09-13-2020, 04:30 PM
(09-13-2020, 09:48 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 13-Sep-2020 World View: Brutality in Iran - Democide
(09-12-2020, 11:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > The sort of people who believe that brutality by law enforcement
> promotes compliance might include people such as the leadership of
> a rotten system such as the monstrous regime in Iran, which
> executes people on confessions achieved with torture. (Iran did so
> recently, hanging a professional wrestler involved in a
> protest. Iranian politics is nothing but fear.
I of course agree with this, except for singling out Iran. I've
developed a whole theory about when this happens -- in the decades
following an internal ethnic or religious generational crisis civil
war. The brutality towards political opponents carries on for decades
after the civil war ends, and that's exactly what's happening in Iran.
It is still murder. It is no less murder than when a robber shoots a store clerk or a rapist strangles the victim to silence her. The Fifth Amendment of the United States (existing since 1789) makes clear that people are not compelled to testify against themselves, no matter how infamous the offense. In case anyone thinks that that created a climate of lawlessness, the legal system has found ways of getting testimony and evidence that refutes an offender who lies about his crime. Of course offenders know enough to not admit to their crime.
The old saying was that dead people tell no tales, but in practice, a dead body typically leaves evidence of any wrongdoing that can be even stronger than a perpetrator's confession. To destroy or successfully conceal the body is about the only way for a murderer to hide his crime, and the attempt to destroy the corpus delicti leaves its own evidence. Fire is better at creating than destroying evidence.
I'm not saying that Iran lacks a sordid history in legal process. The theocratic regime (which is paradoxically quite godless in its conduct) may simply be continuing the old norm under the Pahlavi dynasty. Beating a confession out of someone is itself barbarous, unnecessary, and unreliable. Some person who confesses to a horrific crime when threatened with a blowtorch facing his genitals or with the threat of loved ones being brutalized is simply choosing between being hanged and being crippled or being forced to acquiesce in even worse injustice.
Quote:Besides Iran's Ali Hosseini Khamenei, country leaders following this
pattern today or recently include Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre
Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in
Uganda, Emmerson Mnangagwa / Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Joseph Kabila
in DRC, or, outside of Africa, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hun Sen in
Cambodia and Maithripala Sirisena in Sri Lanka.
In some jurisdictions, one killing is good for a hanging, and I am not going to argue against capital punishment here. We need recall that the judicial process is the dam against a flood of lynchings and purges. When it fails at this either the political system loses all effectiveness, or nobody is safe from a tyrant. Judges are the formal top of the legal process, which explains the respect that they get even if defense attorneys and litigation attorneys get paid more than judges.
A judicial murder may not get the attention of a mass killing through a terrorist attack or the ignominy of either calculated genocide or a disgraceful genocide, but as a general pattern a judicial system that allows a fair and impartial trial of the most helpless person possible -- someone accused of a horrible crime -- has some chance. At that, Iran fails badly.
It is telling that in the trial that determined that Saddam Hussein would be hanged (the Dujail trial) the "revolutionary judge" who issued 143 death sentence in retribution against a community in which someone attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein would himself be judged. Needless to say, a statement that the legal process in Satan Hussein's Iraq was unreliable is an understatement. The obedient judge was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Quote:What's happening in Iran is a very common pattern that occurs after a
generational crisis civil war. It's possible that the KKK is another
example of this, although I haven't yet done enough research to
support that, and it would be a variation of the pattern.
The alternative is to let bygones be bygones, determine that only the most egregious offenses be beyond mercy. So systems like postwar Germany, Italy, and Japan repudiate the previous regime that had done such horrors and restructure their political systems so that previous horrors cannot be repeated. That even includes reforming the educational system. (If you are wondering about eastern Germany, local communists dispossessed the aristocrats and plutocrats and ensured that some of the people who had backed Hitler would never have that ability again). Japan turned its monarchy into a near-republic in which the Emperor has practically no power. The secret police is abolished and not replaced (OK, the commies in East Germany developed a "socialist" version of the Gestapo), what remains of the military is reduced to a national self-defense force, the government repudiates territorial expansion, and the educational system repudiates dictatorship and racism.
Quote:R. J.
I've co-opted the word "democide" to describe this kind of behavior in
a country. Democide refers to mass slaughter of a country's citizens
by the leadership outside of war, and I've been surprised to learn
that more people are killed by democide than by war. I've co-opted
the word for Generational Dynamics to describe all the kinds of
abusive behavior such as you identified in Iran, and which occurs in
all countries after an internal generational crisis civil war.
Rudolph J. Rummel created the word democide to describe a wide variety of horrors from the mass-killings of Mongol aggression, the Atlantic slave trade, the Holodomor, and the Holocaust.
Here is his site, probably unmodified from 2014 (when he died)
Rummel suggests democracy as the solution. Democracy compels people to contemplate the legitimacy of the Other Side on most issues (ethnic and religious divides, social class, and even sexuality). Democracy mandates that people try to cut deals instead of cutting throats. Undemocratic systems tend to cut throats when the opportunity arises. Dictatorial, despotic, and tyrannical regimes are (should this be surprising?) are more likely to solve their problems by going to war... and are likely (1) to treat their troops as cannon fodder and (2) treat conquered peoples badly.
The worst war in which America ever participated (America got off lightly in contrast to most other countries) was World War II. The three main enemies of World War II (Germany, Italy, and Japan) are the least likely enemies of the United States in a Crisis. That's not to say that two of those countries are in any way likely to do what they did last time. I am satisfied that Germany is not to be tangled with due in part to an intelligence service that somehow melds the dirty tricks of the old DDR as well as the Cold-War intelligence system that the US accepted as safe, effective, and troublesome... and that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces will maul any attacker severely.
Rummel tells us in two words, "Power kills". Wealth does not kill. Cultural and religious differences do not kill. Traditional enmity does not kill. Even military prowess does not kill. Power -- the ability of a State to kill, starve, and enslave pariahs -- kills.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
