Poll: Justified Extermination

[Paragon Fury]

Alright, so inspired by a long-running debate in the WoW community and 2.5 hour long debate I had with a friend the other day, I'm going to drop a heavier topic here on the Escapist;

Is the complete extermination of a race or group ever justified, even if it is the only pragmatic and practical way to ensure the safety and survival of a larger group?

The reason this comes up within the WoW community is because of a particular faction within the Horde side - the Forsaken.

The Forsaken are Human (and some Elven) Undead created by the Scourge Plague, a weapon designed by the Burning Legion to allow them to conquer Azeroth. The Scourge - what those raised and affected by the plague are called - was the primary weapon and under the control of the Lich King and used against all the races of Azeroth. It infected live humans and raised the dead, turning them into zombies and undead abominations used as shock and mass wave troops against the peoples of Azeroth, along with the Lich King's various other biological and magical weapons.

The Forsaken are a group of Scourge, lead by the Undead Banshee Slyvanas Windrunner, who broke free of the Lich King's control and rebelled against him, taking with them the knowledge of plagues and the magic of undeath.

While the general stance of Horde players and the Horde in-game is that while the Forsaken can be evil, there are still a sentient race and at the very least deserved to be left or alone (and the Tauren believe they can eventually cure the Blight which afflicts the Forsaken, turning them back into regular humans).

Players of the Alliance and much of the Alliance in-game believe, however, that the Forsaken are unholy abominations are that their "free will" and sentience is merely a cruel joke and psychological weapon used against the people trying to fight them. Every major faith in the Alliance believes that undeath is a curse and a disgusting abomination that can't be allowed, and it personally offends several of the cultures and peoples of the Alliance most notably the Humans, who are used to make more Forsaken and suffered the most under the Scourge.

The Alliance's case however, is helped by the actions of the Forsaken; even the Horde have a hard time defending the actions of the Forsaken and their leader, Slyvanas Windrunner. Since their inclusion in the Horde the Forsaken have constantly used weapons of mass destruction and biological warfare against the Alliance and others, including developing new plagues and the continued use of the Scourge plague to raise more fallen humans as Forsaken. Sylvanas has gone so far as to attack and use these weapons against multiple Alliance and Human settlements including Southshore and Hillsbrad. She has also directly defied Horde leadership multiple times, including attacking the human kingdom of Gilneas and poisoning the land so badly with the Blight that not even Forsaken can use the land anymore.

Slyvanas have also put their own survival and agendas over the Horde's many times including the betrayal at the Wraithgate (where Forsaken forces plaguebombed Alliance AND Horde forces in an attempt to get at the Lich King) and most recently -

LEGION SPOILERS AHEAD

Spoiler

In the Stormheim zone attempting to enslave a Titan Watcher (basically a god) in order to make herself into a near demi-god, unable to die and able to forcefully raise the fallen of ANY race on Azeroth into the ranks of the Forsaken, and not just Humans and Elves.

Because of all the above and more, including then fact that there is basically NO dissent at all from ANY Forsaken at any time for their actions and in fact they continue to actively support and worship Slyvanas almost as if she was some kind of deity, and in fact continue to act as if they are in the service of the Lich King despite having left him behind; most Alliance believe the only sensible and pragmatic course of action is to simply exterminate ALL Forsaken and reclaim the Human and Dwarven lands they have stolen in order to protect the Alliance and stop Forsaken from committing any more atrocities.

Which is the crux of the debate on the forums and the one I had with my friend; if a culture, race, religion etc. seems to be so corrupt, so hell-bent and so dangerous to everyone around them...are you justified in wiping them out completely? As in completely extermination them? Or does the fact that they're sentient somehow mean they need to be preserved?

Or, as I argued, does their sentience actually make their crimes worse, as they are willingly following this path?

And because I have a reputation to maintain;

Spoiler

 

[Saelune]

Yes, but only in some crazy sci-fi/fantasy scenario. Ya know...like zombies. However, I never subscribed to the "entire race is Neutral Evil" thing of old DnD, and am always open to anything being able to not be evil. So even if we found out say, Werewolves, Vampires, or some other crazy monster species, I could believe some are good.

Really it has to be a brain-dead species, like zombies. If its something with children (ie has offspring that grow up), Id have to assume that nurturing it to go against its tendencies is probably possible. If it has free-will/thought, it can think/want to not do bad things.

 

[The Philistine]

You have to have something cartoonishly evil and destructive for it to be justifiable. The closer to real life something is, the more abhorrent the suggestion becomes.

 

[Paragon Fury]

You have to have something cartoonishly evil and destructive for it to be justifiable. The closer to real life something is, the more abhorrent the suggestion becomes.

Basically, take the Nazis, but instead of there being doubts and in-fighting among the population and leadership of Germans, replace that with near Imperial Japan or North Korean fervent worship of their leaders for Adolf Hitler, and the general populace fully supports and is dedicated to the idea of the Aryan Race and the extermination/conversion of all non-Germans/Aryans into them and constantly tries to improve or come up with newer, more horrific ways to make this happen.

 

[Saelune]

You have to have something cartoonishly evil and destructive for it to be justifiable. The closer to real life something is, the more abhorrent the suggestion becomes.

Basically, take the Nazis, but instead of there being doubts and in-fighting among the population and leadership of Germans, replace that with near Imperial Japan or North Korean fervent worship of their leaders for Adolf Hitler, and the general populace fully supports and is dedicated to the idea of the Aryan Race and the extermination/conversion of all non-Germans/Aryans into them and constantly tries to improve or come up with newer, more horrific ways to make this happen.

A common time travel trope is the idea of going back and killing Hitler. But really, the better thing to do would be go back and preventing Hitler from being an evil douche, perhaps by going to a child Hitler and helping him make friends with the Epstein's next door.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Purge them all! The Galaxy belongs to Humanity, and living corpses are abominations. There is no room in this Galaxy for them.
I say unleash the Wolves!

 

[FalloutJack]

It worked for our ancient ancestors. The current homo sapien setup is due largely to the purging of other varients.

 

[Zontar]

It worked for our ancient ancestors. The current homo sapien setup is due largely to the purging of other varients.

We don't really know that though, since we also have a biology that made us better suited for the environment (Neanderthals, for example, needed 10 times as much meat as we do each day, giving us a massive advantage in Europe and North Asia). We know we interbred with them, but we don't know if we actively killed them or simply out-competed them for resources.

That being said, there are plenty of ways one can justify extermination without the need to vilify those who it needs to be done against. An example is a species whose existence endangers the existence of our own.

 

[FalloutJack]

It worked for our ancient ancestors. The current homo sapien setup is due largely to the purging of other varients.

We don't really know that though, since we also have a biology that made us better suited for the environment (Neanderthals, for example, needed 10 times as much meat as we do each day, giving us a massive advantage in Europe and North Asia). We know we interbred with them, but we don't know if we actively killed them or simply out-competed them for resources.

That being said, there are plenty of ways one can justify extermination without the need to vilify those who it needs to be done against. An example is a species whose existence endangers the existence of our own.

There was some interbreeding. There was not a huge amount of it. Adaptation and environment would have definitely been a factor. I heard somewhere, though, that a natural territorial instinct came into play, a need to dominate the surroundings. I could be misremembering something, but I wouldn't discount it.

 

[Zontar]

It worked for our ancient ancestors. The current homo sapien setup is due largely to the purging of other varients.

We don't really know that though, since we also have a biology that made us better suited for the environment (Neanderthals, for example, needed 10 times as much meat as we do each day, giving us a massive advantage in Europe and North Asia). We know we interbred with them, but we don't know if we actively killed them or simply out-competed them for resources.

That being said, there are plenty of ways one can justify extermination without the need to vilify those who it needs to be done against. An example is a species whose existence endangers the existence of our own.

There was some interbreeding. There was not a huge amount of it. Adaptation and environment would have definitely been a factor. I heard somewhere, though, that a natural territorial instinct came into play, a need to dominate the surroundings. I could be misremembering something, but I wouldn't discount it.

Well the simple answer is "we don't know" and probably never will. We know that interbreeding has gone back at least 50,000 years, and that there is significantly more Neanderthal DNA in South and West Europeans then any other group. We also know that due to how many calories their bodies burned and the proportion of meat and plants they needed compared to our own means that they needed ten times as much space to sustain one of them then we needed to do the same. We also have evidence of some fighting, though given that it took 12,000 years to drive them to extinction it was obviously not a sustained thing.

However it happened, we won the game of life, though a part of them remains in us.

 

[SupahEwok]

Is the complete extermination of a race or group ever justified, even if it is the only pragmatic and practical way to ensure the safety and survival of a larger group?
[/spoiler]

Yes.

Cuz fuck slugs, man. Burn them all in salt.

 

[Erttheking]

Only if the species is always neutral/chaotic evil. Which, needless to say, is fairly unlikely.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

It worked for our ancient ancestors. The current homo sapien setup is due largely to the purging of other varients.

We don't really know that though, since we also have a biology that made us better suited for the environment (Neanderthals, for example, needed 10 times as much meat as we do each day, giving us a massive advantage in Europe and North Asia). We know we interbred with them, but we don't know if we actively killed them or simply out-competed them for resources.

That being said, there are plenty of ways one can justify extermination without the need to vilify those who it needs to be done against. An example is a species whose existence endangers the existence of our own.

There was some interbreeding. There was not a huge amount of it. Adaptation and environment would have definitely been a factor. I heard somewhere, though, that a natural territorial instinct came into play, a need to dominate the surroundings. I could be misremembering something, but I wouldn't discount it.

All Europeans and Asians have some Neanderthal DNA, that suggests that it wasn't "some" interbreeding, it was rather extensive. Simply put, even with dilution over generations, the original sample size required to pass at least some of the traits on to all of their descendants, has to be a very large percentage of those ancestors. It's been posited that we simply bread them out of existence, because the majority of their genes may have been recessive compared to ours. Also remember primates in general tend to be more cooperative in nature, even with different branches of their species, than combative. The reason being is that combat expends huge amounts of resources that, without at least an agricultural civilization, are too hard to procure to justify waging long term aggression. This is why what we'd classify as war is something that's unique to humans, because our resource claims are static. Sure apes and monkeys might fight over a particular resource on occasion, but that's usually due to said resource being claimed simultaneously by both groups. If the pickings are bad where you were, you and another group find say a richly productive set of say, fruit trees, but then there isn't enough for both groups. That's when there's a fight. If there is plenty for everyone, fighting becomes pointless, because you'll expend more energy fighting than the fighting is actually worth. The fighting only occurs when there are two, or more groups, but resources at hand are just enough to ensure only one group is fed for the foreseeable future.

OT: This is a "do the ends justify the means" question, the answer realistically is always a resounding "No!"... We can make excuses in an attempt to justify such things, but ultimately it's the result of a major failing, usually on the part of a megalomaniacal leader, with a god complex and a massive inferiority complex.

 

[Thaluikhain]

If they have free will, then not all of them would be evil. A deliberate policy of extermination would thus be wrong.

However, during times of war, it's accepted that a number of innocent people will get killed. How many, and how much this needs to be avoided is a matter of debate, but if you accept a war, you accept some innocent deaths.

Now, if in order to win the war you need to kill the hostile ones, and it just so happens that all the innocent ones happen to get killed as well...that's horrific, but defensible.

 

[Zontar]

All Europeans and Asians have some Neanderthal DNA, that suggests that it wasn't "some" interbreeding, it was rather extensive.

Well, to be fair, much of that could come from a small number of people who interbreed in the initial leaving of Africa, given the bottleneck of those outside of Africa was as small as 200 people. Have a tribe of a few dozen make contact in Levant and two or three generations later that's all that's needed. Now of course there's likely much more then that which happened (and we know that between 50,000 years ago up to their extinction interbreeding did happen) but most of the genetic material common to all non-African humans likely stems from a small number of people breeding with another small group early on in the spread of our species.

Humanity, F**k Yeah!

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

All Europeans and Asians have some Neanderthal DNA, that suggests that it wasn't "some" interbreeding, it was rather extensive.

Well, to be fair, much of that could come from a small number of people who interbreed in the initial leaving of Africa, given the bottleneck of those outside of Africa was as small as 200 people. Have a tribe of a few dozen make contact in Levant and two or three generations later that's all that's needed. Now of course there's likely much more then that which happened (and we know that between 50,000 years ago up to their extinction interbreeding did happen) but most of the genetic material common to all non-African humans likely stems from a small number of people breeding with another small group early on in the spread of our species.

Humanity, F**k Yeah!

Every Human living today, who isn't of purely African descent has 1-4% Neanderthal DNA minimum. Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago, humans hit Europe around 60,000-80,000 years ago at the latest, and 60,000 years ago we hit Asia. That's about 20,000 years of coexistence at minimum with Neanderthals. Also this bottleneck? If that were true, most modern humans would not exist, because a stable minimum breeding population for genetic diversity, especially in humans, is 5,000 individuals. We numbered significantly more than that in the northern lands before the last ice age, which ended 13,000 years ago. Since all Cr-magnon humans(modern humans), except for purely African individuals, have at minimum 1-4% Neanderthal DNA, after 40,000 years of genetic dilution... That means that interbreeding with Neanderthals humans with Cro-magnon humans was widespread and fairly constant until the extinction of our Neanderthal cousins. Especailly considering that more northern subsets throughout European and Asian bloodlines have up to 20% Neanderthal DNA.

So Humanity saw a grim change. A human cousin of ours wasn't as adaptive as we are, but their lineage lives on in the majority of us.

 

[Zontar]

Also this bottleneck? If that were true, most modern humans would not exist, because a stable minimum breeding population for genetic diversity, especially in humans, is 5,000 individuals.

Actually is't around 130, with the number dropping to to as little as 70-90 if you are careful in planning over the course of multiple generations to prevent inbreeding. Necessary genetic diversity isn't as high as some would suspect, as for most of human history we as a species have been marrying people who are either second or third cousins (and for the past thousand years first cousins in much of the Islamic world, though that has had a measurably negative effect on many ethnic groups in North Africa, Arabia and West Asia).

I'm unsure if new discoveries have been made on the issue, but the first wave of our ancestors who moved from Africa to Eurasia where estimated to be around 200-300 people. While other waves of Homo-Sapiens did move out over history, that initial group is the one all non-Africans can find direct descent from, while those after it tend to have large but not all encompassing swaths of Eurasia that can be linked to them.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Also this bottleneck? If that were true, most modern humans would not exist, because a stable minimum breeding population for genetic diversity, especially in humans, is 5,000 individuals.

Actually is't around 130, with the number dropping to to as little as 70-90 if you are careful in planning over the course of multiple generations to prevent inbreeding. Necessary genetic diversity isn't as high as some would suspect

No it's literally a minimum of 5,000 individuals. Less than that and a species/sub-group will go extinct within a few generations, without the aid of outside intervention.

 

[Zontar]

Also this bottleneck? If that were true, most modern humans would not exist, because a stable minimum breeding population for genetic diversity, especially in humans, is 5,000 individuals.

Actually is't around 130, with the number dropping to to as little as 70-90 if you are careful in planning over the course of multiple generations to prevent inbreeding. Necessary genetic diversity isn't as high as some would suspect

No it's literally a minimum of 5,000 individuals. Less than that and a species/sub-group will go extinct within a few generations, without the aid of outside intervention.

I'm not sure where you got that information, because that's wrong (specifically due to the fact that the number differs greatly depending on both the species and the genetic diversity within the group in question).

Though it's also a moot point given there was outside intervention in the form of Neanderthals, Denisovan and later groups of humans. The only thing is that those later groups of humans don't have all non-Africans as their decedents.