The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (164 page)

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Authors: Steven Pinker

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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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125. Neighboring ethnic groups usually don’t commit genocide: Brown, 1997; Fearon & Laitin, 1996; Harff, 2003; Valentino, 2004.
126. Germans anti-Semitic but not genocidal: Valentino, 2004, p. 24.
127. Democides committed by armed minority: Mueller, 2004a; Payne, 2005; Valentino, 2004.
128. Division of labor in democides: Valentino, 2004. See also Goldhagen, 2009.
129. Genocides end when leaders die or are toppled: Valentino, 2004.
130. Ancient historians: Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, p. 58.
131. Genocide as old as history: Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, p. xvii.
132. Table of contents of genocides: Kiernan, 2007, p. 12.
133. Democide counts: Rummel, 1994, pp. 45, 70; see also Rummel, 1997, for the raw data. The numerical precision in his estimates is not intended to be an accurate count but to allow others to verify his sources and calculations.
134. Increase Mather praises genocide: Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, p. 180.
135. Moabites return the favor: Payne, 2004, p. 47.
136. Immortal soul justifies murder: Bhagavad-Gita, 1983, pp. 74, 87, 106, 115, quoted in Payne, 2004, p. 51.
137. Cromwell: Quoted in Payne, 2004, p. 53.
138. Parliamentary reaction: Quoted in Payne, 2004, p. 53.
139. Voice in the wilderness: Quoted in Kiernan, 2007, pp. 82–85.
140. Military codes of honor: Chirot & McCauley, 2006, pp. 101–2. Nothing wrong with genocide: Payne, 2004, pp. 54–55; Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, pp. 199, 213–14; Goldhagen, 2009, p. 241.
141. Roosevelt on Indians: Courtwright, 1996, p. 109.
142. Lawrence and lethal chamber: Carey, 1993, p. 12.
143. Extermination of the Japanese: Mueller, 1989, p. 88.
144. Origins of the word
genocide:
Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990.
145. Holocaust denial: Payne, 2004, p. 57.
146. Novelty of genocide memoirs: Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, p. 8.
147. Conception of history: Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, p. 8.
148. Rummel’s estimation methods: Rummel, 1994, pp. xvi–xx; Rummel, 1997. See also White, 2010c, note 4, for caveats.
149. Definition of “democide”: Rummel, 1994, chap 2.
150. Great Leap Forward: Rummel has since changed his mind because of revelations that Mao knew about the devastation as it was taking place (Rummel, 2002), but I will stick with his original numbers.
151. Pseudo-governments versus recognized governments: White, 2010c, note 4.
152. Governments prevent more deaths than they cause: White, 2007.
153. Death tolls from major democides: Rummel, 1994, p. 4.
154. Democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian governments and their death tolls: Rummel, 1997, p. 367.
155. Death rates from democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian governments: Rummel, 1994, p. 15.
156. Totalitarian versus democratic governments: Rummel, 1994, p. 2.
157. Form of government matters: Rummel, 1997, pp. 6–10; see also Rummel, 1994.
158. Problem and solution of democide: Rummel, 1994, p. xxi.
159. Hemoclysm: Note that figure 6–7 double-counts some of the deaths in figure 6–1, because Rummel classifies many civilian battle deaths as democides. Also double-counted are some of the deaths in Matthew White’s table on p. 195, which folds wartime genocides into the total count for wars.
160. Trends in democide and democracy: Rummel, 1997, p. 471. Rummel’s regression analyses supporting this point, however, are problematic.
161. Perpetrators of Rwanda genocide: Mueller, 2004a, p. 100.
162. Rwanda genocide was preventable: Goldhagen, 2009; Mueller, 2004a; Power, 2002.
163. New genocide dataset: Harff, 2003, 2005; Marshall et al., 2009.
164. UCDP One-sided Violence Dataset: Kreutz, 2008; Kristine & Hultman, 2007;
http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/
.
165. Mass killings in mid-1960s to late 1970s: Death figures are geometric means of the ranges in table 8.1 in Harff, 2005, except Darfur, which is taken by converting the magnitude entries from the PITF database to the geometric means of the ranges spelled out in Marshall et al., 2009, and summing them for the years 2003 through 2008.
166. Overestimated genocide death tolls: The Bosnian massacres, for example, probably killed closer to 100,000 than 200,000 people; Nettelfield, 2010. On conflict numbers, see Andreas & Greenhill, 2010.
167. Risk factors for democide: Harff, 2003, 2005.
168. Effects of instability: Harff, 2003, p. 62.
169. Pathways to democide: Harff, 2003, p. 61.
170. Hitler read Marx: Watson, 1985. Fraternal twins: P. Chaunu, cited in Besançon, 1998. See also Bullock, 1991; Courtois et al., 1999; Glover, 1999.
171. Decline of democide and fade of communism: Valentino, 2004, p. 150.
172. Utopian omelets: Sometimes attributed to the journalist Walter Duranty, a
New York Times
correspondent in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but identified as “Anonymous: French” by
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
, 17th ed.
173. Humans are not eggs: Pipes, 2003, p. 158.
174. Fewer democides in the coming century: Valentino, 2004, p. 151.
175. No Hitler, no Holocaust: Himmelfarb, 1984.
176. No Stalin, no Purge: Quoted in Valentino, 2004, p. 61.
177. No Mao, no Cultural Revolution: Quoted in Valentino, 2004, p. 62.
178. Worldwide terrorism toll: Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (dataset no longer publicly available), reported in Human Security Centre, 2006, p. 16.
179. Existential threats: See Mueller, 2006, for quotations.
180. Prophecy of terrorist doom: R. A. Clarke, “Ten years later,”
Atlantic,
Jan.–Feb. 2005.
181. Terrorist attacks fall into a power-law distribution: Clauset, Young, & Gleditsch, 2007.
182. Rarity of destructive terrorist attacks: Global Terrorism Database, START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, 2010;
http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/
), accessed on Apr. 21, 2010. The figure excludes terrorist attacks associated with the Rwanda genocide.
183. Overblown terrorist fears: Mueller, 2006.
184. Rates of death: National Vital Statistics for the year 2007, Xu, Kochanek, & Tejada-Vera, 2009, table 2.
185. More deaths from deer than terrorists: Mueller, 2006, note 1, pp. 199–200; National Safety Council statistics conveniently summarized in
http://danger.mongabay.com/injurydeath.htm
.
186. Excess deaths from avoiding plane travel: Gigerenzer, 2006.
187. Psychology of risk: Slovic, 1987; Slovic et al., 1982. See also Gigerenzer, 2006; Gigerenzer & Murray, 1987; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Ropeik & Gray, 2002; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974, 1983.
188. Other benefits of exaggerated fears: Daly & Wilson, 1988, pp. 231–32, 237, 260–61.
189. Policy distortions from cognitive illusions: Mueller, 2006; Slovic, 1987; Slovic et al., 1982; Tetlock, 1999.
190. Bin Laden bluster: “Timeline: The al-Qaida tapes,”
Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/page/0,12643,839823,00.html
. See also Mueller, 2006, p. 3.
191. Kerry gaffe: Quoted in M. Bai, “Kerry’s undeclared war,”
New York Times
, Oct. 10, 2004.
192. History of terrorism: Payne, 2004, pp. 137–40; Cronin, 2009, p. 89.
193. Terrorists of the 1970s: Abrahms, 2006; Cronin, 2009; Payne, 2004.
194. Most terrorist groups fail; all die: Abrahms, 2006; Cronin, 2009; Payne, 2004.
195. Terrorism fails: See also Cronin, 2009, p. 91.
196. States immortal, terrorist groups not: Cronin, 2009, p. 110.
197. Terrorist groups never take over states: Cronin, 2009, p. 93. 6 percent success rate: Cronin, 2009, p. 215.
198. Decency as an international language: Cronin, 2009, p. 114. The Oklahoma City death toll of 165 is taken from the Global Terrorism Database (see n. 182).
199. Global Terrorism Database, START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), 2010; accessed on Apr. 6, 2010.
200. Inclusion criteria: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, 2009.
201. Increase in Islamist suicide terrorism: Atran, 2006.
202. Proportion of deaths from Sunni terrorism: National Counterterrorism Center, 2009.
203. Lethality of suicide terrorism: Cronin, 2009, p. 67; note 145, p. 242. Minority of attacks, majority of casualties: Atran, 2006.
204. Ingredients of a suicide terrorist attack: Quoted in Atran, 2003.
205. Playing the battlefield odds: Tooby & Cosmides, 1988.
206. Cowardly warriors: Chagnon, 1997.
207. “between the devil and the deep blue sea”: Valentino, 2004, p. 59.
208. Support for kin selection: Gaulin & McBurney, 2001; Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2002.
209. Yanomamö village mates were related: Chagnon, 1988, 1997.
210. Chimpanzee troops: Wilson & Wrangham, 2003.
211. Perceived versus actual kinship: Daly, Salmon, & Wilson, 1997; Lieberman et al., 2002; Pinker, 1997.
212. Cues to kinship: Johnson, Ratwik, & Sawyer, 1987; Lieberman et al., 2002; Salmon, 1998.
213. Soldiers fight for bands of brothers: Mueller, 2004a; Thayer, 2004.
214. Manchester on brothers in arms: Quoted in Thayer, 2004, p. 183.
215. Why men love war: Broyles, 1984.
216. Better odds for suicide missions: Rapoport, 1964, pp. 88–89; Tooby & Cosmides, 1988.
217. Psychological profiles of suicide terrorists: Atran, 2003, 2006, 2010.
218. Tamil Tiger file closers: Atran, 2006.
219. Hamas carrots: Atran, 2003; Blackwell & Sugiyama, in press.
220. Men do foolish things in groups: Willer et al., 2009.
221. Sacred values and suicide terrorism: Atran, 2006, 2010; Ginges et al., 2007; McGraw & Tetlock, 2005.
222. Testimony on suicide terrorism: Atran, 2010.
223. Fate of suicide terrorism in Israel: Cronin, 2009, pp. 48–57, 66–67.
224. Physical barriers to terrorism: Cronin, 2009, p. 67. Other examples include the United States in Baghdad, and governments in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Lebanon.
225. Palestinian nonviolence: E. Bronner, “Palestinians try a less violent path to resistance,”
New York Times
, Apr. 6, 2010.
226. Recent decline of suicide terrorism: S. Shane, “Rethinking which terror groups to fear,”
New York Times,
Sept. 26, 2009.
227. Sinking favorables for Al Qaeda: Human Security Report Project, 2007.
228. al-Odah, “fostering a culture”: Quoted in F. Zakaria, “The jihad against the jihadis,”
Newsweek
, Feb. 12, 2010.
229. al-Odah, “My brother Osama”: Quoted in P. Bergen & P. Cruickshank, “The unraveling: Al Qaeda’s revolt against bin Laden,”
New Republic
, Jun. 11, 2008.
230. Favorable response to criticism of Al Qaeda: P. Bergen & P. Cruickshank, “The unraveling: Al Qaeda’s revolt against bin Laden,”
New Republic
, Jun. 11, 2008.
231. Mufti’s fatwa: F. Zakaria, “The jihad against the jihadis,”
Newsweek
, Feb. 12, 2010.
232. Jihad as Sharia violation: Quoted in P. Bergen & P. Cruickshank, “The unraveling: Al Qaeda’s revolt against bin Laden,”
New Republic
, Jun. 11, 2008.
233. Killing innocents: Quoted in P. Bergen & P. Cruickshank, “The unraveling: Al Qaeda’s revolt against bin Laden,”
New Republic
, Jun. 11, 2008.
234. Endorsing violence against civilians: Quoted in F. Zakaria, “The jihad against the jihadis,”
Newsweek
, Feb. 12, 2010.
235. Public opinion in war zones: Human Security Report Project, 2007, p. 19.
236. Cratering: F. Zakaria, “The only thing we have to fear . . . ,”
Newsweek
, Jun. 2, 2008.
237. Opposition to attacks on civilians: Human Security Report Project, 2007, p. 15.
238. Iraq death toll: Iraq Body Count,
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
, accessed Nov. 24, 2010. See also Human Security Report Project, 2007, p. 14.
239. Sunni Awakening: Human Security Report Project, 2007, p. 15.
240. The experts speak: Gardner, 2010; Mueller, 1995, 2010a.

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