Yeah that’s what I mean.
Salami theory is the idea that if the gov implements itself slowly enough, it can get away with terrible terrible things.
Idk why its called salami theory. I never slice my salami as thinly as possible…
Lets take at look at the USSRs death toll seeing as we’re talking about the horrors of the state and whether or not it deserves to be treated as invalid. Given, I’m using Wikipedia as a quick source for the sake of quickness.
"…He asserts that Soviet policies greatly exacerbated the famine’s death toll (such as the use of torture and execution to extract grain (see Law of Spikelets), with 1.8 million tonnes of it being exported during the height of the starvation - enough to feed 5 million people for one year, the use of force to prevent starving peasants from fleeing the worst affected areas, and the refusal to import grain or secure international humanitarian aid to alleviate the suffering) and that Stalin intended to use the starvation as a cheap and efficient means (as opposed to deportations and shootings) to kill off those deemed to be “counterrevolutionaries,” “idlers,” and “thieves,” but not to annihilate the Ukrainian peasantry as a whole. He also claims that, while this is not the only Soviet genocide (e.g. The Polish operation of the NKVD), it is the worst in terms of mass casualties.[53]
Current estimates on the total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range mostly from 2.2 million[54][55] to 4 to 5 million.[56"
"Stalin’s role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.[68] During World War II, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, after the NKVD had recruited the new metropolitan, the first after the revolution, as a secret agent. Thousands of parishes were reactivated until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev’s time. The Russian Orthodox Church Synod’s recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
Just days before Stalin’s death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including the Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed."
"After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, containing official records of the execution of approximately 800,000 prisoners under Stalin for either political or criminal offenses, around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement – for a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[71]
The official Soviet archival records do not contain comprehensive figures for some categories of victims, such as the those of ethnic deportations or of German population transfers in the aftermath of WWII.[72] Other notable exclusions from NKVD data on repression deaths include the Katyn massacre, other killings in the newly occupied areas, and the mass shootings of Red Army personnel (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941. Also, the official statistics on Gulag mortality exclude deaths of prisoners taking place shortly after their release but which resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps.[73] Some historians also believe the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities to be unreliable and incomplete.[74][75] In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Robert Gellately and Simon Sebag-Montefiore argue the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in “investigative custody” were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed.[8][76]"
"Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million[2] were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.[40]
Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined.[41] After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars – more than a million people in total – were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions.[41]
During Stalin’s rule the following ethnic groups were deported completely or partially: Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Jews. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. Deportations took place in appalling conditions, often by cattle truck, and hundreds of thousands of deportees died en route.[2] Those who survived were forced to work without pay in the labour camps. Many of the deportees died of hunger or other conditions."
"
Stalin, as head of the Politburo consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party, justified as an attempt to expel ‘opportunists’ and ‘counter-revolutionary infiltrators’.[16][17] Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps, to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.[16][18][19]
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of Sergei Kirov. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 1,108 negative votes.[20] After the assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zioviev.[21] The investigations and trials expanded.[22] Stalin passed a new law on “terrorist organizations and terrorist acts”, which were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed “quickly.”[23]
Thereafter, several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, listing prohibited anti-Soviet activities as counterrevolutionary crime was applied in the broadest manner.[24] The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an “enemy of the people,” starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.[23]
Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large scale purging of Red Army officers followed.[26] The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a “river of blood” separated Stalin’s regime from that of Lenin.[27] In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin’s opponents among the former Party leadership.[28] The only three “Old Bolsheviks” (Lenin’s Politburo) that remained were Stalin, Mikhail Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov.
Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted “national contingents” (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles, ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.[8] Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed; others were sent to prison camps or gulags.[29] Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.
In light of revelations from the Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror,[30] with the great mass of victims being “ordinary” Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars.[31][32] Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.[33][34][35][36] For example, Robert Conquest suggests that the probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but some two and a half times as high. He believes that the KGB was covering its tracks by falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims.[37]
At the time, while reviewing a list of people to be shot, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: “Who’s going to remember all this riffraff in ten or twenty years time? No one.”[38] In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia, established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as ‘Japanese Spies.’ Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin’s lead.[39]“”
“In Hungary, when the Soviets installed a communist government, Mátyás Rákosi, who described himself as “Stalin’s best Hungarian disciple”[188] and “Stalin’s best pupil”,[189] took power. Rákosi employed “salami tactics”, slicing up these enemies like pieces of salami,[190] to battle the initial postwar political majority ready to establish a democracy.[191] Rákosi, employed Stalinist political and economic programs, and was dubbed the “bald murderer” for establishing one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe.[191][192] Approximately 350,000 Hungarian officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956.[191]”
Only that last one is post-WWII. The totals for soviet caused deaths it estimated all the way up to 60 million. Can anybody, with this in mind, call the USSR anything more then a monstrous outlaw worthy of being put down?
Appeal to emotion.
lol,
its the fallacy of appeal to a persons humanity on matters of everyday common sense morality!
we are not in the realms of clinical high-theoretic argument here…
I am sorry. I should have asked if you have any evidence of industrialized countries governments slaughtering large portions of non-violent, non-cooperative portions of their own population? I would guess that it would probably require more like 75% of the population in most African countries to non-cooperate to get rid of the government. But that is because they are third world countries where death is pretty common.
No, they would not be more inclined to kill them, because killing them would result in a much larger back lash. This is why the government is screwed if at least 5% of the population non-cooperates.
Then, it is not “just religion”, for, I would say, a lot of people.
Yes, that I don’t think industrialized countries would slaughter its own population for non-cooperation. How many of those deaths from 1900 to the 1980’s were by industrialized nations on non-cooperating populations?
Yes, cults that use armed resistance. So I will ask again, you think the U.S. government would mass slaughter people for not paying taxes, that were simply non-cooperating?
So, what evidence do you have that people would pay taxes, if they were told they do not have to? In your world, would people happily pay for the food of someone behind them at McDonald’s, if McDonald’s had a policy of charging some customers extra so that they could give free meals to other customers? Is that how markets work?
If he is going to bring in specific examples into the debate he should use more specific language himself. What does “worthy of being put down” mean?
No, I don`t think a country should be “put down” for the crimes of its regime against it.
I assumed he was referring to the regime and not any innocent civilians in the region. this interpretation would be consistent given that he seemed to indicate sympathy towards aforemention civilians. My interpretation may have been wrong.
It should not be up to us to assume anything. He should just be more clear.
If I write “USA should be put down”, it can be interpreted in many ways. And that is no good because USA is not a generic. Others may be attached to her or fond of in some way.
To the contrary, you do have the right to prevent them from associating in a criminal organization that aggresses against outsiders as a matter of policy. It is not different from a man walking up to you with a gun and saying that he is going to shoot in in 5 seconds.
OK, I think I need to explain my position better.
I think it would only take at most 5% of an industrialized nations population to bring down the government, using non-violent, non-cooperation. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, there is not a government in any industrialized nation on earth that currently incarcerates even 1% of its population. The next reason is that most governments in industrialized nations have strict rules about killing its own population, usually only for using violence against the state or others. Aslo, as far as I am aware, most governments in industrialized nations believe in treating prisoners “fairly”. Another thing is, the vast majority of prisoners are the poor. As such, incarcerating them does not cost the state much, because if they are not in prison, they are probably on welfare. Not only that, but they are not considered as productive, so incarcerating them does not affect the economy as much, in the government’s eyes. And the middle class and wealthy can afford better defenses and are more difficult to incarcerate. Lastly, non-violent, non-cooperation appears to have worked for Gandhi and the civil rights movement for bringing about change.
So, if 5% of the population stopped cooperating with the government, and refused to pay taxes, I believe the government would have three options. Either kill them, imprison them, or do nothing. If the government kills them, then it would have a public relations nightmare on its hands. Politicians like to keep their jobs. So, they could kill a bunch of people and lose their jobs, and maybe their lives, or they could not kill them, and lose their jobs, and keep their lives. And really, I don’t think most “Americans” like killing fellow “Americans”. The government people would be killing “their own” people. In one example in this thread, the government killed just four innocent people, and that resulted in 4 million people getting pissed off.
The next option would be to incarcerate them. Depending on the statistic you look at, it costs the state ~$23k/year to incarcerate an individual. Not only would the budget for the justice system have to be increased by 7 to 10 fold, the economy would go into the toilet even further with all the productive people being taken out of the economy. A good chance of the government going bankrupt. And the government would still be faced with a public relations nightmare. So again, the politicians would be faced with incarcerating all these people, and losing their jobs, or not incarcerating them, and still losing their jobs. It is a lose/lose for them.
The last option is to do nothing. And if they do nothing, everyone would find out, and everyone else would stop paying taxes, and the politicians lose their jobs, because the government would go out of business.
The ogvernment having a public relations nightmare for about 5 minutes for killing a bunch of people, which is about how long people remember these events, is not enough to convince many people to be the sacrifical lambs.
There was a town in Canada that tried to declare independence a few years ago. The army was sent in and slaughtered the lot. Nobody cared, frankly, and I doubt that anyone remembers.
Do you have a link to this story?
I tried and couldn’t find it, which adds to my point of how noteworthy it was.
You know, there are very few people that even have the guts to run for office for the LP. Forget anything dangerous. I’m probably the youngest person to ever run for MP because everyone else is too chicken to even have their name on a ballot.
Most people expect to just sit around and wait for someone else to lift a finger.
Nope.
You have the right to prevent the Government of Mexico from victimizing you, or anyone else who wishes to not associate with the government of Mexico. You, however, would be an aggressor to invade Mexico and destroy the state against the will of the people who do wish to be enslaved to it.
After all, “the state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.”
Why do you need an example today? If you need only an example of an industrialized country, then I believe the Stalin example was sufficient. The civil war example was an example of a semi-industrialized country, but why does that change the fact that Lincoln got away with so much horror at a time when they respected the constitution way more than we do today?
As for the “treating prisoners fairly” argument, I don’t see any reason why government should obey this when they don’t already. Once the fear and show of force has been installed, people will back down. Look at what they have done with terrorism. They can call anyone a “terrorist” or “national threat” and arrest then without a public trial. I believe if 5% of the population stops paying taxes, they will find a lot more “terrorists” until those other “terrorists” back down.
I don’t think a bullet cost $23,000 dollars, you assume the government will follow the law.
There were plenty of politicians in the Lincoln adminstration that were opposed to imprisoning of political prisoners. They were also imprisoned, along with many other’s that fled the country, this kept the rest of them in their place.
The fear, the corruption, and the dictatorship of the Lincoln adminstration are long forgotten and the people of the time couldn’t care less about it (publically) once their neighbor’s were shot down or imprisoned.
Oh whoops, you said “incarcerate”, I didn’t see that for some reason.
But that still doesn’t change anything I said though. They could easily kill enough people or incarcerate enough people in order to install the fear and bring down a rebellion, they don’t need to kill/incarcerate 5% of the population to bring down 5% of the population.
Yes, they do have to punish everyone that is openly defying the government. Government authority is based on obedience. Why do you think cops get so pissed when people do not obey? Or judges? Or any government “official”? What do you think people would do, if you went into court, said “you have no legitimate authority” and walked out, and they did not do anything? You know how fast that story would spread, that they did not care that you just left? You know why it would spread so fast? Because you defied them, and they did nothing. If the government does not punish everyone that is openly defying it, then other people will disobey. And no, there is no evidence that a government in an industrialized nation is going to kill a lot of people for not paying taxes.
They were not non-cooperating. The people cooperated.
The South used violence. It was not non-cooperation.
Well, unless you have some evidence to the contrary, your belief is baseless and just fear-mongoring.
That is what the evidence suggests. They didn’t shoot Gandhi’s followers or the civil rights people.