Stalin - 34 - 49 million people killed
Mao - 49 - 78 million
More deaths than the first and second war together and yes the left handed killed more people than the right handed.
ISIS in Iraq and Syria
- Thread starter Suli
- Start date
Stalin - 34 - 49 million people killed
Mao - 49 - 78 million
More deaths than the first and second war together and yes the left handed killed more people than the right handed.
Give me a fecking break. I'm a communist because I don't believe in fairytales?
I realized we are in the wrong thread 
I think more than 50 million people died in WWII alone. The Japs killed 30 mil+ on their own.
Are you?
The total number was around 60 million
You're missing my point (probably on purpose), but it's a pointless endeavour to try and make it clearer, so lets just leave it there. I should know better than to get into arguments over religion, it always boils down to a frustrating retreat to blatant logical fallacies.
You can't just tally up death counts.
Nearly all of the deaths under Mao, for instance, were the result of a (unintentional) famine caused by Mao's disastrous economic policy.
Debateable. The Cultural Revolution is rumoured to have been responsible for up 30 million deaths. The Great Leap Forward, which lead to the famines you mention, around 45 million.
EDIT: - Deaths due to the Cultural Revolution may have numbered a lot less, certainly the Cultural Revolution was over a longer period than the Great Leap Forward so the scale of destruction of human life is certainly greater.
I think people need to make the distinction between deliberate mass killing of civilians and unintended death as a result of poor economic/political policy. It just doesn't make any sense to compare the 50-80 million people who died under Mao to the 6-12 million who died in the Holocaust, for instance. They are two very different things. When people use 50-80 million figure to imply that communism was 'just as bad as Nazism', it is a gross distortion of reality and undermines the absolute horror that Nazism was.
Stalin is a different story to Mao and is more easily compared with Hitler and Nazism (although not quite), but people should still be careful with the figures.
I'd agree with that. Stalin, in my mind is probably the worst. Not to diminish the Nazi's crimes but Stalin actively tried, jailed and murdered his own people on the flimsiest of evidence, pretty much due to his rampant paranoia and cruel streak.
This looks like a good read on the Cultural Revolution: http://www.massviolence.org/Chronology-of-Mass-Killings-during-the-Chinese-Cultural?cs=print
All this talk about ideology, religion and murder might be a bit off topic, though.
Thanks, I'll give that a read.
Forget "in the name of", which I think is a misleading way of putting it. How does one kill because of atheism (= no belief in god)? It's an absurd concept. There is no causal link between atheism and cruelty (or indeed any moral or immoral position or action) because atheism is nothing more than an absence of belief in god. People do however kill because of (i.e. as a direct consequence of) their religious beliefs. It's a very important (and one would think easy to grasp) distinction.
When people point to Stalin and say "look, he was an atheist and he killed a lot of people" I simply have to laugh. I'm sure Stalin didn't believe in a lot of things, like leprechauns, fairies and the flying spaghetti monster, but that's not really relevant is it? What's relevant is what he actually did believe in, that caused him to do the things he did. What was at the root of his behavior? That's the real question.
When people point to Stalin and say "look, he was an atheist and he killed a lot of people" I simply have to laugh. I'm sure Stalin didn't believe in a lot of things, like leprechauns, fairies and the flying spaghetti monster, but that's not really relevant is it? What's relevant is what he actually did believe in, that caused him to do the things he did. What was at the root of his behavior? That's the real question.
Last edited:
I think this thread is filled with very entrenched and bitter opinions. The fact that people are linking these atrocities to religion is an absurdity, this type of brutality and murder comes from nothing other than a will to power inherent in the individual. This will is then fuelled by a radicalised hatred that is imbued from identified differences between people. I'm surprised anybody thinks religion is at the route of these crimes. Religion is just another identifier, like in Nazi Germany it was race and Khamer Rouge Cambodia it was class.
It is no secret of humanity that atrocities lay at the very heart of our nature and societal instincts. Many reject this because they can’t relate to the rationale of murder such as that performed by ISIS. But it is likely you would if your environment was a different one. Look at Northern Ireland for instance. If anybody thinks The Troubles really stemmed from religion, and was not just a physical reaction to perceived oppression, a fundamental tit-for-tat violence that manifested out of humanities desire to seek those ‘familiar’ and identify those that are ‘different’ then they are mistaken.
If the world had no religion it would still have atrocity and war, on the same scale, of that I am certain.
It is no secret of humanity that atrocities lay at the very heart of our nature and societal instincts. Many reject this because they can’t relate to the rationale of murder such as that performed by ISIS. But it is likely you would if your environment was a different one. Look at Northern Ireland for instance. If anybody thinks The Troubles really stemmed from religion, and was not just a physical reaction to perceived oppression, a fundamental tit-for-tat violence that manifested out of humanities desire to seek those ‘familiar’ and identify those that are ‘different’ then they are mistaken.
If the world had no religion it would still have atrocity and war, on the same scale, of that I am certain.
The people who perpetrate this violence themselves link it to religion. I'm inclined to take them at their word.
Yes, the world would still have atrocities and war without religion, just as it would have atrocities and war without Nazism. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't be better off without Nazism, does it.
Moving back on topic, I think a belief in the afterlife is critical when it comes to radicalising people in the way that ISIS are doing. You're just not going to get the same sort of extremist ideology in a group of people who realise you get one shot at life and there's no reward in heaven for waging holy war.
You are kind of twisting my point there, I am saying that religion is not the root cause. More that it is an idealogue latched onto. Human nature is the root cause. Human nature is a difficult root cause to alter.
Nazism is an entirely different thing. Surely no-one can argue that religion is always a force for evil?
They're seeking to establish a theocracy. You can talk about human nature and greed all you want, but a theocracy is as religious as it gets.
No one's arguing that it's always a force for evil, but when people believe in books that explicitly tell you to commit atrocities it's kind of difficult to see their advantage.
I'm not arguing that this branch of Wahabism/Salafist Islam isn't a dangerous idealogy that will cause the death of many and wanton destruction.
I understand this fact.
But to me it seems a lot of people have a fairly simplistic view of theism. I myself am atheist, but it seems a lot of atheists seem to the think that secularism is inherently peaceful and religion is violent. They therefore must at every turn blame events on religion.
The truth is a lot murkier than that. I would actually argue, as an atheist, that it is likely that an entirely secular world would be a no less violent one.
An entirely secular world wouldn't be filled with soldiers hoping to meet their maker soon. It might not end all the conflicts, and other ideologies will obviously spark violence but it will bring an end this particular kind of extremism. And less extremism can only be a good thing.
You don't buy into my point a bit higher up that people are more likely to become extremists if they think they are fighting a just and holy war with a reward in the afterlife?
My take on it is that human beings are inherently tribal and religion is often just a convenient label to differentiate opposing tribes. However, I think it's much more difficult to radicalise a secular population than one that is bound by a religious ideology. So you don't need religion to create conflict but it definitely helps.
'this particular kind' being the operative phrase.
Lets look at it like this. New Testament teachings are entirely peaceful. 'love your neighbour as you love yourself', 'turn the other cheek'. In fact Jesus never espoused violence in any form.
Yet Christianity has had movements in its name that have been responsible for the deaths of thousands. Why? because thats humanity. The idealogy will be morphed to suit the agenda of conquest and power.
Removing religion will not remove that, not one single iota.
As proven in Cambodia, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany etc etc etc
The old testament isn't quite as loving. And I'm not arguing religion is the only violent type ideology, just one that we we've tolerated for too many centuries.
Not all human beings commit atrocities of this kind, in fact very few seem to. So we have to ask a different question: What is it that are making these people behave this way? Well, they themselves are happy to provide us with the answer to that; they are doing it because they think that's what god wants of them. I'm not saying there aren't other variables at play to a greater or lesser extent, but I maintain that the causal link between beliefs and behavior is at the forefront of this (and it extends to Nazism, and their belief in the purity of German blood, their irrational fear and hatred of the Jews, and all that nonsense), and unfortunately it's one that is constantly minimized and obfuscated when we're talking about religion. Few people deny that the Holocaust was a result of Nazi doctrine, but many seem to hesitate to make that same link between religion and violence, for one reason or another, even when the perpetrators of this violence themselves are making it explicitly clear for us.
It's fair and correct to link the Nazi doctrine as it applied to Jews to religion, as Europe's history of anti-semitism is directly linked to Christianity but this doesn't expalin their policies to Slavs, Roma and the like. I often think religion is used to get people onside who otherwise might question a state's or organization's motives for war, killing, etc.
I think the belief system in this instance exacerbates the problem.
I perhaps agree that religion is a good conduit for radicalisation. But I think poverty and oppression are the best ones.
Lets think more about the mindset of an Isis militant:
1) Opressed by Shi'ites and oppressed by the west
2) Poor
3) Raised in a war-torn area.
They are a product of this enviornment and their religion is their identifier for their enemies. But ultimately they seek a route to power.
Not all of ISIS' army is from war torn huts. Some of have degrees and shit, even homes with central heating.
I wasn't necessarily linking Nazi anti-semitism to religion in that post (even though I certainly think European Christians' vilification and persecution of the Jews with accusations of deicide throughout the centuries contributed to that environment), it was more of an attempt to demonstrate the causal link between beliefs and behavior, and that certainly extends to Nazi hatred of Slavs, gays, handicapped etc. I don't think anyone would say that Nazism was a religious ideology, despite certain elements.
Even if we were to assume that this was the mindset of a typical ISIS militant (which I don't think there's any reason to assume), that doesn't really explain the thousands of foreign fighters that have joined their ranks.
What a bucket load of nonsense. Just because Communism bans religion doesn't mean that everyone is an atheist in a communist country. People are still religious, you just can't express it.
I'm an Atheist and half of Holland are atheist and 99% of us are not communist.
Religion = religion. Communism = ideology. At least with an ideology you take responsibility for your actions. Religion leads to lunacy based upon fairy tales and an imaginary deity.
A lot of ISIS fighters come from Western countries where they have a home, healthcare and a social security net.
Yet, they still left these safe havens and went to fight, murder, slaughter and rape in Syria and Iraq.
It's their religious teachings as per Quran and Hadiths that inspire them to commit these atrocities. They are purists of their religion.
Am I a communist? No. Are you being deliberately obtuse about this? yes.
War is the normal state of humanity. Primitive human societies studied by anthropologists and historians were constantly in low level conflict with their neighbours. A high proportion of men, in particular, in such societies died violent deaths. Their religious beliefs usually consisted of nothing more than primitive animism and were certainly not a cause of conflict.
We think of the modern world as being scourged by war, but, in fact, we're relatively peaceful. A citizen of the Western world in the 20th century had a far lower chance of dying in a group conflict than his ancestor 2000 or 4000 years in the past. Pre-Christian pagan societies in Europe were extremely violent. It's not for nothing that the Vikings were feared for their barbarism. It may be difficult to credit but Christianity moderated violence in Europe. It had a modest, civilizing effect. Too much to expect that any belief system was going to overturn the predominant strains of human nature.
No, I didn't think that you were linking them in that way but I wanted to point out that such a link would have some truth in it.
I accept that all 3 points don't apply to every ISIS militant. In the case of foreign fighters this is because these people identify with my first point, an opinion that these people are oppressed.
I think if you study Northern Irish Republicanism you can equate the foreign fighters in ISIS to the American financers of the IRA.
Drawn in by 'the struggle' and a sense of brethrenship.
All of this discussion is suited to the religion thread anyways. I think the bottom line is that ISIS (or IS) is using/manipulating as a justification for their actions, and that is wrong. Really Islam is nothing like they pretend it is and their interpretation of the Quran is disgustingly far off the actual text itself.
In what ways is is far off the actual text?
Please don't take us down this very predicatble road of an argument....
They're trying to set up a theocracy. Why wouldn't we talk about the book they're going to base it on?