Democide and Menticide

Two Unknown Hidden Terms Impacting Society

Author’s Note: I initially published this article on Out Here On the Perimeter last week. First and foremost, thanks to TriTorch for giving me the space and the audience to publish this and for the inspiration to touch on these two subjects that most of us are unfamiliar with. Without further ado, please enjoy the read.

The term ‘democide’ is one that the vast majority of people have never heard of. In fact, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which charts the frequency of words in books over time, “democide” is a very rare term, with a frequency of less than 0.000001% in 2019. Additionally, GPT4 estimates that even less than 0.1% of the American population is familiar with the term “democide.” So, if most of the population has no idea what this term is, how would they recognize it if it occurred in their country?

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Democide refers to “the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command.” What’s interesting about the term is that it can cover a wide range of deaths, such as forced labor or extrajudicial summary killings, but it can also be mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect. Understanding the term in this light is where things get interesting.

“Governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect can include withholding aid during disasters, or failing to act in situations where the government has a duty to protect its citizens.” 

Ask yourself: When has your government engaged in acts of omission and neglect that have resulted in deaths? The first answer that comes to mind would be the pandemic — and we’re not talking about the vaccines — but if we take a step back, we can see that democide has been happening for quite some time before that. We are talking about acts from the government that have led to deaths— and we have quite a history of that occurring.