'In fact, all great states in this [20th] century have been killer states, to a greater or lesser degree. Naturally, the "degree" matters — sometimes very much.'<blockquote>'In fact, both the Soviet and Nazi mass murders must be placed in a wider context. Just as it is unlikely that Nazi racist ideology of itself can account for the murder of the Jews — and so many others — so Leninist amoralism is probably not enough to account for Bolshevik crimes. The crucial intervening historical fact may well be the mass killings of the First World War — of millions of soldiers, but also of thousands of civilians on the high seas by German submarines and of hundreds of thousands of civilians in central Europe by the British hunger blockade.[<a href="[
mises.org];] Arno Mayer makes the important point in regard to World War I that "this immense bloodletting … contributed to inuring Europe to the mass killings of the future." He means this in connection with the Nazis, but it probably also holds for the Communists themselves, witnesses to the results of a war brought about by "capitalist imperialism." None of this, of course, excuses any of the subsequent state criminals.
In fact, all great states in this century have been killer states, to a greater or lesser degree. Naturally, the "degree" matters — sometimes very much. But it makes no sense to isolate one mass atrocity, historically and morally, and then to concentrate on it to the virtual exclusion of all others. The result of such a perverted moralism can only be to elevate to the status of hero leaders who badly wanted hanging, and to bolster the sham rectitude of states that will be all the more prone to murder since history "proves" that they are the "good" states.
- Ralph Raico,
The Taboo Against Truth, September 1989</blockquote>