Talk:Mass murder

Genocide

I propose to move the atrocity examples from the controversial genocide page here. Howere a given incident of a government killing hundreds of thousands (or millons) of people should be classified legally, it can still be listed here. Ed Poor

Gregory Sulface is responsible for this. I agree; however there are border-line cases; for instance I don't think that the 1994 Hebron massacre is an act of genocide (any more than suicide bombings - but of course it is an example of a Mass Murder), but I fear an edit war will start over it just out of principle. --Uri

I don't propose removing events from the genocide page to put here, just putting a note on the genocide page that because of a technicality, killing one's own people or killing people for political or cultural reasons is not actually genocide. User:Fredbauder

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Given that the term genocide has a specific legal definition which is different from popular usage (or my own ideosyncratic usage, perhaps) -- I vote that we move all "non-genocide" massacres out of the genocide article and put them into the mass murder article. --Ed Poor

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One problem with "mass murder" as a word for this, is that if I grab a gun and run around a shopping centre and shoot dead fifty people, then I'd commonly be called a mass murderer. If I'm the evil global dictator who decides that a billion must die, then you are proposing to call me a mass murderer also--but the guy who kills fifty people in a shopping centre isn't even in the same league as me. My crime doesn't just involve more people--it involves so many more people that its a qualitiatively different phenomena. Which is why I propose we use "democide" -- I know its not a very common term (not yet at least), but it is better than either "genocide" (since killing a billion is not necessarily genocide) or "mass murder" (since killing fifty people in a shopping centre is also mass murder, but is totally different from killing a billion. -- SJK

• I also support "democide" over "mass murder" for similar reasons: democide is a narrower, more specific term, referring to the killing of numbers of people by a government. That is a wholly different phenomena from slaughter by a criminal or criminal organization. If the Mafia gun down 50 people, it's a crime and an outrage, but it's one likely to be agressively prosecuted by the government of the region where it occurred. If a government guns down 50 people, who will call them to account? (These days, sometimes the international community will, but that has mixed application and mixed success.) That's why I believe it to be qualitatively different, as well as (often) quantitatively. -- April

In terms of calling governments to account, I hope we don't accidentally choose an obscure term which makes this harder. Nearly every mention of "genocide" I've heard in my life has referred to government murder of huge numbers of civilians -- not because they wanted to destroy an ethnic group -- to suppress opposition to the government and its policiies. Stalin starved 5 million Ukra[i]nian farmers. MUST we quibble over whether to call this genocide, democide, mass murder, a "purge", etc? I suspect that a tactic of groups who wish to avoid criticism for their activities, is to change the meaning of terminology -- then sidetrack all criticism into debate about the correct term to use. So I'll be glad when we settle this usage question. --Ed Poor

I suggest we just use Rummel's term. Of course, we should add a disclaimer like "There is no ideal term for the murder of very large numbers (thousands, millions) of people in the English language. The term 'genocide' is often used, but genocide (according to the generally accepted definition) only applies to killings motivated by a desire to exterminate an ethnic or religious group. The term 'mass murder' does not have this problem, but 'mass murder' is also used to refer to the murder of a smaller group of people (dozens or less) by an individual or a small group. The term 'democide' does not generally suffer from these problems, but it is a recent coinage and has not yet been accepted into general English usage."

One problem though is that democide doesn't apply to killing thousands or millions in all cases either. It only applies when governments do it. Of course, few other than governments have the resources to murder millions--but I don't think the term "democide" could be applied to a nuclear attack by terrorists (unless they had some state's support or backing--which they probably would need in practice, but might not), or to some technician fixing an ICBM who thinks it would be fun to watch it launch. Of course, since nothing like this has happened yet (unless Sept 11 meets the numbers threshold for democide, and they had government support anyway), this is a rather theoretical issue. --- SJK

Democide is not in general usage in the English language. Mass murder is and its meaning is generally understood. User:Fredbauder ____ This is a very confused article. It has managed to confuse the act of mass murder with the motivations for the act. Genocide may be an underlying motivation for mass murder, and it should be so noted. More detailed discussion of genocide should be moved to genocide. Eclecticology 08:42 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

I changed "ethnic groups" to "ethnic and other groups." The Khmer Rouge murder of intellectuals was not ethnically based (though the massacre of Chams and other minorities was). Similarly, political purges (Stalin, Mao, etc.) are not necessarily ethnic based. Personally, I prefer calling these democide, rather than genocide, but admittedly, the term is not sufficiently current. Another term, omnicide, refers to victims of massive attacks, such as the Japanese killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Again the term is not sufficiently current, but it does help to distinguish betwene motivations. Danny

ATF vs David Koresh (Branch Davidian compound, outside Waco, Texas)

Does the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assault on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas serve as an example state-sponsored mass murder?

No, a kind of common sense is needed in these cases. One cannot apply these kinds of terms to anything we politically disagree with, this is like liberals attempting to call Bush a terrorist, or conservatives trying to call Ted Kennedy a serial killer. What Waco, Texas can be called is a federal violation of civil rights, but not a mass murder in the traditional sense. This is not to say what happened wasn't terrible, but for the sake of those who intend to read this as a kind of history, the appropriate, unbiased terminology has to be used. That is not to say that all unbiased terminology is not negative, but you hvae to use the appropriate kinds, i.e., Waco involved the government's violating an individual's rights, and acting in most things the Constitution tried to avoid, but they were not serial killers, or mass murderers per se. 68.111.219.236Ezedriel

Timothy McVeigh

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is considered by the FBI to be an American domestic terrorist, but he maintained to his death that he acted alone in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. His entry in Wikipedia states, "Some investigators contend that Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols had ties to Islamic terrorism through Ramzi Yousef, a militant who planned the 1993 WTC Bombing, and through a series of meetings with Islamic terror group Abu Sayyaf members in the Philippines. Others suggest he had ties to a radical Christian Identity group called Elohim City near Muldrow, Oklahoma." As this is still speculation, should he not be considered a mass murderer?

U.S. Deathday party for six cadavers with real homicidor-suicidor

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/25/seattle.shooting.ap/index.html

Israel's genocide against arabs

there's this line that seems somehow interjected and doesn't have article about it (other instances of genocide in the list have separate articles) i don't want to edit anything (I might get banned for 99 years for vandalism) but is that an agreed on view?