After hearing and writing about what the nasty guy is doing to make the coronavirus pandemic worse and hearing the death toll has passed 75,000 and could end up above a million I wondered how the nasty guy would rank among world leaders who caused mass death. Fortunately, he doesn’t. Yet.
I first went to the site What Culture, which listed eight deadly despots. Then I visited the site Pop Ten for their list. I’m not linking to either of those sites because I found one that documents sources. This is Wikipedia and its list of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll. There are several lists on these pages, starting with what looks like every war ever fought by humans ordered by the number dead. And WWII, with at least 60 million is at the top of the list (the number depends on whether indirect deaths are included).
A list of more interest is the Anthropogenically exacerbated outbreaks of disease and famine. That is defined as “famines and disease outbreaks that were caused or exacerbated by human action.” Most of the entries in this list are famine, though a few include disease. At the top of the list is the Great Chinese Famine that was a part of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. The death count is somewhere between 12 million and 55 million.
We could already add the coronavirus in the US to this list because the event with the fewest deaths is 50,000 and we’re now past 75,000. However, this could take a consensus that the actions of the nasty guy were either malicious or incompetent (either qualifies as human action), which this country may not be ready to do (though some of us are quite ready!).
There is also the list of political leaders and regimes by death toll. The top entries:
Mao Zedong of China, perhaps 50-70 million.
Genghis Khan, Timur, and Kublai Khan, three in the Khan dynasty that ruled much of Asia and invaded Europe. Their rule and conquest resulted in 20-40 million dead.
Adolph Hitler, up to 26 million dead.
Chaing Kai-Shek of the Republic of China (ousted by Mao), 18 million dead.
Joseph Stalin, perhaps up to 15 million dead.
Hirohito Emperor of Japan during WWII, up to 15 million dead. Other lists attribute maybe 5 million dead to Hideki Tojo, the head of the Japanese military.
I’m a bit puzzled by the totals for Hitler and Hirohito. Their dead add up to 41 million and WWII cost 60 million lives. I would think the two of them would be responsible for nearly all of them (Mussolini’s contribution is comparatively small and doesn’t make up the difference).
Leopold II of Belgium forcibly colonized the Congo in the last 1800s to extract its rubber and minerals, perhaps up to 13 million dead.
Ranavalona I of Madagascar, the first (only?) woman in the list. Her forced labor policies and military campaigns killed about 2.5 million.
Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge killed up to 3 million in Cambodia.
Wikipedia list the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire, though other sources say one of them, Ismail Enver Pasha, did most of the killing. It was for this guy’s actions that the term “genocide” was created. The best known is the Armenian Genocide, though there were also Assyrian and Greek genocides. About 2.5 million dead.
Kim Il-Sung, his son and grandson, of North Korea, up to 3.5 million dead.
Also in the list causing at least a million deaths are Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Suharto of Indonesia, Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong. Other names that are familiar are Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Idi Amin, Ivan the Terrible, and Henry VIII. Towards the bottom of the list are Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Claudius.
The US is in some of these lists for Indian massacres, 16 thousand, and the dead in the American Indian Wars, perhaps up to 60 thousand. There is also the genocide of the native Americans (both North and South) mostly due to disease, though also forced labor, wars, and massacres. This total is perhaps 138 million for both continents.
I don’t want to see the nasty guy added to these lists (though I believe he already qualifies for one of them) because I don’t want to see that many dead.
Leah McElrath tweeted a thread that seems appropriate after all that.
I can’t be the only one who is preoccupied by the fact that patients with #COVID19 are having to die alone.
(I know healthcare workers are doing what they can with FaceTime and everything, but it’s simply not the same as having your loved ones with you.)
I can’t be the only one who is gobsmacked by the absence of empathy or even any recognition at all with regard to the ill and their loved ones.
No national mourning, no flags at half staff, no proclamations by politicians in their memory. Nothing. Just...nothing.
We are being intentionally desensitized to mass death happening within our own communities.
We’ve previously been intentionally desensitized to mass death happening elsewhere (like Iraq).
Expanding the desensitization to include our own neighbors?
That’s a VERY dangerous step.
This [an image of a sign saying "Open”] is the message from the Trump administration.
No deference to the loss of approximately 75,000 Americans so far or to the mourning of our people.
This is ghoulish.
...
This virus and the disease it causes have taken enough from us.
So has Trump, his administration, his enablers, and his supporters.
Let’s not let them take our compassion or our humanity.
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