2020: The Year Governments Killed Hundreds of Thousands of Their Own People

And sentenced to death millions more

Originally ran on August 29th, 2020.

In the run up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, all you could hear about was how Saddam had “gassed his own people” — a reference to up to 5,000 Iraqi Kurds killed in the 1988 Halabja chemical attack when Saddam was still being propped up by the Empire.

I guess that was meant to evoke parallels to Hitler, as well as focus attention specifically on crimes against own populace. Sure, the US had strangled to death 1 million Iraqis, but that Saddam had done it to his own citizens is what made his much more modest body count uniquely evil.

The morality of assigning lesser weight to mass murder of foreigners aside, it is true that by 2003 it seemed the time of governments inflicting truly massive mortality on their own populations, which left such a terrible mark on the 20th century, was behind us.

Sure, post-WWII the Empire had extinguished a few million in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq. But these, as said, were populaces of foreign governments. The last such government democide of own subjects was the 1.5 million who perished 1975-79 under the Kmer Rouge, and before that the 45 million in Mao’s 1958-62 Great Leap Forward. For even earlier death-by-government with body counts in the millions you’d have to go back to Stalin’s famines and terror, and to those of Churchill (if you count the Crown’s subjects in British India as Churchill’s “own people”).

Thus until now, we lived in an age where we believed that albeit — courtesy of Empire’s worst excesses — the wholesale slaughter and strangulation of foreigners was still with us, at least the terrible 20th-century style strangulation of own citizens no longer was.

In 2020 that no longer holds true.

According to one estimate 21,000 Britons died during just the first eight weeks of the lockdown as a result of the lockdown. Another study puts it at a more modest 16,000.

According to the London government itself up to 185,000 more are expected to die in the coming years as a result of the 2020 lockdown. A different study puts it at a more modest 85,000.

Whether it is 21,000 and 185,000, or 16,000 and 85,000 these are huge figures. And while Britain’s lockdown was the longest in the West, the UK is just one small part of the developed world that locked down. For the entire developed world combined the losses are easily ten (if not twenty) times greater.

These are largely deaths stemming from the fact that for months on end the life-saving and life-extending health care systems essentially shut down (albeit they absolutely didn’t need to), and heart and cancer patients in particular are going to pay the price.

In the Third World, only a small sliver of the population has access to advanced heart and cancer treatments to begin with, so the shutdowns were less consequential in that way, but they are going to pay for the lockdowns in increases in tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition.

By one estimate due to the lockdowns, an extra 128,000 children are going to die of malnutrition just through the end of 2020. WHO estimates there will be an up to 1.4 million additional tuberculosis deaths, up to 380,000 additional malaria deaths, and up to 500,000 additional HIV deaths.

When all is said and done we are talking between 2 and 5 million (!) people sentenced to death by their own governments. Nothing like this has been seen since the days of Pol Pot and Mao.

At least Pol Pot and Mao were deranged megalomaniacs who were building a “paradise” on Earth, and to them this justified sacrificing millions if necessary. The world governments of 2020, however, sacrificed millions because of what??? Because there was a worse-than-usual flu bug running around in the age of social media??

Apparently in 2020 millions have been condemned to death because governments all over the world got it in their head they could order around a virus (talk about utopianism even greater than Mao’s), and proceeded to sacrifice millions in a process that ultimately proved only how incapable they were of this, even after such a horrific cost.

Over 1 million Iraqis perished under the ruinous 1990-2003 sanctions regime. But in the alternative media, we are acutely aware even less comprehensive sanctions against other countries also always result in a certain amount of excess deaths, eg the tens of thousands calculated for Venezuela and Iran.

Despite that, faced with the novelty of mapped virus movement in the age of social media, ignorant governments all over the world responded by decreeing the equivalent of Iraq sanctions on steroids against their own populations. What before 2020 governments sought to do only to their enemies to weaken and destroy them, they now unleashed against their own populations as a “cure”.

If before 2020 sanctions were something only people in sufficiently “rogue” states had to contend with, and then only as a threat from foreign, explicitly hostile governments, in 2020 such strangulation became a threat, and reality, to everyone. Courtesy of their own governments, and with the same ruinous and murderous outcome in lives lost.

And this is why Anti-Empire has been covering and speaking out against the lockdowns so much. Anti-Empire speaks out against wars and blockades of the American Empire, not because they are American, but because they the biggest waste of life today. So when another man-made mass casualty event comes along that if anything is right now taking even more lives, then we can not do anything but fight just as strongly against that too.

Sadly however, one half of the independent media which opposed Imperial sanctions on small powers and was always calling attention to their cost, is now shilling for very similar measures all over the world, as long as they are inflicted on the populace by the local oppressor rather than the far-away one. Apparently sanctions are good after all, and they even cure viruses? Maybe John Bolton’s Lenin Peace Prize got lost in the mail?

23 Comments
  1. dreamjoehill says

    Look at Scandanavia. Although Sweden has just two-thirds the combined population of its neighbors Norway and Denmark, it has four times as many deaths. Adjusted for population, Sweden’s death rate is nearly five times higher than that of Denmark and nearly 10 times higher than Norway. There are now on average more than 5,000 cases a day reported in the country as a whole, including 1,500 in Stockholm alone.

    Unlike Norway & Denmark, Sweden pursued a “herd immunity” policy – no stay at home orders.

    When will you COVID denial cultists face the facts.

    Stop spreading deadly disinformation!

  2. MrRedwoodGuy . says

    By reading the replies, it’s clear that people are not trying to live individual lives, but instead have decided they must be living for the state, living only as a part of the government life. Their most important question each day is, “What is the government doing, what did they say today?”

    1. plamenpetkov says

      if the government is controlling your whole life down to how much money you make and how you live, then it IS rather important for most people to know what the gov is doing and saying today.

  3. Ted says

    According to the US Army War College, Sandam Hussein never gassed his own people to death. The 200 — not 5,000 — civilian casualties killed by gas in the town of Halabja during a battle between Iraqi forces and a coalition of Kurds and Iranian forces died of the cyanide gas deployed by Iranian troops against the Iraqi Army. The gas killed 52 Iraqi troops, despite their being prepared for gas warfare. Wind blew the poisonous gas into the town, killing civilian Kurds. Autopsies performed on the 200 civilian dead tested positive for the cyanide blood agent used by the Iranians in the battle.
    The Iraqi Army deployed mustard gas during the battle, which is generally not deadly and is used to temporarily disable opponents, so they can be routed by conventional means. US Army War College instructors claim Mustard Gas claims one casualty per 250 troops gassed.
    But the US government people and the talking heads on TV said Hussein gassed 5,000 of his people, so it must be true.

  4. Curmudgeon_49 says

    I hate to break it to you, but Steven Pellitiere, who taught at the War College and was sent to investigate the incident at Halajba, wrote a op-ed in the NYT about that in January 2003. It was the Iranians. Ironically, invoking parallels to Hitler, in this case would be entirely approprated there is exactly zero forensic evidence of any hollow cost.

  5. Macho Mann says

    Hopefully 2021 WILL be the year that The People killed their own governments…

  6. Rowdy-Yates says

    In the Third World, only a small sliver of the population has access to advanced heart and cancer treatments to begin with, so the shutdowns were less consequential in that way, but they are going to pay for the lockdowns in increases in tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition.

    The numbers who will drop to absolute poverty and by, death, are massive. Unlike the developed world the middle class in the developing world have no safety net when a person loses his job, cannot find another and businesses are forced to close down. He does not have access to unemployment benefits, Social security, private insurance or any of these things we take for granted. That person drops like a stone to the bottom and usually has a debt larger than those who were poorer than him

    India’s middle class of over 400 to 500 million have been hit in a manner never seen before. The misery index is just beginning to play out.

  7. Godfree Roberts says

    Mao [was a] deranged megalomaniacs building a “paradise” on Earth.

    Nonsense. Mao was neither deranged, megalomaniacal, nor building a paradise. He did more good for more people and less harm to fewer people than any leader in history. The charges against him are just Western propaganda.

    1. DinoN says

      I agree with you! I was born in a British Colony and I am glad my fore-parents were not stuck in India. Today I am only “afraid” of Covide-19. Speaking from experience, poor uneducated people, my parents were, do not need “Demockracy. All they want is a job so that they can take care of their Family. Take a look at America. Now that is what I call DERANGED!

    2. plamenpetkov says

      notice how none of the people replying refuted your (correct) statements but instead talked about Trump.

    3. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      Trump will be doing the same thing for Americans if he gets re-elected.
      Pompeo will make sure of it.

      1. XSFRGR says

        Trump is little more than a big orange Shabbos Goy doing the bidding of his masters.

        1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

          Name a politician who is different other then color scheme.

  8. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

    Governments have been responsible for many of their subject’s deaths for as long as there have been governments.

  9. stevek9 says

    Interested in your take on the German protest today.

    1. James Willy says

      Another nothing burger. Back to work monday. What a waste of time it was.

  10. voza0db says

    NO SURPRISE HERE! The SRF & Billionaires MAIN GOAL is clear.

    What is it that is SO DIFFICULT for the herd of moron slaves to understand that the SRF & Billionaires & jesters, with the help and support of many slaves with college titles and “expert” labels, just want to PUT MILLIONS (if lucky, billions) OF US IN PERPETUAL REST?!

    OPERATION COVID-19 just tested, with great success, the compliance of the herd of moron slaves to OBEY ORDERS even if they know that obeying them might cause death!

    Next they will deploy OPERATION “THE GREAT REST” (I renamed it!)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65e568a0d15743b0759c147f0b05ee99f682893a7db4945bb89478c3f8574a8b.png

    ENJOY THE SHOW…

  11. David Bedford says

    I knew something bad was going to happen leading up to 2020 I just had a bad gut feeling, we have Bill Gates and all these politicians who are anything but Christian yet they always play up on their ‘Christian values’, they talk about how the human population is out of control and Bill Gates even went as far as to say during a Ted Talk that with the help of reproductive health care (aka abortions) and vaccines we would be able to slow down the population growth. He literally admitted to wanting to cull the population but said it in a way to make it look like he is some fucking philanthropist. This man should not be on TV recommending what we all do with our health, he is repulsive!

  12. cechas vodobenikov says

    China during Mao improved conditions more than any nation except USSR during Stalin than in all nations w the possible exception of Ghenghis Khan—–anglophone thinking is pro empire and fascist
    covid his not yet understood as to prevalence , lethality, preferred treatment nor prevention

  13. L Garou says

    The Bureaucrat Plague is the worst plague, ever..

  14. watcher12 says

    good comparisons. Good that you are up and writing again.

  15. nick1111 says

    Jews pull the strings in US

  16. Nic Nicol says

    As an American white male who believes 100% in the founding of this nation. This federal government operating as THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA as a corporate empire is not our government. They are a criminal corporation that is owned and operated by the richest elite. Foreign entities controlling through the illegal private conglomerate of world banks known as THE FEDERAL RESERVE. This is a trick that has been played on both the American people and the world. The very idea that these imposters claim we are a democracy is repugnant. The fathers of this nation expressed their thoughts on democracy in well documented quotes. Benjamin Franklin said “ democracy is like to wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote“ Thomas Jefferson said “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule. Where 51% of the people take away the rights of the other 49%”. Alexander Hamilton said “We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline to much to democracy we shall soon shoot into a monarchy or some other form of dictatorship. Our real disease is democracy”. This is just a few of the quotes that can be found among the many. Through the systematic slow progression of propaganda, government controlled education, corporate lobbyists and censorship the American people were brainwashed into believing this is our government. Fortunately those of us that have escaped from the effects of the 24/7 indoctrination programing have spent time learning and sharing vital information about our founding. These people calling themselves our government take oath to our constitution and claim it as the supreme law of the land. In doing so the place themselves under the rules set within. Because of the fact that they have violated almost all of the rules set within our constitution and created legislation illegally depriving the people of their rights they can be held criminally under our law. There are many criminal codes that were set up at the founding to hold government liable should they act as they have. We that understand these things have been working diligently against the largest and most effective brainwashing machine the world has ever seen. We are reaching people. In spite of their power people are waking up. Things feel dire because of those who have been pulled to the right or the left creating huge division that keeps them blind to the realities. But we are advancing we are pulling people back from the extremes. When we get enough Americans out of their cognitive dissidence we will use our law to indict prosecute him and sentence these traitors to the fullest extent of the law. The cornerstone of this nation is individual liberty. That we are all born equal and free. That government is here at our pleasure. As we are the rulers and they are the servants to the people. We will return this nation to one that truly represents freedom. The atrocities that this government has committed will be dealt with. I the ideas that formed this nation were meant not only for us but for all the people of the world. Every human born has inalienable rights. They are rights not granted by men but by the natural rights of everyone. Our government did not grant them. Thus they have no claim or authority over them. Neither does any other nations government in the world. We all must understand that there is no one on earth above anyone of us. There’s only three situation‘s that authority over another is legitimate. The first one is a parents authority over their children. One that is there until they become of age. The second is a rate of a victim of a crime with evidence to see the accused in court to settle the matter. The accused remains innocent and it must be proved to a jury of his peers that the crime had been committed the authority is only extended if proved guilty but ends when the debt has been repaid. The final legitimate claim of authority over another is when someone of their own free will gives their rights up to go into service of another. Like those who go into government in-service of the people. They are not leaders they are servants. Nobody forced them to take the position and in many cases they even beg for our approval to take the position. But since force cannot be used to take someone’s rights they may leave office and have rights restored at any time. We will deal with our government here in America it’s time for everyone around the world to deal with theirs. The way this is done is outlined in my final statement. A statement that makes clear our decisions and their consequences. United we stand divided we fall.

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