File format

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_format 

A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.

Some file formats are designed for very particular types of data: PNG files, for example, store bitmapped images using lossless data compression. Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the Ogg format can act as a container for different types of multimedia including any combination of audio and video, with or without text (such as subtitles), and metadata. A text file can contain any stream of characters, including possible control characters, and is encoded in one of various character encoding schemes. Some file formats, such as HTML, scalable vector graphics, and the source code of computer software are text files with defined syntaxes that allow them to be used for specific purposes.

Specifications

File formats often have a published specification describing the encoding method and enabling testing of program intended functionality. Not all formats have freely available specification documents, partly because some developers view their specification documents as trade secrets, and partly because other developers never author a formal specification document, letting precedent set by other already existing programs that use the format define the format via how these existing programs use it.

If the developer of a format doesn't publish free specifications, another developer looking to utilize that kind of file must either reverse engineer the file to find out how to read it or acquire the specification document from the format's developers for a fee and by signing a non-disclosure agreement. The latter approach is possible only when a formal specification document exists. Both strategies require significant time, money, or both; therefore, file formats with publicly available specifications tend to be supported by more programs.

Patents

Patent law, rather than copyright, is more often used to protect a file format. Although patents for file formats are not directly permitted under US law, some formats encode data using patented algorithms. For example, using compression with the GIF file format requires the use of a patented algorithm, and though the patent owner did not initially enforce their patent, they later began collecting royalty fees. This has resulted in a significant decrease in the use of GIFs, and is partly responsible for the development of the alternative PNG format. However, the GIF patent expired in the US in mid-2003, and worldwide in mid-2004.

Identifying file type

Different operating systems have traditionally taken different approaches to determining a particular file's format, with each approach having its own advantages and disadvantages. Most modern operating systems and individual applications need to use all of the following approaches to read "foreign" file formats, if not work with them completely.

Filename extension

Main article: Filename extension

One popular method used by many operating systems, including Windows, macOS, CP/M, DOS, VMS, and VM/CMS, is to determine the format of a file based on the end of its name, more specifically the letters following the final period. This portion of the filename is known as the filename extension. For example, HTML documents are identified by names that end with .html (or .htm), and GIF images by .gif. In the original FAT file system, file names were limited to an eight-character identifier and a three-character extension, known as an 8.3 filename. There are a limited number of three-letter extensions, which can cause a given extension to be used by more than one program. Many formats still use three-character extensions even though modern operating systems and application programs no longer have this limitation. Since there is no standard list of extensions, more than one format can use the same extension, which can confuse both the operating system and users.

One artifact of this approach is that the system can easily be tricked into treating a file as a different format simply by renaming it — an HTML file can, for instance, be easily treated as plain text by renaming it from filename.html to filename.txt. Although this strategy was useful to expert users who could easily understand and manipulate this information, it was often confusing to less technical users, who could accidentally make a file unusable (or "lose" it) by renaming it incorrectly.

This led most versions of Windows and Mac OS to hide the extension when listing files. This prevents the user from accidentally changing the file type, and allows expert users to turn this feature off and display the extensions.

Hiding the extension, however, can create the appearance of two or more identical filenames in the same folder. For example, a company logo may be needed both in .eps format (for publishing) and .png format (for web sites). With the extensions visible, these would appear as the unique filenames: "CompanyLogo.eps" and "CompanyLogo.png". On the other hand, hiding the extensions would make both appear as "CompanyLogo", which can lead to confusion.

Hiding extensions can also pose a security risk. For example, a malicious user could create an executable program with an innocent name such as "Holiday photo.jpg.exe". The ".exe" would be hidden and an unsuspecting user would see "Holiday photo.jpg", which would appear to be a JPEG image, usually unable to harm the machine. However, the operating system would still see the ".exe" extension and run the program, which would then be able to cause harm to the computer. The same is true with files with only one extension: as it is not shown to the user, no information about the file can be deduced without explicitly investigating the file. To further trick users, it is possible to store an icon inside the program, in which case some operating systems' icon assignment for the executable file (.exe) would be overridden with an icon commonly used to represent JPEG images, making the program look like an image. Extensions can also be spoofed: some Microsoft Word macro viruses create a Word file in template format and save it with a .doc extension. Since Word generally ignores extensions and looks at the format of the file, these would open as templates, execute, and spread the virus. This represents a practical problem for Windows systems where extension-hiding is turned on by default.

Internal metadata

A second way to identify a file format is to use information regarding the format stored inside the file itself, either information meant for this purpose or binary strings that happen to always be in specific locations in files of some formats. Since the easiest place to locate them is at the beginning, such area is usually called a file header when it is greater than a few bytes, or a magic number if it is just a few bytes long.

File header

The metadata contained in a file header are usually stored at the start of the file, but might be present in other areas too, often including the end, depending on the file format or the type of data contained. Character-based (text) files usually have character-based headers, whereas binary formats usually have binary headers, although this is not a rule. Text-based file headers usually take up more space, but being human-readable, they can easily be examined by using simple software such as a text editor or a hexadecimal editor.

As well as identifying the file format, file headers may contain metadata about the file and its contents. For example, most image files store information about image format, size, resolution and color space, and optionally authoring information such as who made the image, when and where it was made, what camera model and photographic settings were used (Exif), and so on. Such metadata may be used by software reading or interpreting the file during the loading process and afterwards.

File headers may be used by an operating system to quickly gather information about a file without loading it all into memory, but doing so uses more of a computer's resources than reading directly from the directory information. For instance, when a graphic file manager has to display the contents of a folder, it must read the headers of many files before it can display the appropriate icons, but these will be located in different places on the storage medium thus taking longer to access. A folder containing many files with complex metadata such as thumbnail information may require considerable time before it can be displayed.

If a header is binary hard-coded such that the header itself needs complex interpretation in order to be recognized, especially for metadata content protection's sake, there is a risk that the file format can be misinterpreted. It may even have been badly written at the source. This can result in corrupt metadata which, in extremely bad cases, might even render the file unreadable.

A more complex example of file headers are those used for wrapper (or container) file formats.

Magic number

See also: Magic number (programming) § In files

One way to incorporate file type metadata, often associated with Unix and its derivatives, is to just store a "magic number" inside the file itself. Originally, this term was used for a specific set of 2-byte identifiers at the beginnings of files, but since any binary sequence can be regarded as a number, any feature of a file format which uniquely distinguishes it can be used for identification. GIF images, for instance, always begin with the ASCII representation of either GIF87a or GIF89a, depending upon the standard to which they adhere. Many file types, especially plain-text files, are harder to spot by this method. HTML files, for example, might begin with the string <html> (which is not case sensitive), or an appropriate document type definition that starts with <!DOCTYPE HTML>, or, for XHTML, the XML identifier, which begins with <?xml. The files can also begin with HTML comments, random text, or several empty lines, but still be usable HTML.

The magic number approach offers better guarantees that the format will be identified correctly, and can often determine more precise information about the file. Since reasonably reliable "magic number" tests can be fairly complex, and each file must effectively be tested against every possibility in the magic database, this approach is relatively inefficient, especially for displaying large lists of files (in contrast, file name and metadata-based methods need to check only one piece of data, and match it against a sorted index). Also, data must be read from the file itself, increasing latency as opposed to metadata stored in the directory. Where file types don't lend themselves to recognition in this way, the system must fall back to metadata. It is, however, the best way for a program to check if the file it has been told to process is of the correct format: while the file's name or metadata may be altered independently of its content, failing a well-designed magic number test is a pretty sure sign that the file is either corrupt or of the wrong type. On the other hand, a valid magic number does not guarantee that the file is not corrupt or is of a correct type.

So-called shebang lines in script files are a special case of magic numbers. Here, the magic number is human-readable text that identifies a specific command interpreter and options to be passed to the command interpreter.

Another operating system using magic numbers is AmigaOS, where magic numbers were called "Magic Cookies" and were adopted as a standard system to recognize executables in Hunk executable file format and also to let single programs, tools and utilities deal automatically with their saved data files, or any other kind of file types when saving and loading data. This system was then enhanced with the Amiga standard Datatype recognition system. Another method was the FourCC method, originating in OSType on Macintosh, later adapted by Interchange File Format (IFF) and derivatives.

External metadata

A final way of storing the format of a file is to explicitly store information about the format in the file system, rather than within the file itself.

This approach keeps the metadata separate from both the main data and the name, but is also less portable than either filename extensions or "magic numbers", since the format has to be converted from filesystem to filesystem. While this is also true to an extent with filename extensions—for instance, for compatibility with MS-DOS's three character limit—most forms of storage have a roughly equivalent definition of a file's data and name, but may have varying or no representation of further metadata.

Note that zip files or archive files solve the problem of handling metadata. A utility program collects multiple files together along with metadata about each file and the folders/directories they came from all within one new file (e.g. a zip file with extension .zip). The new file is also compressed and possibly encrypted, but now is transmissible as a single file across operating systems by FTP transmissions or sent by email as an attachment. At the destination, the single file received has to be unzipped by a compatible utility to be useful. The problems of handling metadata are solved this way using zip files or archive files.

Mac OS type-codes

The Mac OS' Hierarchical File System stores codes for creator and type as part of the directory entry for each file. These codes are referred to as OSTypes. These codes could be any 4-byte sequence, but were often selected so that the ASCII representation formed a sequence of meaningful characters, such as an abbreviation of the application's name or the developer's initials. For instance a HyperCard "stack" file has a creator of WILD (from Hypercard's previous name, "WildCard") and a type of STAK. The BBEdit text editor has a creator code of R*ch referring to its original programmer, Rich Siegel. The type code specifies the format of the file, while the creator code specifies the default program to open it with when double-clicked by the user. For example, the user could have several text files all with the type code of TEXT, but which each open in a different program, due to having differing creator codes. This feature was intended so that, for example, human-readable plain-text files could be opened in a general purpose text editor, while programming or HTML code files would open in a specialized editor or IDE. However, this feature was often the source of user confusion, as which program would launch when the files were double-clicked was often unpredictable. RISC OS uses a similar system, consisting of a 12-bit number which can be looked up in a table of descriptions—e.g. the hexadecimal number FF5 is "aliased" to PoScript, representing a PostScript file.

Mac OS X uniform type identifiers (UTIs)

Main article: Uniform Type Identifier

A Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) is a method used in macOS for uniquely identifying "typed" classes of entity, such as file formats. It was developed by Apple as a replacement for OSType (type & creator codes).

The UTI is a Core Foundation string, which uses a reverse-DNS string. Some common and standard types use a domain called public (e.g. public.png for a Portable Network Graphics image), while other domains can be used for third-party types (e.g. com.adobe.pdf for Portable Document Format). UTIs can be defined within a hierarchical structure, known as a conformance hierarchy. Thus, public.png conforms to a supertype of public.image, which itself conforms to a supertype of public.data. A UTI can exist in multiple hierarchies, which provides great flexibility.

In addition to file formats, UTIs can also be used for other entities which can exist in macOS, including:

• Pasteboard data
• Folders (directories)
• Translatable types (as handled by the Translation Manager)
• Bundles
• Frameworks
• Streaming data
• Aliases and symlinks

OS/2 extended attributes

The HPFS, FAT12 and FAT16 (but not FAT32) filesystems allow the storage of "extended attributes" with files. These comprise an arbitrary set of triplets with a name, a coded type for the value and a value, where the names are unique and values can be up to 64 KB long. There are standardized meanings for certain types and names (under OS/2). One such is that the ".TYPE" extended attribute is used to determine the file type. Its value comprises a list of one or more file types associated with the file, each of which is a string, such as "Plain Text" or "HTML document". Thus a file may have several types.

The NTFS filesystem also allows storage of OS/2 extended attributes, as one of the file forks, but this feature is merely present to support the OS/2 subsystem (not present in XP), so the Win32 subsystem treats this information as an opaque block of data and does not use it. Instead, it relies on other file forks to store meta-information in Win32-specific formats. OS/2 extended attributes can still be read and written by Win32 programs, but the data must be entirely parsed by applications.

POSIX extended attributes

On Unix and Unix-like systems, the ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS version 3, XFS, JFS, FFS, and HFS+ filesystems allow the storage of extended attributes with files. These include an arbitrary list of "name=value" strings, where the names are unique and a value can be accessed through its related name.

PRONOM unique identifiers (PUIDs)

The PRONOM Persistent Unique Identifier (PUID) is an extensible scheme of persistent, unique and unambiguous identifiers for file formats, which has been developed by The National Archives of the UK as part of its PRONOM technical registry service. PUIDs can be expressed as Uniform Resource Identifiers using the info:pronom/ namespace. Although not yet widely used outside of UK government and some digital preservation programmes, the PUID scheme does provide greater granularity than most alternative schemes.

MIME types

MIME types are widely used in many Internet-related applications, and increasingly elsewhere, although their usage for on-disc type information is rare. These consist of a standardised system of identifiers (managed by IANA) consisting of a type and a sub-type, separated by a slash—for instance, text/html or image/gif. These were originally intended as a way of identifying what type of file was attached to an e-mail, independent of the source and target operating systems. MIME types identify files on BeOS, AmigaOS 4.0 and MorphOS, as well as store unique application signatures for application launching. In AmigaOS and MorphOS the Mime type system works in parallel with Amiga specific Datatype system.

There are problems with the MIME types though; several organisations and people have created their own MIME types without registering them properly with IANA, which makes the use of this standard awkward in some cases.

File format identifiers (FFIDs)

File format identifiers is another, not widely used way to identify file formats according to their origin and their file category. It was created for the Description Explorer suite of software. It is composed of several digits of the form NNNNNNNNN-XX-YYYYYYY. The first part indicates the organisation origin/maintainer (this number represents a value in a company/standards organisation database), the 2 following digits categorize the type of file in hexadecimal. The final part is composed of the usual filename extension of the file or the international standard number of the file, padded left with zeros. For example, the PNG file specification has the FFID of 000000001-31-0015948 where 31 indicates an image file, 0015948 is the standard number and 000000001 indicates the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

File content based format identification

Another but less popular way to identify the file format is to examine the file contents for distinguishable patterns among file types. The contents of a file are a sequence of bytes and a byte has 256 unique permutations (0–255). Thus, counting the occurrence of byte patterns that is often referred as byte frequency distribution gives distinguishable patterns to identify file types. There are many content-based file type identification schemes that use byte frequency distribution to build the representative models for file type and use any statistical and data mining techniques to identify file types.

File structure

There are several types of ways to structure data in a file. The most usual ones are described below.

Unstructured formats (raw memory dumps)

Earlier file formats used raw data formats that consisted of directly dumping the memory images of one or more structures into the file.

This has several drawbacks. Unless the memory images also have reserved spaces for future extensions, extending and improving this type of structured file is very difficult. It also creates files that might be specific to one platform or programming language (for example a structure containing a Pascal string is not recognized as such in C). On the other hand, developing tools for reading and writing these types of files is very simple.

The limitations of the unstructured formats led to the development of other types of file formats that could be easily extended and be backward compatible at the same time.

Chunk-based formats

In this kind of file structure, each piece of data is embedded in a container that somehow identifies the data. The container's scope can be identified by start- and end-markers of some kind, by an explicit length field somewhere, or by fixed requirements of the file format's definition.

Throughout the 1970s, many programs used formats of this general kind. For example, word-processors such as troff, Script, and Scribe, and database export files such as CSV. Electronic Arts and Commodore-Amiga also used this type of file format in 1985, with their IFF (Interchange File Format) file format.

A container is sometimes called a "chunk", although "chunk" may also imply that each piece is small, and/or that chunks do not contain other chunks; many formats do not impose those requirements.

The information that identifies a particular "chunk" may be called many different things, often terms including "field name", "identifier", "label", or "tag". The identifiers are often human-readable, and classify parts of the data: for example, as a "surname", "address", "rectangle", "font name", etc. These are not the same thing as identifiers in the sense of a database key or serial number (although an identifier may well identify its associated data as such a key).

With this type of file structure, tools that do not know certain chunk identifiers simply skip those that they do not understand. Depending on the actual meaning of the skipped data, this may or may not be useful (CSS explicitly defines such behavior).

This concept has been used again and again by RIFF (Microsoft-IBM equivalent of IFF), PNG, JPEG storage, DER (Distinguished Encoding Rules) encoded streams and files (which were originally described in CCITT X.409:1984 and therefore predate IFF), and Structured Data Exchange Format (SDXF).

Indeed, any data format must somehow identify the significance of its component parts, and embedded boundary-markers are an obvious way to do so:

• MIME headers do this with a colon-separated label at the start of each logical line. MIME headers cannot contain other MIME headers, though the data content of some headers has sub-parts that can be extracted by other conventions.
• CSV and similar files often do this using a header records with field names, and with commas to mark the field boundaries. Like MIME, CSV has no provision for structures with more than one level.
• XML and its kin can be loosely considered a kind of chunk-based format, since data elements are identified by markup that is akin to chunk identifiers. However, it has formal advantages such as schemas and validation, as well as the ability to represent more complex structures such as trees, DAGs, and charts. If XML is considered a "chunk" format, then SGML and its predecessor IBM GML are among the earliest examples of such formats.
• JSON is similar to XML without schemas, cross-references, or a definition for the meaning of repeated field-names, and is often convenient for programmers.
• YAML is similar to JSON, but use indentation to separate data chunks and aim to be more human-readable than JSON or XML.
• Protocol Buffers are in turn similar to JSON, notably replacing boundary-markers in the data with field numbers, which are mapped to/from names by some external mechanism.

Directory-based formats

This is another extensible format, that closely resembles a file system (OLE Documents are actual filesystems), where the file is composed of 'directory entries' that contain the location of the data within the file itself as well as its signatures (and in certain cases its type). Good examples of these types of file structures are disk images, OLE documents TIFF, libraries. ODT and DOCX, being PKZIP-based are chunked and also carry a directory.

Joseph Stalin's cult of personality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin%27s_cult_of_personality 

 

Poster of Stalin displayed at a public event in Leipzig in 1950

 

A celebration of Stalin's purported 70th birthday in the People's Republic of China

 

Stalin at his 70th birthday ceremony with Marshal Nikolai Bulganin, Chinese Communist Leader Mao Zedong, Mongolian Communist Leader Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal and German Communist Leader Walter Ulbricht

Joseph Stalin's cult of personality became a prominent feature of Soviet popular culture in 1929, after a lavish celebration of his purported 50th birthday. For the rest of Stalin's rule, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, with Stalin's name and image appearing everywhere. Historian Archie Brown sets the celebration of Stalin's 50th birthday on 21 December 1929 as the starting point for his cult of personality.

Stalin's image in propaganda and the mass media

Female members of the FDJ carry Stalin's pictures in the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin

The building of the cult of personality around Stalin had to proceed judiciously, as British historian Ian Kershaw explains in his history of Europe in the first half of the 20th century, To Hell and Back:

A Stalin cult had to be built carefully. This was not just because the man himself was so physically unprepossessing – diminutive and squat, his face dominated by a big walrus mustache and heavily pitted from smallpox – or that he was a secretive, intensely private individual who spoke in a quiet, undemonstrative voice, his Russian couched in a strong Georgian accent that never left him. The real problem was the giant shadow of Lenin. Stalin could not be seen to be usurping the legendary image of the great Bolshevik hero and leader of the revolution. So at first Stalin tread cautiously.

Lenin had not wanted Stalin to succeed him, stating that "Comrade Stalin is too rude" and suggesting that the party find someone "more patient, more loyal, more polite". Stalin did not completely succeed in suppressing Lenin's Testament suggesting that others remove Stalin from his position as leader of the Communist party. Nevertheless, after Lenin's death 500,000 copies of a photograph of Lenin and Stalin apparently chatting as friends on a bench appeared throughout the Soviet Union. Before 1932, most Soviet propaganda posters showed Lenin and Stalin together. This propaganda was embraced by Stalin, who weaponized this relationship in speeches to the proletarian, stating Lenin was "the great teacher of the proletarians of all nations" and subsequently identifying himself with the proletarians by their kinship as mutual students of Lenin. However, eventually the two figures merged in the Soviet press; Stalin became the embodiment of Lenin. Initially, the press attributed any and all success within the Soviet Union to the wise leadership of both Lenin and Stalin, but eventually Stalin alone became the professed cause of Soviet well-being.

The celebrations for Stalin's 50th birthday in December 1929 marked the real beginning of the construction of the cult around Stalin. Publicly, Stalin was modest, rejecting suggestions that he was Lenin's equal, but allowing a dual celebration of the two men to proceed, before later shifting it primarily to himself. By 1933, central Moscow had twice as many busts and images of Stalin as of Lenin, and Stalin would receive ovations at his rare public appearances lasting 15 minutes or more.

The Soviet press constantly praised Stalin, describing him as "Great", "Beloved", "Bold", "Wise", "Inspirer", and "Genius". It portrayed him as a caring yet strong father figure, with the Soviet populace as his "children". From 1936, the Soviet press started to refer to Stalin as the "Father of Nations", reminding the peasantry of their image of their previous ruler, the tsar, who was seen as a "stern family patriarch". After years of revolutions and civil war, the Russian people longed for strong and purposeful leadership.

Interactions between Stalin and children became a key element of the personality cult. Stalin often engaged in publicized gift giving exchanges with Soviet children from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. Beginning in 1935, the phrase, "Thank You Dear Comrade Stalin for a Happy Childhood!" appeared above doorways at nurseries, orphanages, and schools; children also chanted this slogan at festivals.

Speeches described Stalin as "Our Best Collective Farm Worker", "Our Shockworker, Our Best of Best", and "Our Darling, Our Guiding Star". The image of Stalin as a father was one way in which Soviet propagandists aimed to incorporate traditional religious symbols and language into the cult of personality; the title of "father" now first and foremost belonged to Stalin, as opposed to the Russian Orthodox priests. The cult of personality also adopted the Christian traditions of procession and devotion to icons through the use of Stalinist parades and effigies. By reapplying various aspects of religion to the cult of personality, the press hoped to shift devotion away from the church and towards Stalin.

Initially, the press also aimed to demonstrate a direct link between Stalin and the common people; newspapers often published collective letters from farm or industrial workers praising the leader, as well as accounts and poems about meeting Stalin. Shortly after the revolution of October 1917 the Ivan Tovstukha drafted up a biographical section featuring Stalin for the Russian Granat Encyclopedia Dictionary. Even though most of the description of Stalin's career was very much embellished, it had gained so much favor with the public that they released a fourteen-page pamphlet of it alone named Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: A Short Biography with a print run of 50,000. However, these sorts of accounts declined after World War II; Stalin drew back from public life, and the press instead began to focus on remote contact (i.e. accounts of receiving a telegram from Stalin or seeing the leader from afar). Another prominent part of Stalin's image in the mass media was his close association with Vladimir Lenin. The Soviet press maintained that Stalin had been Lenin's constant companion while the latter was alive, and that as such, Stalin closely followed Lenin's teachings and could continue the Bolshevik legacy after Lenin's death. Stalin fiercely defended the correctness of Lenin's views in public, and in doing so Stalin implied that, as a faithful follower of Leninism, his own leadership was similarly faultless.

Other displays of devotion

Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film that exhibited fawning devotion. An example was Alexander O. Avdeenko's "Hymn to Stalin", which came from an earlier speech made by him in 1935:

Thank you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Stalin, our inspired leader ... Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be : Stalin ...

Stalin's monument in Prague

Numerous pictures and statues of Stalin adorned public places. In 1955 a giant monument dedicated to Stalin was constructed in Prague and stood until 1962. The statue was a gift for Stalin's sixty-ninth birthday from Prague to commemorate "Mr. Stalin's personalty, mostly from his ideological features". After 5 years in the making, the massive 17,000-ton monument was finally revealed to the public which depicted Stalin, with one at the front of a group of proletarian workers. Statues of Stalin depicted him at a height and build approximating the very tall Tsar Alexander III, but photographic evidence suggests he was between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in (165–168 cm). Stalin-themed art appeared privately, as well: starting in the early 1930s, many private homes included "Stalin rooms" dedicated to the leader and featuring his portrait. Although it was not an official uniform, party leaders throughout the Soviet Union emulated the dictator's usual outfit of dark green jacket, riding breeches, boots, and cap to prove their devotion.

The cult also led to public devotional behavior: by the late 1930s, people would jump out of their seats to stand up whenever Stalin's name was uttered in public meetings and conferences. Nikita Khrushchev described it as "a sort of physical culture we all engaged in."

The advent of the cult also led to a renaming craze: numerous towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader. The Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were also named in his honor, and he accepted several grandiloquent titles (e.g., "Father of Nations", "Builder of Socialism", "Architect of Communism", "Leader of Progressive Humanity") among others.

The cult reached new levels during World War II, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet national anthem.

In December 1949, Stalin celebrated his purported 70th birthday (he had in fact been born in December 1878). His birthday was celebrated extensively throughout the USSR. In the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the former Sanatorium Avenue was renamed to Stalin Avenue. Various statues and institutions were made to honor him. On 2 December 1949, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree to form a government committee centered on Stalin's birthday. 18 days later, the Supreme Soviet awarded the Order of Lenin to Stalin. On 21 December, the day after he was awarded, a ceremonial meeting dedicated to the 70th birthday of Stalin took place in the Bolshoi Theater. Notable world leaders were in attendance, including Chinese leader Mao Zedong and East German Deputy Prime Minister Walter Ulbricht. Marshal of the Mongolian People's Republic Khorloogiin Choibalsan, who was once a favorite of Stalin, did not attend the ceremonies, instead sending General Secretary Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal. For Mao, the celebrations were part of his first state visit to the USSR since taking power.

In many Eastern bloc countries, Stalin's birthday was also celebrated extensively. The Bulgarian city of Varna was renamed to Stalin and Musala was renamed to Stalin Peak. The Gerlachovský štít in Czechoslovakia was also renamed after Stalin.

Stalin and young people

One way Stalin's cult was spread was through the Komsomol, the All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth in Soviet Russia, created in 1918. The ages of these young people ranged from 9 to 28 years old making it a favorable instrument to reshape the members and ideology of the Soviet Union. This organization was created to raise the next generation into the type of socialist that Stalin envisioned. Being a part of this organization was beneficial to the participants for they were favored over a non-member when it came to getting scholarships and jobs. Just like most youth clubs, they focused on their members' education and health, with sports and physical activities. They also focused on the youths' behavior and character. The children were encouraged to reject anyone who didn't embody the values of a socialist. In cases of lying and cheating on the schoolyard, it resulted to "classroom trials". Stalin wanted the best to prevail in his image of the future Soviet Union so he put into effect a decree that would punish juvenile delinquency to ensure the 'good apples' were the ones paving the road for his ideal society.

Organizations like the Komsomol were not the only influences on the children at the time. Cartoons like The Strangers Voice by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, reinforced the idea of a Soviet culture by depicting foreign thinking and customs as unwanted and strange. Children would play their own version of 'Cowboys and Indians' as 'Reds and Whites' with children fighting to play the main party leaders like Stalin.

Illusion of unanimous support

The cult of personality primarily existed among the Soviet masses; there was no explicit manifestation of the cult among the members of the Politburo and other high-ranking Party officials. However, the fear of being marginalized made oppositionists sometimes hesitant to honestly express their viewpoints. This atmosphere of self-censorship created the illusion of undisputed government support for Stalin, and this perceived support further fueled the cult for the Soviet populace. The politburo and comintern secretariat (E.C.C.I.) also gave the impression of being unanimous in its decisions although this was often not the case. Many top ranking leaders in the politburo such as Zhdanov and Kaganovich sometimes disagreed with Stalin. Not all of Stalin's proposals were passed, but this was not made known to people outside the party leadership. The party leadership discussed and debated various alternatives but always presented themselves as monolithic to the outside world to appear stronger, more credible and unified. Among the leadership this was also considered correct Leninist practice, since the Leninist organizational principle of democratic centralism provided "freedom of debate" but required "unity of action" after a decision had been reached. The minority felt it their duty to submit to the will of the majority and Stalin himself practiced this when losing a vote.

Stalin's opinion of his cult

Stalin disapproved and distrusted the personality cult around him. Like Lenin, Stalin acted modestly and unassumingly in public. John Gunther in 1940 described the politeness and good manners to visitors of "the most powerful single human being in the world". In the 1930s Stalin made several speeches that diminished the importance of individual leaders and disparaged the cult forming around him, painting such a cult as un-Bolshevik; instead, he emphasized the importance of broader social forces, such as the working class. Stalin's public actions seemed to support his professed disdain of the cult: Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviet leaders. Walter Duranty stated that Stalin edited a phrase in a draft of an interview by him of the dictator from "inheritor of the mantle of Lenin" to "faithful servant of Lenin".

A banner in 1934 was to feature Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, but Stalin had his name removed from it, yet by 1938 he was more than comfortable with the banner featuring his name. Still, in 1936, Stalin banned renaming places after him. In some memoirs Molotov claimed that Stalin had resisted the cult of personality, but soon came to be comfortable with it.

The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen reported a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin himself at a New Year's Party in 1935, in which he said: "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening." In the beginning of 1938, Nikolai Yezhov proposed renaming Moscow to "Stalinodar". The question was raised at a session of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Stalin, however, reacted entirely negatively to this idea and, for this reason, the city retained the name Moscow.

Veneration of Stalin by the Soviet people for his role as the leader of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II helped to stabilize their belief in the Soviet system, a factor of which Stalin was aware. Historian Archie Brown wrote: "Stalin himself believed that his 'image' ... as a charismatic, almost superhuman, leader helped to solidify support for Communism and to bestow on it legitimacy." It was a constant in Stalin's beliefs that the Russian people, especially the peasants, were used to being ruled by a single person, the tsar, and did not understand the complexities of the structure of power and governance in the Soviet Union. Because of this, there had to be one person who was perceived as the ruler, someone they could, in his words "revere and in whose name to live and labour." In 1940, Gunther noted that "[Stalin] knows the Russians understand a master". The dictator could easily have stopped the adoration but "permitted and encouraged his own virtual deification", he said. "Or perhaps he likes" the worship, Gunther speculated.

However, Stalin discouraged all interest in his private and family life, and divulged only limited personal information. He rarely appeared in public or met with ambassadors, as of 1940 had met only seven foreign journalists for formal interviews in 20 years, and during the first five-year plan made no speeches or public appearances for 18 months.

Nikita Khrushchev in his "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, claimed that Stalin had personally added by hand to the manuscript of the hagiographical Short Biography of Stalin, published in 1948, passages such as: "Although he performed his task as the leader of the party and the people with consummate skill and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation." In addition Khrushchev claimed that Stalin expanded the list of his accomplishments enumerated in the book. Despite this, scholars have cited evidence that cast doubt to Khrushchev's claims. Few scholars today would cite Khrushchev’s speech as a reliable source and it now seems clear that Stalin distrusted the cult of personality around him.

Stories of the childhood of Stalin

On February 16, 1938, after the release of a book called Stories of the Childhood of Stalin, the publishing committee was urged to retract the book, as Stalin claimed that the book was an example of excessive hero worship that elevated his image to idealistic proportions. Stalin spoke disdainfully of this excess, expressing concern that idolatry is no substitute for rigorous Bolshevik study, and could be spun as a fault of Bolshevism by right-deviations in the USSR. Specifically he wrote:

I am absolutely against the publication of "Stories of the childhood of Stalin". The book abounds with a mass of inexactitudes of fact, of alterations, of exaggerations and of unmerited praise. Some amateur writers, scribblers, (perhaps honest scribblers) and some adulators have led the author astray. It is a shame for the author, but a fact remains a fact. But this is not the important thing. The important thing resides in the fact that the book has a tendency to engrave on the minds of Soviet children (and people in general) the personality cult of leaders, of infallible heroes. This is dangerous and detrimental. The theory of "heroes" and the "crowd" is not a Bolshevik, but a SR theory. The heroes make the people, transform them from a crowd into people, thus say the SRs. The people make the heroes, thus reply the Bolsheviks to the SRs. The book carries water to the windmill of the SRs. No matter which book it is that brings the water to the windmill of the SRs, this book is going to drown in our common, Bolshevik cause. I suggest we burn this book.

A more accurate depiction of his childhood and achievements are found in many other areas of writing and genre.

End of the cult and de-Stalinization

O kulcie jednostki i jego następstwach, Warsaw, March 1956, first edition of the Secret Speech, published for the inner use in the PUWP

De-Stalinization was the process of political reform that took place after Stalin's death, where a majority of Joseph Stalin's actions during his reign were condemned and the government reformed. February 1956 was the beginning of the destruction of his image, leadership, and socialist legality under the thaw of Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress. The end of Stalin's leadership was met with positive and negative changes. Changes and consequences revolved around politics, the arts and literature, the economic realm, to the social structure.

His death and the destabilization of his iconic leadership was met with the chance of new reforms and changes to his regime that had originally been immediately locked down under his control. The tight lock he kept on what was published, what was propagated, and what changes to the government and economics, became accessible. With the control that Stalin held being passed on to the government, an endorsed methodology was ideally enacted. There after, a collective leadership system was the result. The result left Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria, Nikolai Bulganin, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich as members of that committee. The program of de-Stalinization was soon after put into effect by Krushchev as he took on an opposite personality into the government. This allowed for better relations with the West in the future.

First wave of de-Stalinization

After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 "Secret Speech" to the Twentieth Party Congress famously denounced Stalin's cult of personality, saying, "It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god." The "Secret Speech" initiated a political reform known as "the overcoming/exposure of the cult of personality", later called de-Stalinization, that sought to eradicate Stalin's influence on the Soviet society. This also led the people to find the liberation to revolt publicly in Poland and Hungary. These changes were inevitably met with opposition. Even after losing favor with Stalin during his leadership, Molotov still argued in favor of Stalin's regime, opposing de-Stalinization and criticizing Stalin's successors. Mao Zedong along with some other communist leaders, while initially supporting the struggle against the "cult of the individual", criticized Khrushchev as an opportunist who merely sought to attack Stalin's leadership and policies in order to implement new different policies that in the Stalin-era would have been considered anti-Marxist Revisionism.

Under Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev, pro-Stalinist forces attempted to re-establish Stalin's reputation as the "Great Leader". Having failed to do so at the 23rd Party Congress in the spring of 1966, they turned to another method, the text of a speech that Brezhnev was scheduled to give in November of that year in Georgia, Stalin's native country. A draft of the speech made by hard-core Stalinists was presented to Brezhnev, who, being a cautious man, distributed it to other officials for their comments. One of his advisors, Georgi Arbatov, with the support of his superior, Yuri Andropov, put the arguments against the draft to Brezhnev: rehabilitating Stalin would complicate the Soviet Union's relations with the Eastern European Communist states, especially those headed by men who had been victims of Stalin's actions; changing the status of Stalin once again, so soon after it had been downgraded, would make things difficult for the Western Communist parties; it would be difficult to reconcile the harsh words spoken against Stalin by prominent Communist leaders at the 20th and 22nd Party Congresses; and finally, it was pointed out that Brezhnev himself had participated in those Congresses, which would raise questions about his own role. As a result of these arguments, the speech was re-written without any mention of rehabilitating Stalin. Even though the anti-Stalinists prevailed in this instance, the use of the phrase "the period of the cult of personality" – referring to 1934-1953 – disappeared, indicating a softening of the official anti-Stalin line. Thus, it became easier for pro-Stalin viewpoints to be published, and harder to get anti-Stalin's works before the public.

Second wave

This changed when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the country's top leadership position. In a speech given in November 1987, on the eve of the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Gorbachev said

It is sometimes asserted that Stalin did not know the facts about the lawlessness. Documents we have at our disposal speak to the fact that this is not so. The guilt of Stalin and of his closest associates before the party and people for indulging in mass repression and lawlessness is enormous and unforgivable. This is a lesson for all generations.

After this, during the period of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring") initiated by Gorbachev, another wave of de-Stalinization took place. This "second wave" evolved into something more fundamentally anti-communist. It condemned not only Stalin but also the other responsible people in the Soviet power hierarchy. In the end, it adopted something closer to a Western democratic structure in place of the traditional closed communist authoritarian system. This campaign aimed to restructure the Soviet Union entirely, engaging public constituencies to diminish communism and bringing an end to the U.S.S.R.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin saw a return of both centralized and authoritarian control of the state and the cult of Stalin, focusing primarily on his role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and the winning of World War II. During this period, in the early 2000s, Russia had lost its role as a global superpower, and restoring the positive legacy of Stalin helped to ameliorate the felt loss of status, bringing back a symbol of the country – albeit the Soviet Union predecessor state – at the height of its power.

Third wave

Nevertheless, a "third wave" of more ambivalent de-Stalinization was still able to get off the ground around 2009. This fostered a reassessment of Stalinism as well as commemorating the victims of his totalitarian regime. For instance, Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russia, said about the Katyn massacre of Polish officers in World War II by the Soviet Army that "Stalin and his henchmen bear responsibility for this crime," echoing a previous statement by the Russian Parliament: "The Katyn crime was committed on direct order by Stalin and other Soviet leaders." Partly driven by the Russian re-engagement with the West, the new de-Stalinization, unlike that under Gorbachev, has not been accompanied by liberalization and reform of the political system, which remains centralized, authoritarian, and dependent on the repression of the people by the security police, much as in Stalin's time. Such a paradoxical situation, where Stalin's reputation is downgraded, but the state is essentially following in the path blazed by him, leads to the ambivalence of the official position. On the one hand, Moscow city officials were prevented from putting up decorations featuring Stalin for the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, with Medvedev saying that Stalin had "committed many crimes against his people. And even though the country achieved success under his guidance, what was done against his own people cannot be forgiven." On the other hand, there is no shortage of publications and television programs glorifying Stalin. Anti-Stalin sentiment is not being suppressed, but neither are pro-Stalin views. And despite the official statements of Stalin's culpability, those in power are still anxious to use the symbolic value of the dictator in support of their own monopolistic hold on the country.

In classrooms across Russia, students are taught out of a modern textbook which represents Stalin as simply an efficient leader who had the unfortunate responsibility to resort to extreme measures to protect Russia and ensure its leadership role on a global scale. A poll in 2019 found that 70% of Russians believed that Stalin had a positive impact on Russian history despite the fact that only 51% of people in Russia still viewed Stalin with a positive attitude.

Social cleansing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cleansing 

Social cleansing (Spanish: limpieza social) is social group-based killing that consists of the elimination of members of society who are considered "undesirable", including, but not limited to, the homeless, criminals, street children, the elderly, the disabled. This phenomenon is caused by a combination of economic and social factors, but killings are notably present in regions with high levels of poverty and disparities of wealth. Perpetrators are usually of the same community as the victims and they are often motivated by the idea that the victims are a drain on the resources of society. Efforts by national and local governments to stop these killings have been largely ineffective. The government and police forces are often involved in the killings, especially in South America.

Causes

Africa

In African countries, social cleansing almost always takes the form of witch hunting which is most common in areas with poor economic circumstances. Several social and economic theories exist as to why such circumstances have arisen and led to accusations of witchcraft, including warfare, natural disasters, unequal patterns of development, and larger forces of globalization. Most scholars agree that the cause of social cleansing efforts is a result of "interaction of economic conditions and cultural factors". All of these theories must be linked to larger societal trends, including the devaluation and social marginalization of women as well as the placement of blame on individuals for their own economic misfortunes in lieu of recognition of global and local economic forces at play. However, several scholars have emphasized the outside groups and circumstances related to these killings to dispute the idea that they are simply a cultural norm.

Economic

In many countries, income disparities have led to social tensions and a climate of "mutual suspicion". The wealthy and powerful are perceived as having obtained their wealth through "evil arts", while the economically disadvantaged are accused of responsibility for misfortunes of the community. There is also evidence that the causes of social cleansing are linked to globalization and economic liberalization, "to the extent that it has stripped entire populations of their means of subsistence, torn communities apart, deepened economic inequalities and forced people to compete for diminishing resources." Many African communities have been destabilized as communal lands have been privatized, local currency has been devalued, and public services have been eliminated. Sometimes these larger economic trends have been linked to more specific events. For example, in Southern Zimbabwe, violent wars led certain areas to be neglected in development efforts, leading to a lack of resources and increasing disparities of wealth in these areas. In Tanzania, scholars have found positive correlations between extreme rainfall (both floods and droughts) and large negative income shocks and famine. These periods have been statistically linked to increases in murder of witches.

Cultural

Several cultural explanations for social cleansing in Africa are related to religion. One that has been offered by scholars is the presence of Pentecostalists, whose focus on the occult has been spread by the media and increased social anxiety. Pentecostalists have been recorded as preaching connections between illness and the devil, which has combined potently with existing indigenous beliefs, most notably in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania. In Tanzania, a positive correlation exists between witch killing and areas where populations practice traditional religions, where the belief in witchcraft is strong. While scholars have suggested that the presence of these beliefs is important because it demonstrates the fact that perpetrators generally do believe that their victims are practicing witchcraft, they also recognize the fact that populations with traditional religious beliefs often have a low socio-economic status, which supports their assertion that poverty is still the primary factor in motivating killings.

Latin America

The most widespread myth about social cleansing in Latin America is that these killings are all related to drug use. However, the phenomenon is larger than the drug problem and is related to state ideology, a culture of violence, and inequitable wealth distribution. Within Colombia specifically, economic factors account for many of the reasons behind these killings, but such factors are additionally "aggravated by external political and economic pressures from the United States".

Economic

Latin America has an extremely large number of individuals living below the poverty line, and these individuals are largely blamed for their impoverished state. Many of these individuals are in critical poverty, meaning that they do not even have the ability to secure food and shelter. This critical poverty is connected to inflation rates that has led the cost of living to increase and the minimum salary to be hardly adequate for survival. Since the 1990s, the gap between the rich and poor has widened, and funds for welfare programs and social services has decreased while funding for security forces to protect "the haves from the have-nots" have tripled in Colombia specifically.

Culture of violence

Main article: Crime and violence in Latin America

Latin America's history has long been plagued by political violence, which over time has morphed into class-based violence. Despite mostly formally democratic governments, the "legacy of authoritarianism" lingers, and the presence of "armed actors" is prevalent as a result of a long history of violence between military, paramilitary, and guerilla groups. The presence of this culture of violence has had various effects on the underclass in countries in Latin America. The military and especially the police have been known to use violence to harm citizens rather than protect them. Private "vigilante" security forces have likewise used violence against the poor with the idea of promoting law and order, especially in Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru. Though many guerilla groups are much less violent than when they originally emerged, they are a presence and an additional source of violence, especially in Colombia. Tension between political groups has led these guerilla groups, the government, and vigilante actors to suspect peasants of working with their enemy and to intimidate them into leaving land in the countryside for the city. Other poor rural residents have been forced to leave due to general violence or lack of public services. Violence at the local level is also extremely common by organized criminals such as street gangs, drug bosses, vigilante justice groups, and local civil patrols. When poor residents are forced to move to the city, they often must turn to prostitution, crime, or begging in inner-city ghettos, which puts them in an extremely vulnerable position in the presence of these violent groups. Men in particular become even more entrenched in the culture of violence as many join gangs to escape "social exclusion and economic disadvantage" and establish a sense of identity and masculinity. Finally, violence exists at a level even smaller than the community—the home. Children are often victims of "physical, mental, and sexual abuse by adults member of their own families". In Guatemala specifically, social cleansing occurs with the "backdrop of genocide", and homicide rates are still extremely high after "three decades of armed conflict" during the Guatemalan Civil War. Violence experienced across the region has led to an erosion of social capital, which was described by Colombians as including "'social mistrust,' 'lack of unity,' 'fear' and 'lack of social institutions.'"

In Spain

Spain, during times before colonization, demonstrates societal patterns that shaped life in Spain in terms of prejudice and discrimination. The discriminatory practice of Spanish legislation led to a certain caste system, pertaining to those with or without honor. Moreover, one's reputation and the way one was treated was based on aspects such as honor, legitimacy, and the limpieza de sangre, a prejudicial marker that indicates one's purity of blood, relating to their family timeline and deciding how society was to treat them. "Historic meanings of honor included those cultural specific ways that Spaniards had always rationalized discrimination due to defects in birth (illegitimate, nonnoble), religion (non-Catholic), and race (nonwhite)." This discriminatory institution based on these concepts of honor, limpieza, and legitimacy, is expressed through the legislation of Spanish government at the time. An example of this was in 1414 when Pope Benedict XIII approved the constitution of Spanish College's San Bartolomé, which linked these concepts through the school's acceptances. Those accepted into the school had to prove they had pure blood, rather than Jewish, Moorish, or heretical heritage.

In Colonial Latin America

The concept of limpieza de sangre, or purity of blood, was used in societies of Spain and Portugal, originating from Iberian culture, where reputation was inherited from one's ancestors. If someone was found to be a race such as Jewish, a converted Jew, or Muslim in their family timeline, it was said to be a stain on their ancestry. Consequently, one's own ancestry determined their reputation and social standing, impacting other aspects such as access to education, career, and marriage for further generations. This became known as the culture of honor, which resided in such reputational ancestry that came to define how individuals were respected.

Limpieza de sangre affected life for every individual in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, including the degree to exclusion and racial discrimination. When Europe came to colonize the "New World" these ethics of honor and limpieza de sangre implied that those with blood lacking purity to European standards was inferior. The Europeans were at the "apex" of social structure and everyone who was not identical in blood was inferior. As colonists, the presumed inferiors were the colonized and thus, due to this culture of honor, they became victims of this discrimination. While over time assimilation, miscegenation and admixture complicated this concept of social cleansing, the ideals of "purity of blood" prevailed, and elite was considered to be of European and Christian origins.

The conquest of indigenous people in Latin America strengthened these ideals. The vulnerability of one's identity in colonial America gave way to one's defense of honor, except for the elites and those in power, typically the colonists. As the degree of honor perceived by individuals was reputational, people felt the need to be confirmed by society or by those in good social standing through submission to the given standards that one's place held. The pursuit of this honor led to many disputes, as well as the fear of being rejected by society and losing one's place.

Despite these long-lived standards, during post-colonialism the ideals of Latin America changed with independence and the growth of democratic values. With this, the culture of honor and respect for those with pure bloodlines changed. People began to socially include those who were previously seen as inferior.

In Brazil

Victims and methods

The most common murder victim in Brazil is a young, black male living in a favela, or a Brazilian slum. These young men typically are, or are assumed to be, gang members and criminals. Violence and murder are most common in areas that are economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized. Women are often targets by association, though the effects of social cleansing and violence against women are largely absent in existing research. Killings are often in public places, with victims being beaten or shot in the street. Police groups sometimes simply enter the community in a large armoured vehicle called a "caveirão" and start shooting. This vehicle contributes to the "anonymity and impunity for the perpetrators".

Perpetrators and motivations

Social cleansing in Brazil is the result of a "murky symbiosis [that] has developed between the official security forces and paramilitary and vigilante-type actors" that carry out "law enforcement against the 'marginal classes.'" State actors often act against the poor "as a form or result of exclusion and oppression". Gangs serve as a scapegoat for the levels of violence and lack of security in many communities. Private groups and some gangs perpetrate killings in attempts to take policing into their own hands. While some killings are a result of groups attempting to punish criminals for misdemeanors, others are a result of perceived threats of poor citizens, such as members of workers' movements.

In Colombia

In the 1980s, "social cleansing" groups started to be created. Their main mission was "to make justice" by killing all non-appropriate people in social terms, like prostitutes, street-living people, trans people, and drug addicts.

Victims and methods

Victims of social cleansing in Colombia are members of society who are considered "undesirable" and "disposable". They are economically disadvantaged, usually live on the streets, and are considered to be a burden on society, "the cause of the country's problems, rather than a consequence of them".

Street children

One of these groups is street children, who are without homes due to abuse, forced displacement, or the death of their parents. Death rates for street children have been as high as six to eight children per day. Children are often shot in their sleep or stabbed to death on the streets or in the police station. A 1993 case in which a nine-year-old girl was strangled to death in Bogota brought attention to this problem and led to nominal reforms. The National Police targets street children specifically under the assumption that they are drug users and criminals. This is to some extent true, as many use drugs to relieve pain and avoid hunger and must shoplift to survive. Despite living in conditions of extreme vulnerability to "aggression and danger", the National Police poses the greatest threat to street children's survival, as they drive them off the streets and target them in social cleansing.

Poor criminals, drug users, and drug dealers

Poor criminals, drug users, and drug dealers are also common targets. From 1988 to 1993, these individuals collectively comprised 56% of social cleansing victims. These individuals are often victims of physical and sexual abuse by the police and vigilante groups known as "comas". One common method of killing these individuals in the city of Bogota is the Choachí run, in which victims are taken to the top of a mountain in the town of Choachí, executed, and thrown off the mountain. In some cases, they are released to attempt escape, but die by falling down the mountain or being shot at as they run. A similar method is known as "the ride", in which victims are forced into a vehicle, killed, and left in a desolate area. Death squads have employed other means for killing suspected criminals, such as murdering them, then cutting off their hands and putting them in small boxes in public spaces to intimidate other criminals. Another group has been known to shoot victims and then cast their bodies into the municipal stadium.

Sex workers and sexual minorities

Sex workers and sexual minorities are treated quite similarly in regards to social cleansing, as both are hard to identify and victims of heavy discrimination despite the fact that both homosexuality and prostitution are legal. Many female sex workers are forced into the line of work due to poverty and domestic violence. Both male and female sex workers are often harassed by the police, and males specifically are demanded to pay a "tax" where "failure to pay results in beatings or imprisonment". In an upside-down system, encounters with dishonest police are preferable to honest police, as the dishonest will accept bribes, while the honest are more likely to kill. Sexual minorities are particularly difficult to identify, because not only do some male sex workers participate in gay sex out of economic necessity, but victims are only considered homosexual if they were dressed as females at the time of death.

Beggars and recyclers

Another group includes those individuals in the most extreme form of poverty. These individuals subsist by asking for money and/or collecting garbage. The police have been known to kill these victims in especially cruel ways, such as pouring gasoline on them and setting them on fire. It is also notable that at least 14 destitute individuals have been killed by security guards at one Colombian university for the use of their bodies as cadavers in the medical school.

Perpetrators and motivations

National Police

The National Police has played a large role in carrying out class-based killings in Colombia. The police created the term "disposable" (Spanish: desechable) to define economically disadvantaged people who are considered to have no value to society. Whether directly or through "paramilitary clients", the National Police was responsible for 74% of deaths related to social cleansing in 1992. Motivations include "security, aesthetics, economic well-being, morals, and religion". In regards to safety and economic well-being, rationales include the idea that the poor are or look like criminals and decrease public safety and drive customers away from businesses. Moral arguments include protection from homosexuals and prostitutes.

Death squads and paramilitary groups

The distinction between death squads and paramilitary groups and the National Police is not always clear. Not only are policemen often members of these groups, but these groups typically enjoy the protection of the police. Other members include businessmen, industrialists, guerillas, and soldiers. Death squads emerged in the late 1970s, one of the first being the Black Hand, a group that murdered suspected criminals. Their reasoning behind these killings is the flawed legal system, which convicts less than 3% of criminals. Death squads and other groups believe it necessary to step in where the legal system has failed by eliminating these suspected criminals. As of 1995, there were no less than 40 of these squads operating in Colombia.

Other factors

National government

The role of the national government in Colombia has largely been complicit cooperation with the National Police. By failing to deal with crime and then also effectively granting impunity to police and military groups, the state has allowed safety issues to be addressed with violence and has perpetuated a "cycle of crime, lack of public safety, violent response, and impunity" due to "terrifying inefficiency and unwillingness to hold people accountable for their acts". While the government at least tries to protect street children through programs to put them in state-run homes, these programs often do not align with their actual needs and have largely failed. There have been limited attempts to protect those in poverty in the legal system, and one case of harassment against the poor resulted in a judge calling for their equal treatment and compensation from the offending policemen. However, the decision was not enforced.

In Guatemala

Victims and methods

Social cleansing and gang killings make up a large portion of the homicides in Guatemala. Since gangs typically make no effort to cover up crimes and leave bodies at the place of death, "signs of torture", as well as location of the body, "serve as indicators of the existence of social cleansing", according to Elizabeth Sanford. According to a study by the Human Rights Ombudsman, "the increase in the number of women killed whose bodies bore marks of torture and other sadistic abuse accounted for 40 percent of the total increase in female murders in 2005." Though female victims account for 10% of all homicides, over 18% of cadavers with signs of torture indicating social cleansing were female. Furthermore, 2% of female victims of homicide are prostitutes, a common victim group of social cleansing efforts. Furthermore, young and destitute male gang members, especially those blamed for homicide of females, have been common victims of social cleansing. The most common form of killing, indicated by the 305 cadavers found in 2005, is strangulation. Other common methods included victims being beaten, shot in the head, bound by their hands and feet, and in the case of female victims, sexual abuse. Victims are abducted, taken to a different location, are tortured and killed, and finally have their body dumped in a different location.

Perpetrators and motivations

Perpetrators include the Guatemalan government as well as private groups either directly or indirectly complicit with the state. Social cleansing efforts are targeted against gangs and other perceived and actual criminals, who are blamed for the high rates of homicide. The perpetrators intend to both exterminate victims and intimidate other members of the target group. Intimidation is carried out both through torture tactics used as well as propaganda including flyers and stickers that support social cleansing as a "method of social control". Because perpetrators are directly or indirectly tied to the state, they naturally have impunity.

Origins

The use of "social cleansing" efforts to eliminate criminals and other persons deemed to be socially dangerous has its origins during the period of military dictatorship and civil war (1954–1996). During the 1960s and 70s, many state-operated paramilitary front organizations (so-called "death squads") emerged with the express purpose of exterminating suspected communists and other enemies of the state. These groups included the MANO, NOA, CADEG, 'Ojo por Ojo' and others. While nominally employed against political targets, the use of "death squads" came to be seen by the Guatemalan police forces (specifically the National Police) as a crime fighting tool, particularly after the election of Col. Arana Osorio in 1970 and the subsequent "state of siege". One early example of the use of "death squads" against non-political targets was a phantom organization called the 'Avenging Vulture', which specifically targeted criminals.

In Tanzania

Victims and methods

The most common victims of social cleansing efforts in Tanzania are elderly women, the majority of whom are of low socioeconomic status, but several groups of people who are considered burdens to the community, such as children, the sick, infants, and the handicapped, are also victims. These people are usually accused of witchcraft following deaths or other misfortunes in society and tend to flee, choosing homelessness over death. Those who do not flee successfully are killed violently in their homes. Sometimes those considered burdens are simply reduced to zero consumption and are starved to death. This occurs particularly among infants, who have no ability to flee or attempt to provide for themselves.

Perpetrators and motivations

Victims are typically killed by members of their own families, who blame them for economic suffering and household misfortune. Accusations and subsequent killings are often incited by death or illness in the family or the family's livestock. However, general misfortune in the form of "failed crops, lost jobs, and bad dreams also arouse suspicion". While often accusations are raised to the effect of creating a scapegoat, not all forms of social cleansing are connected to witch hunting. The extreme scarcity theory suggests that some families to drive out or starve unproductive family members to provide more nutrients for other members. Many of these perpetrators are young, unemployed men who see the elderly as a burden on their potential for success. Another key perpetrator of social cleansing in Tanzania are the Sungusungu, councils of male elders that operate under the premise of promoting village security. These groups formed under the premise that the government was not able to prevent crimes such as theft, and they serve as a form of vigilante justice.

Other actors

Although the Tanzanian government has made public witchcraft accusations illegal, the efforts to stop them have been unsuccessful. Conviction levels are extremely low, as "only seven of 1,622 individuals arrested in connection with witch killings during the 1970s and 1980s were convicted, and since then the conviction rate as apparently fallen even lower," according to Edward Miguel. The perception of the government and police force as unable to control crime has led groups such as Sungusungu to take matters into their own hands, though studies suggest that the police may sometimes be involved in witch killings.