Author R.J. Rummel has produced a significant body of work including numerous essays and several books that deal with the subject of democide, a term he coined to describe a widely-accepted legal definition of murder that applies when perpetrated by government upon its own people.

After examining about 10,000 sources over many years, Rummel estimates that governments of the world have murdered (i.e., committed democide on) approximately 262 million people in the 20th century alone.

That shocking figure is no joke and, as Rummel points out, is about 7 times higher than the combat death toll from all wars fought over the same period combined. 20th Century wars were the worst in man's history and killed almost twice as many people as “ordinary” civilian criminal murders across the globe over the same one-hundred-year span.

It should come as no surprise that the hallmark of democide according to Rummel is authoritarian government.

It should also be no surprise that virtually every monstrous genocide or democide event in modern history was conducted by collectivist or socialist-style dictatorships, with the lion's share of atrocity garnered by the Marxist variety – those great saints who do everything “for the good of the people” and who without any sense or shame hold offices and/or comprise significant political parties in most “civilized” nations today.

In fact, the results of various flavors of socialism are what prompted other historians to invent the word “genocide” in the first place. Read more

Source: lewrockwell.com