Автор: Битарх

There is only one killer, and the victims are thousands

Voluntarist, Bitarch

A very common mistake in the study of phenomena such as wars and genocides is the incorrect correlation between the number of those who actually committed killings and other forms of violence and the number of victims who suffered from that violence. Some may even think that the number of killers is roughly equal to the number of killed, which would mean that wars and genocides with millions of victims prove the capacity for brutal violence even in the average person. But to think this way would be a grave error.

One can recall that according to some military researchers, such as Dave Grossman, 98% of soldiers on the front line experience strong resistance to committing murder, and only 2% lack such resistance. The deaths of up to 2 million inhabitants of Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime were the fault of only 55-70 thousand Khmer Rouge (averaging about 30-40 killings per killer). And one researcher of the Rwandan genocide claims that there is nothing impossible about even 25 thousand people killing hundreds of thousands, if not a million people in 100 days—for this, one killer would have to commit on average only one killing every 2.5 days (or 40 killings in total).

In peaceful everyday life, as a rule, there are 2.5 violent crimes per one violent criminal. Less than 0.1% of people commit more than a dozen violent crimes. But what level can such “recidivism” reach in the case of wars, genocides, or repressions, when killing becomes something acceptable, permitted, or even required?

Let’s look at some well-known extreme cases. You have probably heard of the following figures at least once:
— the Croatian war criminal Petar Brzica, who personally killed up to 1,360 Serbs in one night (according to the most conservative estimates, 670 killings were committed);
— the NKVD officer Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhìn, who personally shot between 10,000 and 20,000 people throughout his service.

In the case of wars, genocides, and repressions, one killer can indeed personally commit hundreds and thousands of killings. In principle, such figures can be expected from any person who is capable of easily committing murder without experiencing any resistance or disgust. Does a killer have any incentive to stop and kill less when they have been given an unlimited right to do so? It would be absurd to expect such a thing from a killer; rather, he will kill until the very end, and if the opportunity arises, he will personally kill hundreds and thousands of people.

Based on what we know about genocides, in practice, one average killer in a state of “violent omnipotence” is most likely to manage to commit several dozen killings. Of course, this still indicates that the actual killers in any situation are a tiny minority of people, meaning that the number of victims of mass killings significantly exceeds the number of killers themselves. Wars, genocides, and repressions never work on the principle of “one day a million people took to the streets and killed another million people.” If a million people were indeed killed somewhere, it means that only several tens of thousands of killers took to the streets with violent intentions.

Gun laws – a tool in the commission of genocides

A rather interesting pattern can be traced in a great many genocides. They were preceded by the introduction of regulations and bans on civilian weaponry. Often, such bans directly preceded the genocides. Very convenient for government thugs and other bandits, isn’t it? To strip the common people of their weapons, and then calmly and almost without any resistance exterminate the undesirable part of the population.

To advocate for gun laws and against the natural human right to defend one’s own life means supporting the exclusive armament of a minority of perpetrators. After all, bans only work against peaceful and law-abiding citizens, who would never in their lives use a weapon to commit an attack, but only for the purpose of self-defense. Meanwhile, government agents and lawless bandits will keep their weapons regardless. Is this really what opponents of the freedom of armament and self-defense desire—that governments hold totalitarian power over people, and bandits have complete freedom to commit violence without facing resistance from their victims?

What genocides can tell us about human violentness

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Recalling the genocide of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda, it might seem to us that nearly the entire Hutu people, egged on by supporters of the idea of exterminating the Tutsis, simply turned into killers. Or we might recall how horrific Pol Pot’s regime was, when up to a quarter of Cambodia’s population perished. Do this and other similar examples of mass genocides show us that humans have no natural restraints against killing other people, and that with enough conviction, almost anyone could easily do it?

In assessing phenomena such as war or genocide, it is certainly not worth relying on subjective feelings. It would be much better to conduct detailed calculations. Based on the most widely accepted research, between 500 thousand and 662 thousand Tutsis died as a result of the genocide in Rwanda, with some estimates reaching 800 thousand deaths. But how many Hutus took part in the genocide? One study estimates the number of killers at 50 thousand people [1]. Another study estimates the number of genocide participants (those who attempted murder, committed murders, rapes, torture, and other forms of serious violence) at between 175 thousand and 210 thousand people [2]. At the start of the genocide, the population of Rwanda was over 7 million people.

What does this mean? According to the highest estimate, only 2.5-3% of the population of Rwanda, or 3-3.5% of the Hutu population itself, committed violence during the Tutsi genocide. According to the lowest estimate, the killers constituted less than 1% of the population. This is considering the fact that movements advocating for the extermination of the Tutsis called upon the Hutus to commit murders by all possible means and through all information channels. And the killings themselves were indeed mass in nature.

There should be no doubt that such a percentage of people could organize a genocide. It is unlikely that a person who is urged to kill, who feels no repulsion toward committing murder, and whose potential victims have no serious means of defense, would stop after only one or two episodes. Rather, one should expect that he would kill everyone who crossed his path. Small groups of such killers could wipe out thousands of people at once, especially if they were armed. The study that estimates the number of killers in the Rwandan genocide at 50 thousand people asserts that there is nothing impossible about even 25 thousand people being able to exterminate hundreds of thousands, if not a million people, in 100 days.

Another well-known example of genocide is the extermination of 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians by the “Khmer Rouge” from 1975 to 1979 under Pol Pot’s regime. The forces of the Khmer Rouge by 1975 can be estimated at 55 to 70 thousand people [3][4]. The population of Cambodia at the beginning of the genocide was about 7.8 million people. Based on these numbers, it is obvious that less than 1% of the population was responsible for the death of 20-25% of Cambodia’s population at that time.

Genocides cannot tell us that the majority of people are ready to carry out the extermination of groups or even entire peoples who do not share their views. The direct killers and other perpetrators of violence in genocides are an overwhelming minority of the total population. Therefore, they cannot serve as evidence of human violence; rather, the opposite is true—they only confirm that, for the most part, humans are non-violent.

Sources:

  1. Jones, B. D. (2001). Peacemaking in Rwanda: the dynamics of failure;
  2. Straus, S. (2004). How many perpetrators were there in the Rwandan genocide? An estimate. Journal of Genocide Research, 6(1), March, 85–98;
  3. Carney, T. (1989). The Unexpected Victory. In Karl D. Jackson, ed., Cambodia 1975–1978: Rendezvous With Death. Princeton University Press, pp. 13–35;
  4. The Crime of Cambodia: Shawcross on Kissinger’s Memoirs New York Magazine, 5 November 1979.

Corruption always accompanies the power structures

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The very existence of power that is forceful and “mandatory” for everyone leads to the emergence of corruption. Regardless of what anyone says, all governments in the world are corrupt; it is simply that not all are ready to admit it and call this phenomenon by its true name, often hiding behind a term such as “lobbying.” And this is not surprising—if a certain public body possesses the “legal” right to a monopoly on establishing and controlling orders in society, including through the use of force, then various interest groups will always turn to it in an attempt to achieve their goals at the expense of infringing upon the rights and freedoms of other interest groups. This is inevitable even in the most liberal democracies, for in them as well, nothing prevents a particular interest group from inducing a sufficient number of officials to adopt a decision necessary for them.

As long as coercive power-based governments exist, corruption and the infringement of the interests of some people in favor of the interests of others are unavoidable. Only in a free market can different interests stably coexist parallel to one another, for it is sufficient that each interest has at least a minimal group of “consumers.” Politics, however, can at any moment issue a law according to which all alternatives to a certain single interest will be discriminated against or even completely liquidated within a specific territory. And such a law will be backed by the threat of violence in the event of non-compliance.

Power Control and the Failure of State Democracy

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The events of the coronavirus pandemic clearly demonstrated how some of the most democratic states in the world can easily turn literally into authoritarian regimes with strong government power, suppression of the opposition, and the imprisonment of “undesirable” people. We are talking about Australia and Canada, which rank in the top ten countries in democracy ratings. In the fight against the pandemic, the government of the former decided to resort to total bans on leaving the home and movement of citizens, surveillance of them, and the imprisonment of violators. In the latter, the government responded to truckers’ protests against coronavirus restrictions by blocking bank accounts, suppressing the activities of the opposition, introducing a state of emergency, and arresting some of the protesters. Or let us recall France, which is also a fairly democratic country, yet its police do not hesitate to beat people without masks with batons, and almost any anti-government actions end with a harsh dispersal of protesters by security forces.

Democracy can very easily turn into an authoritarian and repressive regime. And this should not be surprising—what else can be expected from governments that, while perhaps quite democratic and liberal in their goals, still rely on the instrument of force to implement those goals? When a certain body in society has the right to use force to compel people and the ability to effectively exercise that right, it is only a matter of time and the existence of a pretext before force transforms from a simple tool for upholding the law into a tool for carrying out repressions and strengthening power.

Therefore, it is important to understand that the only possible path to achieving a free and non-violent society is the eradication of coercive instruments of management, and the mere replacement of an authoritarian regime with a democracy will yield nothing in the long run. Adhering to democratic and liberal values is absolutely meaningless and useless if, alongside them, the impermissibility of violence is not actively supported, both in private relationships between people and in the implementation of measures by any associations or public governing bodies.

Paper money as a cause of people’s impoverishment

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Do you know why in the United States after 1971 labor productivity continued to grow at a constant rate, but at the same time real incomes of people abruptly stopped following the growth of productivity and remained virtually unchanged? Or why after 1971, over 50 years, the consumer price index soared 7-fold (what cost 1 dollar in 1971 now costs 7 dollars), although before 1971 it took almost 200 years for an approximately similar price increase? Or perhaps why the share of US residents living with their parents until age 29 gradually decreased until 1971, but began to grow again after? Or why the cost of housing relative to workers’ incomes in the US has only increased several times during this period?

The answer is extremely simple – on August 15, 1971, US President Richard Nixon finally liquidated the gold exchange standard, canceling the fixed conversion of the US dollar into gold. After this, the US dollar turned into paper that was effectively backed by nothing. It was after this decision that the impoverishment of Americans, who had previously only grown wealthier, began.

This rather simple fact clearly confirms the absolute failure of paper money as a means of exchanging goods between people and accumulating wealth. The use of paper money is merely a reliable way to become poor. After all, what else can be expected from money that can be printed in unlimited quantities, thereby devaluing people’s savings, while enriching officials, government structures, subsidized oligarchs, and banks, who received the new money supply first and realized it at the old prices. Or what else can be expected if money is distributed boundlessly at an artificially low interest rate for the development of businesses that would be absolutely unprofitable and failing at a rate formed under free market conditions. Indeed, the theory of the Austrian School of Economics does not call unlimited money emission and credit expansion the main causes of economic crises for nothing.

People will only grow poorer until we abandon government paper currencies in favor of money that is not controlled by any centralized governing bodies and has a strictly limited issuance of new coins. Precious metals demonstrated their reliability as a means of exchange and wealth accumulation in the past. But in today’s digital world, where information technologies play a key role in all types of activity and relationships, cryptocurrencies can serve as a reliable means of exchange.

With a stationary bandit, there are only privileges, not rights

Voluntarist, Bitarch

One of the most important concepts in the life of any society is rights. These could be so-called human rights, property rights, copyrights, and many other rights. But if we ask where all these rights come from, we are often told that the state is their source. That is, the definition and maintenance of rights actually fall within the functions of the body that declares a “monopoly” on its power and on the use of violence in society.

What, then, is the actual essence of the concept of rights in reality? The answer is simple—this concept is identical to the concept of privilege. Thus, under state power, you have freedom of speech only because you have been granted a privilege to do so. Your property is not actually yours—you have merely been granted the privilege to own and use it. You can practice a certain profession or run your own business only by virtue of permission granted from above. And this list can be continued almost indefinitely, as any of your rights and freedoms are actually just privileges from a stationary bandit.

States around the world have repeatedly and explicitly demonstrated that there are no rights, only privileges that people can easily lose. Over time, many types of activities have become heavily regulated, people’s property has been seized repeatedly, people have been deprived of their freedoms repeatedly, and people were forbidden from using anything other than “sovereign” money as a means of exchange; these are just a few examples of such deprivation of privileges. Currently, the privileged nature of state rights, and especially property rights, can be clearly observed in the example of Russia. Companies that have suspended operations in the country face the seizure of their assets; all foreign citizens from “unfriendly states” were first deprived of copyrights and patent rights, and then of the rights to buy and sell real estate altogether. As for freedom of speech and activity, it was taken away even from people in seemingly extremely liberal and democratic countries—for example, when harsh coercive measures were applied in Australia and Canada against people unwilling to share certain state COVID restrictions. And this list can also be continued almost indefinitely.

Even if we imagine a perfectly democratic state that still relies on the instrument of violence, the rights emanating from it would also be privileges. In such a case, determining which privileges the organ of violence will grant to people and which it will take away from them for each specific issue would be decided by the opinion of the majority. Ultimately, due to the inevitable difference in opinions and the varying composition of the majority on different issues, all people would again find themselves subject to privileges. Moreover, in real life, the situation is even worse, since perfectly democratic stationary bandits do not even exist.

For clarity in understanding the essence of currently existing rights, they should be called specifically privileges, since there is effectively no difference between these concepts. Such a difference will arise only when violence is eradicated as a method of managing social life, and indeed as a way of conducting human relations in general, as a result of which right will become not a subject of policy maintained by violence, but a subject of voluntary contract and agreement between people.

What exactly in our brain makes us non-violent

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Extremely interesting and important results were demonstrated by experiments on the use of anti-aggressive agents in mice and rats. It turned out that some of them are capable of reducing the manifestation of attacking aggression on their part, while not affecting defensive aggression and other non-aggressive forms of behavior and social communication. To be more specific, we are talking about agonists that activate serotonin 5-HT1A/1B receptors.

These results align with the theory that many species possess innate inhibitors of aggressive behavior, which prevent causing harm and killing members of their own species. In the case of humans, a model of the violence inhibition mechanism (VIM) was even developed, which also explains the development of empathy. Based on this theory, violence in intraspecific relationships should be viewed as a pathological rather than a natural form of behavior. Especially since even in many territorial, social, and armed species, the level of lethal violence still does not exceed 1%, and according to various evidence, only no more than 2% of people do not experience strong resistance to committing murder.

We also see that defensive aggression, unlike attacking aggression, is indeed a natural form of behavior, and the work of the violence inhibitor does not stop it in the presence of an immediate threat to life in the environment. This was well demonstrated by the administration of the 5-HT1A agonist alnespirone to rats. It had an extremely selective effect; the strong reduction in aggressiveness did not prevent the rats from resorting to defensive behavior when encountering an aggressive peer.

Various genetic evidence demonstrates that certain variants of the 5-HT1A/1B receptor genes, as well as three other genes associated with the 5-HT system—TPH2, MAO A (also known as the “warrior gene”), and SERT—lead to increased aggressiveness in animals and humans. For example, in one study, impulsive and aggressive alcoholics were found to have differences in the 5-HT1B gene compared to healthy people and non-aggressive alcoholics. This study covered two different groups of people: Finns and a Native American tribe. Mutations in the MAO A gene have long been known as a cause of abnormal manifestations of aggression in men.

According to the violence inhibition mechanism model, the direct result of its dysfunction is calloused-unemotional (CU) traits in children and psychopathy in adults. Changes in the function of 5-HT1B receptors in certain parts of the brain were found in people with aggressive traits and psychopathic traits. A difference in the 5-HT1B gene genotype was present in children with calloused-unemotional traits.

It should be noted that dozens of genes and a large number of systems influence aggressiveness. However, the violence inhibitor remains a specific mechanism expressed by a limited number of receptors and genes. Firstly, this is simply important for inhibiting aggression most effectively. Secondly, other forms of pharmacological intervention, such as the use of antipsychotics (like haloperidol), beta-blockers, drugs affecting GABA neurotransmitters, and 5-HT2 receptor agonists and antagonists (many psychedelics belong to the former), result only in a non-selective reduction of aggressiveness, suppressing defensive aggression and other forms of behavior, and causing side effects.

Understanding the nature of the violence inhibitor and its limitation to a small number of receptors and genes can not only tell us a lot about violence itself, but also help in creating a solution aimed against it as a pathological form of behavior inherent in a minority of people. And the essence of such a solution is simple: returning to them the inhibiting control over aggression that is natural for the majority, through the use of appropriate pharmacological or even gene-therapeutic drugs.

This material briefly describes the content of the article titled “Neurophysiology and Genetics of the Violence Inhibition Mechanism“, which you may refer to for greater detail.

An ethological approach to the definition of aggression, violence, and self-defense

Libertarian Band has released a video on the ethological approach to defining the concepts of aggression, violence, and self-defense. Ethology, as a science that studies animal behavior and serves as a link between biological and sociological sciences in the study of human behavior, is a fairly precise tool for solving this problem. The ethological approach can provide us with clear answers regarding what should be considered aggression and violence, as well as where the boundaries of self-defense lie.

I recommend everyone watch this video and share it with others, so that there will be less confusion in the future during conversations about aggression, violence, and self-defense.

How even a small military conflict can lead to a catastrophe

Voluntarist, Bitarch

During the invasion of Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine, an incident occurred that could have ended with extremely catastrophic consequences. We are talking about the events at the Zaporizhzhia NPP – the largest power plant in Europe. The details of this event are not so important; the main point here is that military actions were taking place around the nuclear power plant itself. Perhaps the probability of a catastrophe was extremely low, but it was still not zero. And had it happened, tens of millions of lives would have been at risk, as it would have been much worse than the well-known nuclear catastrophe at the Chernobyl NPP. Also, information has now emerged about biolaboratories located on the territory of Ukraine. The WHO recommended that Ukraine destroy dangerous pathogens to prevent their possible leakage.

Should this not demonstrate what the problem is with violence as a method of solving problems and achieving goals, and why we need to fight against it? War or any other violent conflict can lead to a catastrophe if it hits a nuclear plant, a warehouse with dangerous chemicals, or a biolaboratory with samples of deadly viruses, especially those of artificial origin, which were kept for strictly controlled experiments and for which it is unknown what to do if they suddenly break out.

As we can see, it is not even necessary to intentionally use nuclear, chemical, biological, or any other weapon of mass destruction to achieve exactly this mass destruction. In the modern world with a heap of dangerous technologies and means used at various enterprises and facilities, it can become merely an accidental result of even a small armed clash, not to mention a conflict as large-scale as the one currently taking place between Russia and Ukraine. Therefore, violence and war are extremely unacceptable; it is necessary to fight against all manifestations of violence immediately and everywhere, throughout the world. Those who are not in the territory of the conflicting countries likely believe they are completely safe. But this is absolutely not the case, for in the modern world, no one is safe as long as any violent conflicts remain possible.