Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Argument
- 2 Ethnic Cleansing in Former Times
- 3 Two Versions of “We, the People”
- 4 Genocidal Democracies in the New World
- 5 Armenia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 6 Armenia, II: Genocide
- 7 Nazis, I: Radicalization
- 8 Nazis, II: Fifteen Hundred Perpetrators
- 9 Nazis, III: Genocidal Careers
- 10 Germany's Allies and Auxiliaries
- 11 Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot
- 12 Yugoslavia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 13 Yugoslavia, II: Murderous Cleansing
- 14 Rwanda, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 15 Rwanda, II: Genocide
- 16 Counterfactual Cases: India and Indonesia
- 17 Combating Ethnic Cleansing in the World Today
- Works Cited
- Index
17 - Combating Ethnic Cleansing in the World Today
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Argument
- 2 Ethnic Cleansing in Former Times
- 3 Two Versions of “We, the People”
- 4 Genocidal Democracies in the New World
- 5 Armenia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 6 Armenia, II: Genocide
- 7 Nazis, I: Radicalization
- 8 Nazis, II: Fifteen Hundred Perpetrators
- 9 Nazis, III: Genocidal Careers
- 10 Germany's Allies and Auxiliaries
- 11 Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot
- 12 Yugoslavia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 13 Yugoslavia, II: Murderous Cleansing
- 14 Rwanda, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 15 Rwanda, II: Genocide
- 16 Counterfactual Cases: India and Indonesia
- 17 Combating Ethnic Cleansing in the World Today
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
EIGHT THESES RECONSIDERED
Murderous cleansing has been modern. In earlier times it sometimes resulted when conquerors seized the land but did not require the labor of the natives, while monotheistic salvation religions later attempted forced conversions. But the pace of murderous ethnic cleansing quickened greatly when modern people sought to establish rule by the people in bi-ethnic environments. “The people” came to have a dual meaning – as the demos of democracy and as the ethnos or ethnic group. Modern ethnic cleansing is the dark side of democracy when ethnonationalist movements claim the state for their own ethnos, which they initially intend to constitute as a democracy, but then they seek to exclude and cleanse others. There was also a dark side of socialist versions of democracy. The people was equated with the proletariat, and after the revolution cleansing of classes and other enemies might begin.
Yet the relationship with democracy has been a dynamic process, not a static correlation. Definitionally, perpetrating regimes cannot be democracies. Some were ethnocracies, democratic only within the ethnos, like settler regimes. Some began the slide into murderous cleansing by attempting to democratize, but then became authoritarian party-states, as in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Bolshevik Russia. The Young Turks began with democratic aspirations but slid simultaneously into authoritarianism and ethnic cleansing. Some began the slide as authoritarian party-states, with democratic processes already subverted during the preceding years, as in the Nazi, Chinese, and Cambodian cases.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dark Side of DemocracyExplaining Ethnic Cleansing, pp. 502 - 530Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004