduced into international relations for the first time when the Allied Powers sent a letter to the government of the Ottoman Empire, a member of the Central Powers, protesting massacres that were taking place within the Empire.
In other words, we needed to teach the Ottomans a lesson because they were allies of the dreaded Huns, and they needed to be taught a lesson. Fortunately, experts Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot got it all sorted in 1916 and carved up the Ottoman Empire for dinner. So that was all right.
The odd thing is that Google ngrams doesn’t notice genocide as a serious problem until the 1970s.
And look: genocide didn’t really take off until 1990.
I’m a bit old-fashioned about genocide. I believe war is war, and if our boys get killed they are heroes; if the enemy’s soldiers get killed, they had it coming. If our civilians get killed it’s a crime against humanity; if the enemy’s civilians get killed it’s collateral damage. And that goes for all wars: global, regional, civil wars, revolutionary wars, terrorism, mostly peaceful protest, and far-right insurrection.
But let’s get down to the facts, such as Wikipedia’s piece on genocides from WWI to WWII. The Armenian genocide in the Ottoman empire during and after WWI is estimated at 1.0 to 1.5 million deaths. There were 250,000 Jews killed in the White Terror during the Russian Civil War. The Soviet famine of 1930-33 arising out of the Five-Year Plan involved about 8.7 million deaths. The Japanese “Three Alls” policy in China in WWII involved about 2.7 million Chinese deaths. Then there was the Holocaust with 6 million Jews killed. Then the Nazis killed about 6 million non-Jews.
You understand I’m just hitting the high points. After World War II the experts finally defined genocide, and millions more were killed.
In India during Partition only about 2.2 million were killed. My mother in Calcutta asked her Hindu servants how they were doing and they said fine. There were two Muslim families on their street and they killed them all.
In Biafra, in the 1960s, from 0.5 to 3 million civilians were killed. In the late 1970s the Khmer Rouge is said to have killed 1.5 to 3 million people. In the Bangladeshi Liberation War an estimated 0.3 to 3 million people were killed. In Tibet, about 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed by the PRC. But Wiki does not mention the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China under the heading of genocide.
In Afghanistan during the 1980s about 2 million Afghan civilians were killed by the Soviets. I’m only scanning for “millions,” you understand.
Let’s take a look at the 21st-century genocides, when Google shows interest in genocide soaring. I had to scan for “,000” because I couldn’t find any million-death genocides.
The Russians killed about 50,000 Chechen civilians in the Chechen wars. Boko Haram killed about 62,000 Christians in Nigeria. In Darfur the death toll is estimated at 300,000. Then there’s ISIL in Iraq with an estimated 19,000 deaths. There’s the Tigray region in Ethiopia with 0.4 to 0.8 million killed or starved to death.
Then there’s Gaza.
According to over 100 international experts… [Israeli government] acts likely amounted to genocide.
The international experts don’t give any numbers, which is odd considering that experts now have spreadsheet apps to run the numbers.
Did you notice something about the numbers? In the first part of the 20th century Wikipedia reports the victims of genocide in the millions. But since World War II, apart from the exemplary record of Genocider-in-chief Mao Zedong, genocide has been in decline.
And yet Google reports concern about genocide skyrocketing in the years since 1990. What’s that all about? I guess experts gotta expert.
Did I mention British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury on experts? He wrote:
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts.
Lord Salisbury mentioned medical experts, theological experts, military experts. But he forgot to mention international human rights experts. I say that if Lord Salisbury had been prime minister and Bismarck chancellor in 1914 we would never have had World War I. Or the Bolshevik Revolution. Or Literally Hitler. Or most of the 20th century genocides.
Experts agree that Lord Salisbury did not invent the Salisbury Steak.
Remember Lord Montgomery? Monty’s Rule One was: Don’t invade Russia. Rule Two was: Don’t invade China. He should have added Rule Three: Don’t mess with the Jews.
But experts never learn.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.