When one truly grasps the reality that during the 20th century more people were killed by their own governments than all the wars combined, the 2nd Amendment doesn't seem like such a bad idea after all. Democide is the word for a government killing its own, and it has happened more than we would like to think it has. Here are 10 core examples.
U.S. Government Poisons Alcohol During Prohibition, Kills 10,000
![10 times governments screwed their people, us poisons alcohol during prohibition]()
Calvin Coolidge was an asshole. Did you know that? It all started on Christmas Eve, 1926, when a man checked into a hospital feeling ill. By Christmas Day, 60 others entered the same hospital for the same reason, and eight more died. When Prohibition ended in 1933, more than 10,000 Americans had perished.
The culprit: our beloved government. Six years after Prohibition started in 1920, federal officials were frustrated that people continued to drink. So they took matters into their own hands and ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohol manufactured countrywide. They put kerosene, iodine, ether, chloroform, formaldehyde and a variety of other toxic chemicals into the mix (bootleggers routinely stole and resold the alcohol).
As the Chicago Tribune said in 1927, "Normally, no American government would engage in such business ... It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified."
Mao Murders 20 Million Chinese (on Accident)
![10 times governments screwed their people, mao zedong murders 20 million chinese]()
In 1958, Mao ZeDong had the bright idea of initiating the Four Pests Campaign. It involved exterminating mosquitos, rats, flies and sparrows. Animals responsible for eating seeds and ruining the work of farmers were as good as dead.
But once the sparrows were vanquished, the locust population shot through the roof. It had the opposite effect of what was originally intended. Mass deforestation and the destruction of more than 50 million tons of crops ensued. By the time the government realized their mistake, millions had already starved.
Holodomor, the Other Holocaust
![10 times governments screwed their people, holodomor]()
Translated from Ukrainian, Holodomor means "extermination by hunger." Estimates range from 1.5 million to 12 million who died. Devised by Joseph Stalin to destroy Ukrainian nationalism, it was perhaps the most brutal attempt to spread communism in all of history.
Ukraine was considered the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, but once the collectivization of agriculture seized peasant farms, Stalin & Co. exported their harvests to economic allies and themselves. The worst kind of famine you could imagine changed the landscape of Ukraine forever.
Pol Pot Kills Off 25 Percent of Cambodia
![10 times governments screwed their people, pol pot kills 25 percent of cambodia]()
Pol Pot was a little man with big dreams. He wanted to create a classes peasant society ruled by the elite. To do this, Pot's Khmer Rouge regime engineered the killing of roughly 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. They targeted intellectuals, ethnic minorities and anyone else deemed a threat to the new dictatorship. One detention center, S-21, saw the lives of 19,993 people killed out of the 20,000 imprisoned.
Writing in his journal one night, Pot said, "If the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalists remain in control, what was the point of revolution?" It seems to quickest way to surefire totalitarian government is to kill off the smart people and keep the dummies dumb.
1948-1987: North Korea's Hidden Democide
![10 times governments screwed their people, north korea hidden democide]()
Purges, executions and forced labor took the lives of an estimated 1.6 million North Koreans over the course of 40 years. Kim Il Sung - Papa Kim, as I like to call him - founded an entirely new flavor of Orwellian horror. No one knows what the exact number of deaths was, but dissidents and escapees painted a nasty picture of Il Sung's reign. To give an example of the brutal nature of his despotism, labor camp guards were often rewarded college tuition for shooting people who tried to escape.
500,000 Communists Killed in Indonesia
![10 times governments screwed their people, 500000 communists killed in indonesia]()
Indonesian history books don't talk about it. The American government abetted it. And in one year, 500,000 suspected Indonesian communists were killed.
When President Suharto rose to power in 1965, he wanted to establish a New Order. This included the systematic liquidation of the Indonesia Communist Party and all its adherents. A sinister cocktail of beheadings, shootings and dismemberments caused rivers to be literally clogged with bodies. And since this happened during the height of the Cold War, the US News & World Report went with the headline, "Indonesia: Hope... when there was once none."
The Rwandan Genocide
![10 times governments screwed their people, rwandan genocide]()
From April to July 1994, 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Six men, women and children were murdered every minute. It all began when President Habyarimana's plane was shot down.
Let's back up. There was a conflict between the Hutu majority and Tutsis. Historically, Tutsis tended to be landowners, and Hutus were often laborers. The division of labor created a type of violent envy that predicated one of history's worst genocides. Perhaps the ghastliest aspect was the endemic of rape, amounting to 500,000 women. Sixty-seven of them were infected with HIV, and a startling 20,000 babies were born from it.
While Western media glanced on, 200,000 civilians were complicit in the mass killings. Local officials and government-sponsored radio programs even encouraged citizens to murder their neighbors.
America Sterilizes 65,000 "Undesirables"
![10 times governments screwed their people, america sterilizes 65000 undesirables]()
In 1937, a piddling 15 percent polled by Fortune Magazine were anti-sterilization. Once sterilization was deemed constitutional, the 20th century saw a brand of eugenics that would make Hitler proud - literally. The deaf, the blind, the dumb and the deformed were routinely rendered impotent. After WWII, the American government suddenly grew a conscience and declared compulsory sterilization immoral.
Dominican Republic Ethnically Cleanses 12,000 Haitians
![10 times governments screwed their people, dominican republic ethnically cleanses 12000 haitians, the parsley massacre]()
President Rafael Trujillo stated during a dance on October 2, 1937: "For some months, I have traveled and traversed the border in every sense of the word. I have seen, investigated, and inquired about the needs of the population. To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations of Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labor, I have responded, 'I will fix this.' And we have already begun to remedy the situation. Three hundred Haitians are now dead in Banica. This remedy will continue."
The Parsley Massacre, as it is now called, involved ordering soldiers to hold up a sprig of parsley and ask people what it was. If they pronounced it the wrong way, the Haitian Creole way, they were killed. UCLA historian Lauren Derby claimed that the majority of deaths belong to those who were born inside the Dominican Republic's border.
Mexico's Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968
![10 times governments screwed their people, tlatelolco massacre of 1968]()
Sons and daughters of the Mexican Revolution wanted a revolution for themselves. They were students, and thousands were present to protest in Mexico City, chanting, "We don't want Olympics, we want revolution!" (This was 10 days before the 1968 Summer Olympics.)
In what was kept quiet for nearly 40 years, the Mexican military fired upon the crowd. The government ordered the slayings in a desperate attempt to provide an image of peace, ironically, as the eyes of the world would soon looking on during the Olympics. Approximately 300 students were murdered via government-employed snipers. No information was released until 2000 when Vicente Fox investigated crimes of Mexico's past.
U.S. Government Poisons Alcohol During Prohibition, Kills 10,000
Calvin Coolidge was an asshole. Did you know that? It all started on Christmas Eve, 1926, when a man checked into a hospital feeling ill. By Christmas Day, 60 others entered the same hospital for the same reason, and eight more died. When Prohibition ended in 1933, more than 10,000 Americans had perished.
The culprit: our beloved government. Six years after Prohibition started in 1920, federal officials were frustrated that people continued to drink. So they took matters into their own hands and ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohol manufactured countrywide. They put kerosene, iodine, ether, chloroform, formaldehyde and a variety of other toxic chemicals into the mix (bootleggers routinely stole and resold the alcohol).
As the Chicago Tribune said in 1927, "Normally, no American government would engage in such business ... It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified."
Mao Murders 20 Million Chinese (on Accident)
In 1958, Mao ZeDong had the bright idea of initiating the Four Pests Campaign. It involved exterminating mosquitos, rats, flies and sparrows. Animals responsible for eating seeds and ruining the work of farmers were as good as dead.
But once the sparrows were vanquished, the locust population shot through the roof. It had the opposite effect of what was originally intended. Mass deforestation and the destruction of more than 50 million tons of crops ensued. By the time the government realized their mistake, millions had already starved.
Holodomor, the Other Holocaust
Translated from Ukrainian, Holodomor means "extermination by hunger." Estimates range from 1.5 million to 12 million who died. Devised by Joseph Stalin to destroy Ukrainian nationalism, it was perhaps the most brutal attempt to spread communism in all of history.
Ukraine was considered the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, but once the collectivization of agriculture seized peasant farms, Stalin & Co. exported their harvests to economic allies and themselves. The worst kind of famine you could imagine changed the landscape of Ukraine forever.
Pol Pot Kills Off 25 Percent of Cambodia
Pol Pot was a little man with big dreams. He wanted to create a classes peasant society ruled by the elite. To do this, Pot's Khmer Rouge regime engineered the killing of roughly 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. They targeted intellectuals, ethnic minorities and anyone else deemed a threat to the new dictatorship. One detention center, S-21, saw the lives of 19,993 people killed out of the 20,000 imprisoned.
Writing in his journal one night, Pot said, "If the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalists remain in control, what was the point of revolution?" It seems to quickest way to surefire totalitarian government is to kill off the smart people and keep the dummies dumb.
1948-1987: North Korea's Hidden Democide
Purges, executions and forced labor took the lives of an estimated 1.6 million North Koreans over the course of 40 years. Kim Il Sung - Papa Kim, as I like to call him - founded an entirely new flavor of Orwellian horror. No one knows what the exact number of deaths was, but dissidents and escapees painted a nasty picture of Il Sung's reign. To give an example of the brutal nature of his despotism, labor camp guards were often rewarded college tuition for shooting people who tried to escape.
500,000 Communists Killed in Indonesia
Indonesian history books don't talk about it. The American government abetted it. And in one year, 500,000 suspected Indonesian communists were killed.
When President Suharto rose to power in 1965, he wanted to establish a New Order. This included the systematic liquidation of the Indonesia Communist Party and all its adherents. A sinister cocktail of beheadings, shootings and dismemberments caused rivers to be literally clogged with bodies. And since this happened during the height of the Cold War, the US News & World Report went with the headline, "Indonesia: Hope... when there was once none."
The Rwandan Genocide
From April to July 1994, 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Six men, women and children were murdered every minute. It all began when President Habyarimana's plane was shot down.
Let's back up. There was a conflict between the Hutu majority and Tutsis. Historically, Tutsis tended to be landowners, and Hutus were often laborers. The division of labor created a type of violent envy that predicated one of history's worst genocides. Perhaps the ghastliest aspect was the endemic of rape, amounting to 500,000 women. Sixty-seven of them were infected with HIV, and a startling 20,000 babies were born from it.
While Western media glanced on, 200,000 civilians were complicit in the mass killings. Local officials and government-sponsored radio programs even encouraged citizens to murder their neighbors.
America Sterilizes 65,000 "Undesirables"
In 1937, a piddling 15 percent polled by Fortune Magazine were anti-sterilization. Once sterilization was deemed constitutional, the 20th century saw a brand of eugenics that would make Hitler proud - literally. The deaf, the blind, the dumb and the deformed were routinely rendered impotent. After WWII, the American government suddenly grew a conscience and declared compulsory sterilization immoral.
Dominican Republic Ethnically Cleanses 12,000 Haitians
President Rafael Trujillo stated during a dance on October 2, 1937: "For some months, I have traveled and traversed the border in every sense of the word. I have seen, investigated, and inquired about the needs of the population. To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations of Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labor, I have responded, 'I will fix this.' And we have already begun to remedy the situation. Three hundred Haitians are now dead in Banica. This remedy will continue."
The Parsley Massacre, as it is now called, involved ordering soldiers to hold up a sprig of parsley and ask people what it was. If they pronounced it the wrong way, the Haitian Creole way, they were killed. UCLA historian Lauren Derby claimed that the majority of deaths belong to those who were born inside the Dominican Republic's border.
Mexico's Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968
Sons and daughters of the Mexican Revolution wanted a revolution for themselves. They were students, and thousands were present to protest in Mexico City, chanting, "We don't want Olympics, we want revolution!" (This was 10 days before the 1968 Summer Olympics.)
In what was kept quiet for nearly 40 years, the Mexican military fired upon the crowd. The government ordered the slayings in a desperate attempt to provide an image of peace, ironically, as the eyes of the world would soon looking on during the Olympics. Approximately 300 students were murdered via government-employed snipers. No information was released until 2000 when Vicente Fox investigated crimes of Mexico's past.