You’re missing his main point. The Nazis hid what they were doing. They knew that what they were doing would shock the world. Stalin didn’t publicize his actions either. North Korea doesn’t brag about it’s camps either. They know that their actions would appall the world so they hide it behind closed doors and propaganda to distract. Several centuries ago, they would have done it in the open and no one would have been shocked. Such cruelty was expected of the strong towards the vanquished and weak.
Thanks to greater populations and modern technology, they can kill many more than in the past.
Africa is a good example of a harsher past. Many of the tribes still have the attitudes of the past, so they have no shame in beating to death thousands (ala Rwanda). But even there you can see changes as many Africans resist such brutality. Remember, the Rwandan genocide was stopped by Rwandans themselves.
Abortion? Do you think that unwanted pregnancies weren’t aborted in the past? If the right herbs weren’t available, then how many children were simply abandoned or exposed in the past? Today an abandoned newborn shocks us. But centuries ago, they were simply a fact of life.
Even the Muslims with their barbaric faith, hide some of the worst aspects of their culture (the massive molestation of young boys) in the face of condemnation. Still, they do represent the most backwards and heinous of modern cultures.
Stopped? They killed a million people before they were "stopped." That's not being stopped, that's running out of people to slaughter because thy're all dead!
I don’t think so. Jihadists hide their violence? No, they broadcast it to the world, for intimidation purposes. Cruelty as a means of political control is useless if unknown. Do you think people in North Korea don’t know about the brutality of the camps? Word spreads by word of mouth. Moreover, the rest of the world knows that they are horrible—no, we don’t know the full extent of the horror and yes Kim Jong Il does his best to keep information from getting out but it does get out and we know about it.
The same goes for the killing fields of Cambodia, Idi Amin, Rwanda. Stalin’s brutality was well known within the USSR and well enough known outside. Yes the intelligentsia in the West denied it and lied about it but the word got out to the rest of the world. Yes, many of these tyrants (Hitler etc.) tried to hide as much as they could of what they were doing, but the groups they seek to intimidate know very well what is happening to their fellow group members—otherwise the intimidation factor is lost. When someone like Kim Jong Il wants to intimidate the entire population, he makes sure the entire population knows and acts of utter brutality are crucial for that purpose.
Pinker is a fool. The exact same thing he is saying was said in the late 1800s—enlightened modern folk had turned their backs on the primitive brutal evil violent past. No more of that. Then came World War I, the Armenians, the Soviets and so on and so forth. Now there’s a comparative lull for forty or fifty years (and a lull only in relative terms) and he extrapolates to some great change.
It may well be true that certain situtations of political tyranny will favor merely making people disappear, as some of the South American dictators did. I can imagine that the Brave New World/Walden II dictators who lie just over the horizon in our neck of the woods may indeed want to avoid public executions and tortures in favor of hidden drugging up in “mental hospitals” and “sensitivity training campuses”—using mind-altering drugs to torture people by depriving them even of their own consciousness, their own ability to talk to themselves and their fellow prisoners, of the ability to bear witness to Truth even in the limited circumstances of the “sensitivity concentration camps.”
But the use of open brutality and violence to intimidate large blocs of people will never disappear. Yes, the tyrants may become even more sophisticated in their methods, but non-violent they will never be and never were.
Nothing’s really changed, Pinker. Prattle along to your fellow ivory tower pinheads. Meanwhile people around the world know very well that sadistic, brutal cruelty for political and religious control is alive and well. No amount of PinkerPontification can eliminate it.