he 10 Most Dangerous Books Ever Written
In my usual round of reading anything online that I find slightly interesting, I found a few articles on the most dangerous books ever written.
Each one of these lists I encountered are wrought with ideology without any real quantifiable data as to how the listed books are dangerous. Conservative commentators will list books such as Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species or Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, while Liberal commentators take jabs and the Bible and the Quran.
In this article I will set out to compile a list of the truly most dangerous books ever written putting ideology aside and using the raw numbers from how many deaths are attributed to the writings. As casualty figures throughout history are always nebulous I will base my findings on the highest casualty figures quoted. While some may come as no surprise, others should cause one to raise an eyebrow.
Based on these raw figures alone, the most dangerous books ever written would be:
10. The Malleus Maleficarum: (Est Deaths: 12mil)
The official witch hunter’s manual of the Spanish Inquisition. While actual death tolls of the inquisition itself range in the hundreds of thousands, figures have been quoted as high as 12 million deaths from Christian witch hunts inspired from these writings.
Notable Quote:
“But (and this is remarkable) when on the next day the other witch had at first been exposed to the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs, after she had been set quite free, she disclosed the whole matter without the slightest discrepancy from what the other had told…”
Part II Question I Chapter XV
9. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (Est Deaths: 50mil)
The Wealth of Nations is thought to be the original text outlining the science of economics and laying the ground work for Capitalist ideology. There is much debate of the nature of Capitalism and whether or not Imperialist regimes could be considered Capitalistic. Socialist critics of Capitalism will argue that from Capitalism Imperialism is born, and the estimated death toll from Imperialistic regimes (Including the United States) has been quoted upwards of 50 million.
Notable Quote:
“In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.”
The Wealth Of Nations, Book II, Chapter II, p.329, para. 106.
8. The Holy Bible (Est Deaths: 61mil)
With multiple crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the generally blood soaked history of the Catholic Church. The estimated death toll generated from Christian ideology is estimated to be upwards of 61 million.
Noteable Quote:
And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house. And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city. Ezekial 9:5
7. The Quotations of Chairman Mao (Est Deaths: 70mil)
While dictators espousing the ideology of Communism have carved a mind boggling bloody path over the past century alone, The Quotations of Chairman Mao gets special mention not as much from the estimated 30 million Chinese violently killed in the name of Communism but for the 40 million alone that died of famine. The case of Chinese Communism stands not only as an argument against the violence of Communism but against the inefficiency of Communist economics that lead to the starvation of tens of millions. Much debate exists as to how true Chinese Communism is to Karl Marx’s Communist vision.
Notable Quote:
“Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.”
6. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler: (Est Deaths 78mil)
World War 2 was simply the bloodiest war throughout history with virtually no corner of the globe being excluded from the conflict. With the German National Socialist (Nazi) regime at the helm fueled by the writings of Hitler, allied with Benito Mussolini’s Fascism (Which means to “fasten” as a nation) and the Imperialist regime of Japan- the total death toll is estimated at 78 million including over 6 million Jewish victims of the holocaust. Much debate exists as to how true to the ideology of Socialism the National Socialist party of Germany was. Socialists and various followers of Social Democratic ideologies site Fascism and Imperialism as opposing ideologies to Socialism.
Notable Quote:
“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”
5. The Qaran: (Est Deaths: 120mil)
To understand the scope of deaths resulting from Islamic ideology one must understand the vast areas of land covered by practitioners of Islam. The major areas of influence spanned across the Middle East and much of Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and large portions of Africa. There was hardly anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere without some degree of Islamic influence. The adoption of Islam into the Ottoman Empire and the vast area they conquered alone is mind boggling and the last incarnations of the Ottoman Empire lasted till the 1920’s. Modern day Islamic terrorism is only a mere shadow of the former might and carnage that spanned over half the globe throughout a good part of the middle ages.
Notable Quote:
"The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom."
Surah 5:33
4. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: (Est Deaths: 200mil)
At its height, more than 1/3 of the countries in the world claimed to espouse Communist ideology as their modus operandi. The end results have been over 20 million deaths by Democide in Russia, 70 Million in China, and countless other millions in Eastern Europe, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, et al.
While advocates for Communism and Socialism argue that no country has been able to successfully implement a true Communist society, critics of Communism and Socialism cite these failed efforts as means to discount the ideology.
Religious advocates will also target the Atheistic sentiments of Communism and how many victims of Communism died as religious martyrs in societies where religion is outlawed and strict censorship is imposed. Objectively speaking, the anti-religious campaigns of Communist regimes have shown us that those motivated by the notion of extinguishing religion are just as capable of killing on a mass scale as those who believe they are performing the will of their chosen deity.
Notable Quote:
"The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletariat parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, the overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat"
3. The Art of War by Sun Tzu: (Data cannot be quantified)
While I was trying to compile this list based upon quantifiable numbers it soon became obvious that the major contributors to mass scale death would be indirectly responsible for death tolls that cannot be measured.
Written around 200 BC, the fundamentals of this war manual are still practiced today and not just by Generals, but the tactics have been successfully been modified for business and even dating manuals. These time tested tactics have proven effective for any kind of conquest, be it military, monetary, or poon.
Whatever the aims have been, when one wanted to insure victory against their enemies throughout the vast majority of recorded history, they would first be sure to be well studied in the writings of Sun Tzu.
Notable quote:
“A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”
2. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli: (Data cannot be quantified)
The Prince was written in the early 1500’s during politically chaotic times for Italy. The region was broken up into several city-states and there was a great struggle for power between the heads of the city-states and the Catholic Church.
Machiavelli found himself exiled when the Medici took over Florence and wrote the Prince in what some believe was an effort to gain favor with the Medici. The book would not reach publication until 5 years after the death of Machiavelli but would soon land its way in infamy.
In a word, the book was all about power and how to achieve it and more importantly how to keep it. One could say “The end justifies the means” could be the overall theme behind the book. Tyranny, destruction, and death could all be justified in the name of protecting the state.
While The Art of War gave world dictators instructions on how to kill, The Prince gave dictators to justification to kill.
Notable Quote:
“It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.”
1. The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (Est Deaths: 262mil in past 100 years alone.)
If it is true that those who govern can only do so at the consent of the governed than the ultimate question comes down to which writings had the most impact in convincing common people that they needed rulers capable of committing such atrocities?
Hobbes argued that the lives of the common men where hard, brutish and short thus definitive leadership from an unquestioned sovereign was needed if men wanted to be sure their lives weren’t any harder, more brutish, or shorter than they needed to be.
Written during the time of the British Civil War, the Leviathan also argued that unquestioned leadership was needed in order to maintain the peace less every megalomaniacal deviant would cause an uprising in a bid to grab as much power as they could.
With history as the judge, we have seen that mass scale murder was only possible under the reign of an unquestioned ruler or council of rulers, and the more men freed themselves from absolute sovereigns the more peaceful society has become.
For those cultures who still embrace the notion of unquestioned rulers, democide (mass murder by one’s own government) has claimed nearly 300 million lives in the last century alone.
Notable Quote:
"To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.”
Comments and criticisms are appreciated. Please feel free to discuss at length any of these books or the ideas they espouse.
