Joseph Stalin Explains Covid-19, Black Lives MatterTragic vs. statistical deaths.Thu Jul 2, 2020 Raymond Ibrahim Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center“One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.†This pithy aphorism—variants of which have been attributed to several historical figures, mostly Joseph Stalin—is key to understanding the hysteria that has dominated the first half of 2020 in the USA.
Its meaning seems simple enough: death only matters inasmuch as the ones dying are made to matter. Accordingly, if just one person dies—but you know (and presumably like) that person—such a death becomes “tragic.†Conversely, no matter how astronomical their number, the deaths of nameless and faceless people carry no “intimateâ€â€”that is to say, no emotional or sentimental—factor. They are just “statistics.†(This latter view is bolstered by the fact that death is inevitable and comes in a myriad of ways. So why obsess over or be shocked by it—especially when it comes to strangers?)
Communist dictator Joseph Stalin’s association with the axiom that “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic†is often referenced today to explain how he managed to kill millions of his own people. By seeing that his victims largely remained nameless and faceless, he ensured that their otherwise tragic deaths would appear as mere and inevitable statistics.
Ironically, while this would be an example of how a dictator can present his diabolical deeds as benign, since the start of 2020, the reverse tactic has been used in the US: a comparatively few deaths that, like so many before them, might have remained statistical, have been presented as personal tragedies in order to scare, demoralize, and demonize America.
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https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/joseph-stalin-explains-covid-19-blm-raymond-ibrahim/
