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* … violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.
* … violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.
** [[Errico Malatesta]], "Anarchism, Authoritarian Socialism and Communism" in ''What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction'' by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) p. 59.
** [[Errico Malatesta]], "Anarchism, Authoritarian Socialism and Communism" in ''What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction'' by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) p. 59.
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* Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety.
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** [[Alan Moore]], [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/21/superheroes-cultural-catastrophe-alan-moore-comics-watchmen Superhero's cultural catastrophy]
* The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to ''count''. How many violent acts has the world seen compared with the number of opportunities? And is that number going up or down? ''[...]'' To be sure, adding up corpses and comparing the tallies across different times and places can seem callous, as if it minimized the tragedy of the victims in less violent decades and regions. But '''a quantitative mindset is in fact the morally enlightened one. It treats every human life as having equal value, rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic. And it holds out the hope that we might identify the causes of violence and thereby implement the measures that are most likely to reduce it.'''
* The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to ''count''. How many violent acts has the world seen compared with the number of opportunities? And is that number going up or down? ''[...]'' To be sure, adding up corpses and comparing the tallies across different times and places can seem callous, as if it minimized the tragedy of the victims in less violent decades and regions. But '''a quantitative mindset is in fact the morally enlightened one. It treats every human life as having equal value, rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic. And it holds out the hope that we might identify the causes of violence and thereby implement the measures that are most likely to reduce it.'''