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Comment by Russell91 | Hacker News Reader

Stalin's genocide was larger.

>Stalin's genocide was larger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll Mao Zedong is believed to be responsible for 34,300,000–63,784,000 deaths and Joseph Stalin for 23,000,000–60,000,000.

Yea, Mao Ze Dong wasn't the same thing though. It's estimated as many as 60 million people died in China from hunger. Many others died from the civil war (Cultural Revolution). There may have been some genocide but the term doesn't apply as well as in Germany/Russia.

Yes but people were dying from hunger as a direct result of the policies that Mao implemented http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine He is largely responsible for these deaths even if he didn't personally exterminate them.

But presumably there was a different intent behind Mao's actions. It seems to me that the goal of central planning was prosperity, not death.

Yes, true, but in politics the outcome is all that matters, not the intent. As has often been said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Genocide, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is any of the following acts committed with INTENT to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:

killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The intent is important, no matter what you might believe. That's why the killings in Srebrenica were recognized as genocide, even though "only" 8000 civilians were killed. It does not matter if 10 million or 10 thousand are killed, the intent is all that matters.

What follows is that the starvation caused by Maos policies were not a genocide, no matter how many people died, simply because the government didn't intend to kill all Chinese systematically. Quite to the contrary, they seriously believed that collectivization would end the starvation that has plagued China for decades.

The same applies to most deaths caused by Stalins regime. In some cases there was genocide going on, but the largest part of the victims of his regime were due to failed economic policies (starvation) and political persecution.

Whereas Hitlers policy was to exterminate ethnical or religious groups he deemed worthless, like the Jews, the Slavs, the Roma and many more. He clearly had the intention to exterminate those groups, he even stated it publicly.

So are you saying that when climate change happens, if it's as bad as many scientists fear, then modern US conservatives will take up the mantle of "largest genocide in history"?

I doubt they'll volunteer for that label. Maybe they'll be viewed as the Catholic Church is now viewed with respect to the trial of Galileo in 1633.

> but in politics the outcome is all that matters, not the intent

And where is this written as Canon?

Politics is also performed with imperfect predictions of the future. If policies pursued in good faith result in the death of millions, the people implementing them are not as responsible as those for whom death is the policy.

Now, if their intent was to starve the masses to further their goals, you would have a point.

>> but in politics the outcome is all that matters, not the intent

> And where is this written as Canon?

In the minds of the survivors.

> If policies pursued in good faith result in the death of millions, the people implementing them are not as responsible as those for whom death is the policy.

History doesn't see it that way. People don't see it that way. Hitler and Stalin are equally reviled, even though Hitler's genocide was intentional and Stalin's was a side effect of "good intentions" -- a Communist revolution.

> Now, if their intent was to starve the masses to further their goals, you would have a point.

Like Mao and Pol Pot? Both were able to explain their programs as "for the good of the people", and both pursued their programs long after their effect was perfectly clear.

Ok, point taken. But at least I was correct in saying "a caricature" rather than "the caricature." Man, that's a lot of people.

You may be able to find a specific definition of genocide, which makes that statement true. But in a very narrow definition of genocide as targeted extermination policy, as well as in a very broad definition, where a large part of the people who died in WWII would count against Hitler, this is not true.

For a discussion on the historiography see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-...

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