How to organise a genocide

Genocide has, after a long interval, once again become fashionable. This is a guide to how to organise your own genocide, either against internal populations or those otherwise under your control. 

1.    Gather the subjects of the genocide in one or more convenient places. This may present some organisational problems if the subjects are dispersed through the population. You will need to either designate special areas or build camps for their confinement. Methods for distinguishing subjects from the rest of the population may be required, such as special clothing or identification documents. In some cases, the subjects will already live in discrete areas and genocide is much simpler in such cases.

2.    Ensure your local population are sufficiently prepared to support you or (where necessary) participate in the genocide. This is often achieved by emphasising the ways in which they differ from your local population, in speech, habits, or religion. It is particularly useful to accuse them of breaking social norms, such as eating domestic pets or having sex with children. These claims will have an effect even without the slightest evidence. Jewish people for centuries were accused of the ‘blood libel’, in which it was alleged that they killed Christian or Muslim children to use their blood in religious rituals. This absurd story is still active in parts of the Muslim world and even in Qanon conspiracy websites in the USA. Accusations of this kind can be strengthened by claims that the subjects of the genocide are planning to exterminate your own people. This can work even if they are few in number, as seen with the persistence of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a supposed plan by Jews to take over the world.

3.    Decide on the best method of extermination. One of the simplest and cheapest is starvation. This can be achieved by taking food away from people, even in places where food is otherwise plentiful, as in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. This policy in the Soviet Union caused the death of as many as five million people, although there are no accurate records. A variant is to drive people to places where there is little food. This occurred in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1916, when about a million Armenians were driven into the Syrian desert, with the few survivors starved to death in prison camps. If no desert is available, then a viable alternative is to make where they live into a desert. Destroy all buildings, particularly hospitals and schools. Make sure the area is sealed off so that little if any food is available. Starvation can be combined with other methods of extermination like that currently practised by the Israeli and US governments in Gaza. Lorries bringing food into the territory are blocked, while some distribution centres for food have been set up by the two governments. People approaching these are shot. 

    The commonest method of extermination is of course direct murder. This can be carried out by the general population, as in Rwanda in 1994, where machetes were distributed to the Hutu population to enable them to exterminate their Tutsi neighbours. Over half a million died. A larger number (as many as two million) were killed by small arms in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. These figures are far exceeded by the killing of European Jews by Germany and its allies in the Second World War. This involved military death squads as well as industrialised slaughter houses using poison gas and starvation. Modern weaponry of course makes slaughter far more efficient. 

4.    Make sure the rest of the world is not well-informed. This can be achieved by banning journalists on your own side from the site of the genocide, and killing any who are brave enough to report from among the victims. Where reports of killings do leak out, it is possible to excuse them as regrettable casualties in a necessary military operation. Films of civilians being killed can also be excused by claiming they were terrorists or were being used as ‘human shields’ by terrorists. It is also useful to confuse the issue by disputing the exact definition of the word ‘genocide’. In that way, people who do support the mass killing and extermination of others can comfort themselves with the thought that what they favour is not, after all, genocide.         

If you are concerned about the effect of genocide on your long-term reputation, do not worry. It is true that Hitler is widely denigrated, but there are still people who wave Nazi flags at demonstrations. Other genocidal rulers are national heroes. A giant picture of Mao Tse-Tung (at least 50 million killed) hangs in the centre of Beijing. There is a vast metal statue of Genghis Khan (at least 50 million killed) near the capital of Mongolia. Timur (possibly 20 million killed) is a national hero in Uzbekistan, once again celebrated by a giant statue. As long as mass murderers are celebrated and as long as politicians can gain power by spreading hate and fear, then genocides will continue.