Massacres

In recent times the cruelty of man has spread over the entire globe.

In the news I have seen the word massacre bandied around, willy nilly.

It must be understood that the killing of a single human being is a tragedy. The social impact of the death of an individual is (or should be) considerable. When a bread winner is killed, the impact on their dependents is a life changing event. I am not even discounting the trauma on associated family members or friends.

If a child is killed the long term devastation on the parents is life long. The pain never goes away; parents just learn to live with the pain.

Warfare gains glamour as the years pass, it seems to me. Heroic deeds are remembers and cruelty is often brushed under the carpet as the memories are unpalatable. Nations want to forget any crimes that may have committed by their forebearers.

In some American schools the atrocity of killing defenceless school kids is widely publicized as a massacre. There have been terrorist attacks on peaceful Western communities where the killing of a few individuals occurs. This is listed as a massacre.

This terminology bothers me. When I think of massacres, my mind associates with huge numbers of people. One of the worst massacres to me was the horror that occurred at Nanking, China in 1937 by the Japanese. It is estimated that about 300 thousand people were slaughtered and mass rape occurred. Of course the West did nothing effective at the time. The reason why I mention it is because I was watching some or other documentary from the Second World War, and I saw Japanese solders throwing spadefuls of sand on living women and children in a mass grave. The image is indelibly printed in my mind.

(being buried alive by the Japanese)

I think of the Germans killing the Jews and other undesirable groups of people in the Third Reich. Groups of several hundred were machine gunned at a time. Huge masses of bodies just lying on the ground. Of course we understand that event of a holocaust is defined as genocide.

(Nazi soldiers doing their thing)

I think of the genocide taking place in Rwanda where more than half a million people where butchered. This event was particularly gruesome as nearly all of these people were hacked or chopped to death, one at a time. Of course very little was done.

(not too many seemed to care in the West about Rwanda, no oil I suppose)

I think of the events that took place in the dying country of Yugoslavia in the early 1990's where Serbs killed hundreds of thousands of defenseless Muslim people, their neighbours for centuries. Here too, many massacres took place.

(news of these atrocities were telegraphed around the world)

The other side of the same coin is displayed in the poster below.

Isis performed many massacres when they were trying to build a caliphate in the Middle East.

Nobody seems to remember the many millions killed by communist Russia and communist China. I suppose if Nazi Germany did not invade neighbouring countries, Hitler would have been able to murder every single Jew under his political power. Hitler was cruel but personally I don't think he was too bright, definitely a corporal (my apologies to any corporals out there, I also was a corporal, so I know what I am talking about)

There are lesser known massacres, for example the "Bodo League massacre". It took place in 1950 in South Korea where the South Korean Government murdered between 100 thousand and 200 thousand suspected communists. This happened with the full knowledge of the American Military.

(this certainly surprised me, I did not think the South Koreans could do this kind of thing.)

Another example was in the mid 1890's by the Ottoman Empire of the Armenian Christians. It is estimated that between 80 thousand and 300 thousand were massacred. It is estimated there were over 50 thousand orphans, even though there weren't too many scruples about killing children either. This was called the Hamidian massacre.

(this certainly adds to my understanding of generational hatred)

I went to reacquaint myself with definitions found in various dictionaries, on the internet. The correspondents are not incorrect in their use of the definition of the word massacre, even when referring to a small number of victims. The primary definition refers to cruelty and the intentional killing of helpless individuals. Of course the ferocious English language "stole" the word massacre from the French language in the 1600's.

I have been studying World War One and was astonished at so many massacres that occurred in Eastern Europe. I wonder if it was the geographical clash point of Christians and Muslims?

there must have been countless massacres through the ages, Spain, Argentina, many African countries, many Asian countries and even North America against the Red Indian nations. Interesting how nations fall under the collective definition of "Humanity"; we certainly don't seem to have too much "Humanity" in us, do we?

I suppose my understanding and personal application of the word "massacre" are more closely aligned to the definition of genocide.

Another thing that irritates me is when they add brutal to killings. I understand the intention of the authors to stir outrage in the public, but have killings ever not been brutal? Have there ever been gentle or kindly massacres? Of course not! To over or excessively state a situation is defined as redundancy. A few examples can be: "the brutal killings of innocents by the barbarous soldiers".

Can you think of any other examples of redundant speech? I don't think the journalists are stupid or ignorant, but they use various speech patterns to attempt to interest a "couch potato" into continue viewing their channel news information.

So I hope one can understand my position on the drift of meanings in the English language across time. "Massacre" then certainly does not mean what "massacre" means in our current times.