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[[1] Le Monde. (1997, October 31). Les divisions d’une équipe d’historiens du communisme. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.
"Le Livre noir du communisme, ouvrage collectif d'une dizaine d'historiens doit marquer les esprits. « Une bible , expliquent l'éditeur Bernard Fixot et l'historien Stéphane Courtois, coordonnateur de l'ouvrage. Pour la première fois, en plus de huit cents pages, une dizaine de spécialistes dressent un bilan des victimes du communisme à travers le monde, qu'ils chiffrent à près de « cent millions de morts »." (n.p.) [The Black Book of Communism, a collective work by a dozen historians, must have made an impression. "A bible," explain the publisher Bernard Fixot and the historian Stéphane Courtois, coordinator of the book. For the first time, in more than eight hundred pages, a dozen specialists draw up an assessment of the victims of communism throughout the world, which they estimate at nearly "one hundred million dead]
[2] Le Monde. (1997, October 31). Les divisions d’une équipe d’historiens du communisme. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.
"Jean-Louis Margolin et Nicolas Werth reprochent à Stéphane Courtois de considérer « la dimension criminelle comme l'une des dimensions propres à l'ensemble du système communiste », ainsi qu'il l'écrit dans son texte. « Cela revient à enlever son caractère historique au phénomène, affirme Jean-Louis Margolin…" (n.p.) [Jean-Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth reproach Stéphane Courtois for considering "the criminal dimension as one of the dimensions specific to the entire communist system", as he writes in his text. "This amounts to depriving the phenomenon of its historical character," says Jean-Louis Margolin. (n.p.)]
[3] Maisano, C. (2025, January 15). The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History. Jacobin. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.
"Some of the coauthors of the book were enraged by the preface Courtois had composed. Werth, who independently wrote nearly a third of the book, and Margolin, the author of over 160 pages on communism in East Asia, tried to retract their contributions altogether. They gave up only because their lawyers told them it was impossible. However, they immediately distanced themselves in public from both Courtois and the book.” (n.p.)
[4] Le Monde. (1997, October 31). Les divisions d’une équipe d’historiens du communisme. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.
"Karel Bartosek a pour sa part démissionné du comité de rédaction de la revue Communisme que Stéphane Courtois a fondée avec Annie Kriegel, aujourd'hui disparue , à l'instar de Nicolas Werth." (n.p.) ["Karel Bartosek has resigned from the editorial board of the journal Communisme that Stéphane Courtois founded with Annie Kriegel, now deceased, like Nicolas Werth." (n.p.)]
[5] Maisano, C. (2025, January 15). The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History. Jacobin. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.
"First, they accused the editor of being obsessed with arriving at a round figure of one hundred million dead that was factually incorrect. They pointed out that Courtois arbitrarily made up the figures of twenty million dead in the USSR and a million dead in Vietnam on his own, which neither of them had cited in their own chapters in the book" (n.p.)
[6] The Grayzone. (2017, November 22). US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’. https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/.
"While large numbers of people died under the watch of governments that identified as communist, this fake statistic includes the tens of millions of Soviets who died during Nazi Germany’s genocidal onslaught in World War II as supposed “victims of communism.”" (n.p.)
[7] The Grayzone. (2017, November 22). US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’. https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/.
"Perhaps more troubling than The Black Book of Communism’s many egregious errors is the fact that it counts Nazi–collaborating fascists, anti-Semitic White Army fighters, and czarist officers who oversaw genocidal pogroms against Jews in its list of “victims of communism.”" (n.p.)
[8] Maisano, C. (2025, January 15). The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History. Jacobin. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.
"The book’s treatment of communism in Latin America is so one-sided that it might as well be plucked from a US State Department report. We are given the total count of war victims in Sandinista Nicaragua, but we are not told that most of those deaths were caused by the US-funded contras, referred to here as the “anti-Sandinista resistance.”" (n.p.)
[9] The Grayzone. (2017, November 22). US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’. https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/.
"The number of people killed by governments identified as communist is still hotly debated in scholarly literature. There is frequently a double standard applied to Marxist-Leninist states that is not applied to capitalist ones: deaths from hunger, famine and other non-violent causes, even “lost births” that did not actually happen, are often attributed to communism..." (n.p.)
[10] Courtois, S., Werth, N., Panné, J.-L., Paczkowski, A., Bartošek, K., Margolin, J.-L., & Kramer, M. (Ed.). (1999). The black book of communism: Crimes, terror, repression (J. Murphy, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
"Communism, by contrast, appeared as less of a historical aberration in the Russian borderland of Europe—almost “Asia” after all—where, despite Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, civilization had never taken deep root." (p. xii-xiii)
[11] Mann, C. C. (2006). 1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus. Vintage Books.
"Dobyns argued that the Indian population in 1491 was between 90 and 112 million people... the epidemics killed about one out of every five people on earth. According to W. George Lovell, a geographer at Queen’s University in Ontario, it was “the greatest destruction of lives in human history.”" (p. 78)
[12] Mann, C. C. (2006). 1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus. Vintage Books.
"If Dobyns was right, disease claimed the lives of 80 to 100 million Indians by the first third of the seventeenth century." (p. 78)
[13] Mann, C. C. (2006). 1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus. Vintage Books.
"According to a 1999 estimate from the United Nations, the earth’s population in the beginning of the sixteenth century was about 500 million. If Dobyns was right, disease claimed the lives of 80 to 100 million Indians by the first third of the seventeenth century... the epidemics killed about one out of every five people on earth." (p. 78)
[14] Patterson, P. M., Matsumoto, M., & Smith, C. (2023). He Huaka'i Honua: Journeys in world history I, to 1500 CE. Honolulu Community College.
"Between 1500–1650, 50% to 90% of the pre-Columbian population was wiped out." (p. 949)
[15] Hochschild, A. (1998). King Leopold’s ghost: A story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin.
"In 1924, the population was reckoned at ten million—a figure later confirmed by subsequent counts. According to these estimates, this would mean that during the Leopold period and its immediate aftermath, the population of the territory dropped by approximately ten million people." (p. 233)
[16] Morel, E. D. (1904). King Leopold's rule in Africa. William Heinemann.
"It takes a long time to kill 20 million souls..." (pp. 104-105)
[17] Ahmed, N. (2022, December 2). How British colonial policy killed 100 million Indians. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians.
"We do not know for sure what India’s pre-colonial mortality rate was, but if we assume it was similar to that of England in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 people), we find that 165 million excess deaths occurred in India during the period from 1881 to 1920." (n.p.)
[18] Stannard, D. E. (1992). American Holocaust: The conquest of the New World. Oxford University Press.
"for every African who survived to become a working slave, between three and four conventionally died during the enslavement process. With a total of 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 Africans surviving to become slaves, this makes for an overall death rate... of anywhere from 36,000,000 to 60,000,000." (p. 317)
[19] Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). World War I: Killed, wounded, and missing. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing.
"Total deaths/killed: 26,671,462" (n.p.)
[20] Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Battle casualties of the Korean War (1950–53) [Image]. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Korean-War/Invasion-and-counterinvasion-1950-51#/media/1/322419/67418.
"2,299,435 total deaths" (n.p.)
[21] Chappell, B. (2022, September 7). Survivors of a massacre in South Korea are still seeking an apology from the U.S. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/07/1121427407/survivors-of-a-massacre-in-south-korea-are-still-seeking-an-apology-from-the-u-s.
"South Korean authorities eventually stopped the violence, but it took nearly six years and cost some 30,000 lives, according to official estimates." (n.p.)
[22] Bennis, P. (2022, March 25). Let's remember Madeleine Albright as who she really was. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-madeleine-albright-as-who-she-really-was.
"In that now-iconic interview, veteran journalist Lesley Stahl questioned Albright... on the catastrophic effect the rigorous US sanctions... had on the Iraqi population. “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died."" (n.p.)
[23] Bennis, P. (2022, March 25). Let's remember Madeleine Albright as who she really was. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-madeleine-albright-as-who-she-really-was.
"“I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”" (n.p.)
[24] Hagopian A, Flaxman AD, Takaro TK, Esa Al Shatari SA, Rajaratnam J, et al. (2013) Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation: Findings from a National Cluster Sample Survey by the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study. PLOS Medicine 10(10): e1001533. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533
"the authors estimate the total excess Iraqi deaths attributable to the war through mid-2011 to be about 405,000... approximately half a million people died in Iraq as a result of the war and subsequent occupation from March 2003 to June 2011." (n.p.)
[25] Oxfam International. (2022, November 14). 85% of world’s population will live in grip of stringent austerity measures next year. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/85-worlds-population-will-live-grip-stringent-austerity-measures-next-year.
"A new report... shows that 85 percent of the world’s population will live in the grip of austerity measures by 2023." (n.p.)
[26] Ritchie, H., Spooner, F., & Roser, M. (2019). Clean water. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/clean-water.
"one in four people in the world does not have access to safe drinking water... Unsafe water is responsible for more than a million deaths each year." (n.p.)
[27] Reid, M. et al. (2023). Scientific advances and the end of tuberculosis. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2823%2901379-X.
"In the 5 years since the HLM, more than 7 million people have died of tuberculosis..." (n.p.)
[28] World Health Organization. (2019). World malaria report 2019. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/330011/9789241565721-eng.pdf?sequence=1.
"In 2018, there were an estimated 405,000 deaths from malaria globally..." (p. xii)
[29] FoodPrint. (n.d.). The problem of food waste. https://foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/.
"America wastes roughly 40 percent of its food." (n.p.)
[30] Mercy Corps. (n.d.). World child hunger facts. https://www.worldhunger.org/world-child-hunger-facts/.
"Approximately 3.1 million children die from undernutrition each year..." (n.p.)
[31] Pew Research Center. (2018, August 7). For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged for decades.
"After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978..." (n.p.)
[32] O'Neill, A. (2024, March 4). World War II: fatalities by country 1939-1945. Statista. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293510/second-world-war-fatalities-per-country/.
"Estimates for the total death count of the Second World War generally range somewhere between 70 and 85 million people." (n.p.)
[33] Turse, N. (2025, April 30). 50 Years After the Vietnam War, Unexploded Bombs Still Kill and Maim. The Intercept. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://theintercept.com/2025/04/30/vietnam-war-anniversary-landmines-bombs/
"The war’s toll continued to rise, with 100,000 more casualties in Vietnam in the 50 years since the conflict technically came to a close and many more in the neighboring nations of Southeast Asia." (n.p.)
[34] Turse, N. (2025, April 30). 50 Years After the Vietnam War, Unexploded Bombs Still Kill and Maim. The Intercept. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from https://theintercept.com/2025/04/30/vietnam-war-anniversary-landmines-bombs/
"The United States unleashed an estimated 30 billion pounds of munitions in Southeast Asia. At least 3.8 million Vietnamese died violent war deaths, an estimated 11.7 million South Vietnamese were forced from their homes, and up to 4.8 million were sprayed with toxic herbicides like Agent Orange." (n.p.)