| The commitment to beating upon a segment of the population because it is an inherent enemy may precede mass murder, as when members of the bourgeoisie were turned out into the street, their homes confiscated by "the People", or when Jews were made to wear yellow stars and subject to the forced sale of their assets (Goering collected quite a lot of art, paying pennies on the dollar, because of this), but the willingness to beat them to death, as it were, is just under the surface. Thus, in Ukraine, the kulaks were forced to conform to collectivization by a politically engineered famine that killed millions. Those that managed to survive to knuckle under generally ended up in Siberia, to die a few years later. In Germany, the Reich finally came up with the Final Solution. Nor are these side- shows. During World War II, for example, the Nazis gave trains bearing Jews to extermination camps preferential treatment over trains carrying war materiel and troops. They were eager to finish the job, in case they lost the war. In the Soviet Union, execution or working people to death became routinized and tedious, something that mainly happened in the hard labor camps of Siberia, out of sight and mind. It was not galvanizing, it was just part of the grimness of life. Finally, whether it is predictable or containable must, of necessity, vary from case to case. Still, certain ideologies are more prone to such things....... |
