Genocide

Genocide (pronounced jen-uh-sahyd)

(1) A special class of mass-murder, the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group, usually by a state; the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

(2) In casual (and imprecise) use, by extension, the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on other grounds.

(3) In casual (and imprecise) use, by extension, the systematic suppression of a cultural identity, language etc on the basis of cultural, racial or ethnic origin (often expressed as culturicide or cultural genocide).

1944: The construct is géno + cide.  Géno is from the Ancient Greek γένος (genos) (race; kind) from the primitive Indo-European gene- (give birth, beget (with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups)); it was cognate with the Latin gēns (tribe, clan).  The suffix cide (cīda) is from the Latin caedere (to kill; a killing).  The creation of the word genocide is attributed to Polish-born US lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) who used it in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1943-1944) in reference to the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Europe.  In the English-speaking world, there were the pedants who didn’t approve of the mixing of Latin and Greek, noting the proper formation would be genticide, the construct being the Latin gēns (a race, nation, people; a clan, family (oblique stem: gent-)) +‎ -cide and is a hypothetical Latin etymon of the form genticīdium (from gēns +‎ -cīdium (the suffix denoting “killer”; “cutter”) +‎ -ium (from the Latin -um (neuter singular morphological suffix)).  Genocidal is the adjective.

There was earlier, in a similar sense, the French populicide (variously cited as dating from 1792 or 1799) from French populicide, a construct made necessary by the excesses in the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution.  This was later adopted in German as Völkermeuchelnden (genocidal) and was known in English by 1893 as the anglicized folk-murdering.  The less rigorous ethnocide is attested from 1970 in French and 1974 in English.

Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959).

The word genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had immersed himself in study after, as a student, being shocked to discover there existed nothing in international law to prosecute the Ottoman leaders who were complicit in what is now (though not by all) often called the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917) in which over a million are thought to have been killed.  Essentially, Lemkin identified the doctrine of sovereign immunity (the idea that what happens within nation boundaries must be regarded as purely internal matters) as the reason state-sanctioned mass-murder had such a long history and it could be stopped only if this doctrine was subject to some limitations.

In November 1944, Lemkin’s book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe was published.  It was a review of the legal implications of the consequences of the Nazi Germany New Order administrations in the occupied nations and contained the first definitional framework of genocide.  His point was that genocide did not of necessity mean “the immediate destruction of a nation” which was a concept of course familiar from thousands of years of warfare but instead signified “a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”  That formulation was something specific to the circumstances of the holocaust, a process which, for almost a decade, progressed from the Nazi state introducing laws which sought to marginalize and exclude the Jews from Germany’s cultural and economic life to the building of an industrial system intended to murder every Jew in Europe, a process which was organic, a reaction to the circumstances at the time.  The Nazis, upon their assumption of power in 1933 had not even the vaguest plan of extermination, not because Hitler would have thought mass-murder on any scale unacceptable but because it was unimaginable that such a thing was possible.  What was planned was eradication, the forced migration of the Jews from what Germany was and what it was to become, what would now be described (in the literal sense rather than as the euphemism with which the phrase is now associated) as ethnic cleansing.  It was the circumstances of inter-war politics and later war-time realities which meant (1) that mass-emigration firstly within and later beyond Europe was not possible and (2) that under the Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) of war, the mass-murder of millions became possible.  As the word tends now to be used, between 1933 and 1942, a displacement of population became genocide.

Perhaps surprisingly given the perceptions of many, the word genocide did not figure large in the incitements served at the Nuremburg Trial (1946-1946), being mentioned not as one of the four counts but included in Count Three (War Crimes:  "...deliberate and systematic genocide, viz, the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others."

Judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.

Although the holocaust was the most monstrous matter to be tried at Nuremberg, any reluctance to include genocide as a separate count was understandable. Nothing quite like the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which convened at Nuremberg had ever been assembled and it was acknowledged at the time some of the matters with which the defendants were charged were based in retrospective law; they were being held to account for conduct which, at the time, was not unlawful.  Sensitive to this and the need to frame the incitements as close as possible to acknowledged legal norms, the prosecutors, mostly working lawyers for whom the primary concern was winning the case, tried as much as possible to avoid novelty in the incitement.  As it was, the document grew from a three-odd page draft in June to a final copy of sixty-five pages when served on the defendants.  The word genocide appeared just the once.

Genocide was in 1946 recognized as a crime under international law by the United Nations General Assembly and was codified as a crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention.  It expanded Lemkin’s definition, holding that genocide was “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(1) Killing members of the group.

(2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

(3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

(4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

(5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide is defined in the same terms in the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions.  Over one-hundred and fifty states have ratified the convention but the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has anyway ruled the convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law so whether or not ratified, in legal theory, all states are bound by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law.  Many states have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law.  Technically, intent is the most contentious element in any genocide prosecution.  To succeed, intent must be a proven on the part of perpetrators physically to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group; cultural suppression or destruction is not genocide and nor is expulsion from territory. 

After Nuremberg, genocide was long applied only to the destruction of an ethnic group (as conventionally defined) although there has more recently been a debate about whether it applies only if killing of all members of the group is involved or if other means, such as dispersing the group to the point where shared cultural practices or identity are no longer possible also constitutes (an unqualified) genocide; the concepts of cultural genocide, linguistic genocide etc.  The crime has never needed to be absolute.  It has always been understood to include “systematic mass killing”, even if there’s not an intention absolutely to eradicate a group, thereby covering geographically localized events, the actions which in the Balkan wars of the 1990s came to be known as “ethnic cleansing”.  Where there is some purpose other than the actual destruction of a group, such as terrorizing the group or killing the population of a particular place irrespective of group membership, the more precise term is democide, the construct being the Ancient Greek δῆμος (demos) (people) +‎ -cide.  The conduct of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the late 1970s, because it wasn’t inherently or exclusively based on ethnic division, is thus, technically, probably a democide although such was the enormity of the awfulness of what happened that most probably find this a fine and needless distinction.

As many passages in sacred texts (including the Koran and the Bible) indicate, genocide, as a political imperative and military strategy, has a long and cross-cultural history in human civilization.  Although most attention is devoted to the most modern events with the highest death-toll (such as the holocaust, the still disputed matter of the Armenians in 1915 and the events in Rwanda in 1994), in a global sense, the most recent genocide which went closest to succeeding was the genocide of the Moriori, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (which lie to the east of New Zealand).  Invaded by the Maori in 1835, the Moriori were subject to mass murder, enslavement and a policy of deliberate cultural repression; the population which had once numbered close to two thousand by the 1870s shrinking to under a hundred.  In a sense that act of genocide did succeed, the last pure-blooded Moriori dying early in the twentieth century.

Eliminate, Exterminate & Eradicate

Eliminate (pronounced ih-lim-uh-neyt)

(1) To remove or get rid of, especially as being in some way undesirable.

(2) To omit, especially as being unimportant or irrelevant; leave out.

(3) To remove from further consideration or competition, especially by defeating in sport or other competitive contest.

(4) To eradicate or kill.

(5) In physiology, to void or expel from an organism.

(6) In mathematics, to remove (a quantity) from an equation by elimination.

(7) In sport, as elimination & eliminator (drag racing): category classifications. 

1560–70: From the Latin ēlīminātus (thrust out of the doors; expel), past participle of ēlīmināre, the construct being ē- (out) + līmin- (stem of līmen (threshold)) + -ātus (the Latin first/second-declension suffix (feminine -āta, neuter -ātum)).  The most commonly used form in Latin appears to have been ex limine (off the threshold).  Used literally at first, the sense of "exclude" was first attested in 1714; the now obsolete sense of "expel waste from the body" emerged circa 1795 although the general sense of an "expulsion of waste matter" is from 1855.  Eliminate is a verb, if used with an object, the verbs are eliminated & eliminating, eliminability, eliminant & eliminability are nouns and eliminable, eliminative and eliminatory are adjectives.

Exterminate (pronounced ik-stur-muh-neyt)

Totally to destroy (living things, especially pests or vermin); annihilate; extirpate.

1535–1545: From the Latin exterminātus, past participle of extermināre (to drive away (from terminus boundary)), perfect passive participle of exterminō, the construct being ex- + terminō (I finish, close, end), from terminus (limit, end).  In Late Latin there was also the sense "destroy" from the phrase ex termine (beyond the boundary), ablative of termen (boundary, limit, end).  The meaning "utterly to destroy" appeared in English only by the 1640s, a sense found earlier in equivalent words in French and in the Vulgate; earlier in this sense was the mid-fifteenth century extermine.  Exterminator actually came earlier: as early as circa 1400, the Late Latin exterminator (from past participle stem of exterminare) had the sense of "an angel who expells (people from a country) and, by 1848, as a “substance for ridding a place of rats etc) and by 1938 this was applied to a person whose job it was.  Exterminate is a verb, used with an object the verbs are exterminated & exterminating, exterminable, exterminative & exterminatory are adjectives and extermination & exterminator are nouns.

Eradicate (pronounced ih-rad-i-keyt)

(1) To remove or destroy utterly; extirpate.

(2) To erase by rubbing or by means of a chemical solvent or other agent.

(3) Of plants, to pull up by the roots.

1555–1565: From the Latin ērādīcātus (usually translated as “destroy utterly”; literally “pull up by the roots”), past participle of ērādīcāre (root out, extirpate, annihilate), the construct being ē- (out) + rādīc- (stem of rādīx (root) (genitive radicis)) + -ātus (the Latin first/second-declension suffix (feminine -āta, neuter -ātum)).  The assimilated form of ērādīcāre is derived from the primitive Indo-European wrād (branch, root) and from the same source, the native form of the same idea existed in mid-fifteenth century Middle English as outrōten (to root (something) out; eradicate).  A surprisingly recent creation in 1794 was ineradicable and within a few years, ineradicably.  Eradicate is a verb, eradicant is an adjective and noun, eradicated & eradicating are verbs (used with object), eradicable & eradicative are adjectives, eradicably is an adverb, eradication & eradicator are nouns.

Eliminate, exterminate and eradicate in the age of pandemics

In Modern English usage, eliminate, exterminate and eradicate are often used interchangeably despite differences in nuance.  This means also the wealth of synonyms the three enjoy are sometimes haphazardly used although some overlap does exist, the synonyms including: annihilate, expunge, abolish, erase, uproot, extinguish, efface, demolish, total, abate, liquidate, obliterate, trash, squash, purge, extirpate, scratch, slaughter, decimate, execute, massacre, abolish, erase, extirpate, destroy, oust, waive, ignore, defeat, cancel, exclude, disqualify, invalidate, drop, eject, expel, liquidate, omit, terminate, slay, discard & disregard.

In the (relatively) happy times before the emergence of SARS-Cov2's Delta variant, the New Zealand prime minister declared COVID-19 “eradicated but not eliminated” which did sound given that, regarding disease, the words have specific, technical meanings.  In the context of disease, eradication refers to the complete and permanent worldwide reduction to zero new cases through deliberate effort.  Elimination refers to the reduction to zero (or a very low defined target rate) of new cases in a defined geographical area, which can be any size, a province, country, continent or hemisphere.  As used by virologists and epidemiologists therefore, eradication is used in its normal conversational sense but elimination is applied with a specific technical meaning.  There is a quirk to this. The World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1980 although small cultures remain in US and Russian research laboratories.  If these residual stocks are ever destroyed, the WHO may adopt some new term to distinguish between eradication in the wild and an absolute extermination from the planet.  Nobody seems now to believe COVID-19 will ever be eliminated, exterminated or eradicated.  It seems here to stay.

Defendants in the dock, International Military Tribunal (IMT, the main Nuremberg trial (1945-1946)). 

The meanings of eliminate, exterminate & eradicate, both in their English senses and in translation from German have been debated before.  Although not defined in law until the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), the newly (1944) created word genocide appeared in the indictments served at the main Nuremberg trial (1945-1946) upon those accused under count IV, crimes against humanity.  This attracted the interest of lawyers who noted the words exterminate and eliminate appear both in the academic and legal discussions about the novel concept of genocide and in translations of many documents from the Third Reich which related to the Jews.  Defense counsel probed what was meant by these words and whether, in original or translation, their actual meaning in the context of their use was in accord with what was meant when applied to genocide.  The etymological excursion didn’t much help the defendants, most of whom were hanged.  Hermann Göring also raised an objection to a translation from the German being rendered as "final solution to the Jewish problem" rather than "total solution" which, he argued, should compel the court to draw a different inference.  In both discussions, the judges concluded what was being discussed was mass-murder and the relative degree of applicability between synonyms was not a substantive point.  Actually the word used by Göring in the first paragraph of the letter which ultimately authorized the holocaust was Gesamtloesung (complete solution) while in the final paragraph he use Endloesung (final solution).  This was the document which SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant-General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) revealed at the infamous Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942). 

Professionals in the field of pest control actually stick more closely to classic etymology in their technical distinction between the two central words: extermination and eradication.  Extermination (from the Latin, exterminare meaning “out of the boundary” and related to the deity Terminus who presided over boundaries) means to drive the pests beyond the boundaries of the building.  It doesn’t of necessity mean the pests are all dead, just that they are no longer in the building.  Eradicate (from the Latin eradicare meaning to root out) refers to the processes leading to extermination, to bring to light the breeding spots, the places where the infestation has, so to speak, taken root.

Interahamwe

Interahamwe (pronounced in-ter-ah-ham-way or in-tra-ham-way)

A Hutu paramilitary organization.

1992: A constructed proper noun, described variously as (1) borrowed from a Rwanda-Rundi (a dialect of Kinyarwanda) term or (2) a creation to describe the paramilitary formation.  Literal translation is "those who work together" and is thus a euphemism, one based on the link to the Interahamwe’s preferred choice of weapons: farm tools and the machete.  The construct is intera (from the verb gutera), (to work) + hamwe (together) which is related to rimwe (one).

After the genocide

Flag of the Interahamwe.

Although most associated with the Rwandan genocide on 1994, the Interahamwe began as the innocuous youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), then the Hutu ruling party of Rwanda.  However, like other some political youth movements (the Taliban in Pakistan; the Mandela United Football Club in South Africa et al), the circumstances of the times led to mission creep.

The Rwanda genocide had its origin in the Hutu-Tutsi civil war of 1990-1992.  As violence escalated, use of the word “Interahamwe” changed from a description of the youth group into a broad term applied to almost anyone engaged in the mass-murder of Tutsis, regardless of their age of membership of the MRND.  The translation as “those who work together” became a euphemism for “those who kill together”.  Sardonic forms are not rare in both military and paramilitary jargon; the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) category for suicide-bombers prematurely blown-up by their own malfunctioning devices is “work accident”.

Although their numbers are now much reduced, the Interahamwe retain the ambition to destabilize Rwanda and still operate from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the place to which they fled in late 1994.  From there and neighboring countries, along with other splinter groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), they conduct an insurgency against Rwanda although recent operations suggest they're as much concerned with the various criminal activities undertaken to ensure their survival as any political agenda.

Pogrom

Pogrom (pronounced puh-gruhm, puh-grom, poh-gruhm or poh-grom)

An organized persecution or massacre of a defined (usually ethnic or religious) group, historically and originally applied especially to attacks on the Jews.

1882: From the Yiddish פּאָגראָם‎ (pogrom) (organized massacre in Russia against a particular class or people, especially the Jews), from the Russian погро́м (pogróm & pogromu (devastation, destruction) the construct being по (po) (by, through, behind, after) (cognate with the Latin post) +‎ громи́ть (gromu or gromít) (thunder, roar; to smash, to sack; to destroy, devastate) from the primitive Indo-European imitative root ghrem (which endures in Modern English as grim).  The Russian derivatives are погро́мщик (pogrómščik) and погро́мщица (pogrómščica).  The literal translation of the Russian pogróm is destruction, devastation (of a town, country, as might happen in a war) and it’s the noun derivative of pogromít; po is the perfective prefix and gromít (to destroy, devastate) is a derivative of grom (thunder).

For historic reasons, should perhaps be Jewish-specific

Although etymologists note the word pogrom has increasingly been used to refer to any persecution instigated by a government or dominant class against a minority group, its origin lies in organized attacks on the Jews and, for historic reasons, pogrom perhaps should be used only in this context.

Although mob attacks on Jews, organized and spontaneous, have been documented for thousands of years, pogrom is a Yiddish variation on a Russian word meaning "thunder" and entered the English language to describe nineteenth and twentieth century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire, similar attacks against Jews at other times and places retrospectively becoming known as pogroms.  An important technical distinction emerged in the discussions which produced the four articles of indictment ((1) planning aggressive war, (2) waging aggressive war (the two collective the core crime of aggression), (3) war crimes and (4) crimes against humanity) which became the basis of the Nuremberg trials in 1946-1947.  While it was clear an event such as 1938’s Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), in which dozens of Jews were killed, was a pogrom in the historical sense, the holocaust which followed between 1941-1945 was so monstrous a crime and on such a scale that another word was required and thus was created genocide.

In the years since, the definitional aspects of these matters have become a macabre exercise for lawyers required to prosecute or defend those accused of mass-murder.  In the last quarter-century, deciding what to do about what was done in places like Rwanda, the Congo, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia and Burma (Myanmar) required courts to decide whether to treat the events as vigilantism, terrorism, massacres, genocide, war, pogroms or the more recent descriptor, ethnic cleansing.

Promotional poster by Josef Fenneker (1895-1956) for the German silent film Pogrom (1919), written and directed by Austrian Alfred Halm (1861-1951) and distributed by Berliner Film-Manufaktur GmbH.

President

President (pronounced prez-i-duhnt or preza-dint (plus many regional variations)

(1) The title of the highest executive officer of most modern republics.

(2) An official appointed or elected to preside over an organized body of persons.

(3) The chief executive (and sometimes operating) officer of a college, university, society, corporation etc.  Many corporate presidents function as something like a “char(man) of the board” rather than a CEO or COO.

(4) A person who presides.

(5) An alternative form of “precedent” (long obsolete).

1325–1375: From the Middle English, from the Old French president, from Late Latin praesidēns (presiding over; president of; leader) (accusative praesidentem) from the Classical Latin praesident (stem of praesidēns), the noun use of the present participle of praesidēre (to preside over, sit in front of).  The Latin word was the substantivized present active participle of the verb praesideō (preside over) while the construct of the verb was prae (before) + sedeō (sit).  The verb’s original sense was “to sit before” (ie presiding at a meeting) from which was derived the generalized secondary meaning “to command, to govern”, praesidēns thus meaning variously “the one who presides at a meeting”, “governor or a region”, “commander of a force” etc.  In English the construct is thus understood as preside + -ent.  Preside was from the Old French presider, from Latin praesidēre, the construct being pre- (before) + sedere (to sit).  It displaced the Old English foresittan which may have been a calque of the Latin.  The –ent suffix was from the Middle English –ent (which existed, inter alia, also as –ant & -aunt.  It was from the Old French -ent and its source, the Latin -ēns (the accusative singular was -entem), suffix of present participles of verbs in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th conjugations.  The word is used with an upper case if applied honorifically (President of Italy; President Nixon etc) but not otherwise but this is of the more widely ignored rules in English.  Modifiers (minister-president, municipal president, president-elect et al) are created as required.  The spelling præsident is archaic.  President & presidency are nouns, verb & adjective, presidentship & presidenthood are nouns, presidenting & presidented are verbs, presidential is an adjective and presiˈdentially is an adverb; the noun plural is presidents.  The feminine form presidentess dates from at least 1763 and is probably obsolete unless used in humor but that may risk one’s cancellation.

US politics in the last decade has had moments of strangeness so some things which once seemed unthinkable are now merely improbable.

In the US, “president” was used in the original documents of the constitution (1787), picking up the earlier colonial use as “officer in charge of the Continental Congress” and it had also been used in several of the colonies and that in the sense of “chosen head of a meeting or group of persons”.  During and immediately after the Revolution, the tile was adopted by the chief magistrates of several states but before long all instead settled on “governor”, emulating the colonial designation.  In the US, the most common slang shortening of president is “pres”, dating from 1892 although dictionaries note the earlier existence of “prex” which was student slang for the president of a university or college.  First recorded in 1828, as a Latin verb, it meant “a request, entreaty”.  The handy initialization POTUS (President of the United States) dates from 1879 when it was created as part of the “Phillips Code” a system devised by US journalist, telegrapher & inventor Walter Polk Phillips (1846–1920) to speed up the transmission of messages across wire services and reduce their cost (the services charging per letter).  Among those in the code was SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) and later (long after the original rationale had been overtaken by technology) journalists and others started using VPOTUS (Vice-President of the United States), FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) and NPOTUS (next President of the United States) the latter once applied to both Al Gore (b 1948; VPOTUS 1993-2001 & in 2000 the NPOTUS)) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013 & in 2016 the NPOTUS).  Word nerds, pondering nomination of the latest NPOTUS (Kamala Harris (b 1964; VPOTUS since 2021) as the likely Democrat nominee are wondering what will emerge to describe her husband should she become CMOTUS (Chief Magistrate of the United States), the options presumably FGOTUS (First Gentlemen of the United States) or FHOTUS (First Husband of the United States).  Presumably FMOTUS (First Man of the United States) won’t be used.

A full bucket of veep.

In the US during the nineteenth century there was a joke about two brothers: "One ran off to sea and the other became vice-president; neither were ever heard of again."  That was of course an exaggeration but it reflected the general view of the office which has very few formal duties and can only ever be as powerful or influential as a president allows although the incumbent is "a heartbeat from the presidency".  John Nance Garner III (1868–1967, vice president of the US 1933-1941), a reasonable judge of these things, once told Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) being VPOTUS was "not worth a bucket of warm piss" (which is polite company usually is sanitized as "warm spit").  For US vice-presidents, the slang veep (based on the phonetic V-P (pronounced vee-pee) is more commonly used.  Veep dates from 1949 and may have been influenced by the Jeep, the four wheel drive (4WD) light utility vehicle which had become famous for its service in World War II (1939-1945) with a number of allied militaries (the name said to be derived from an early army prefix GP (general purpose light vehicle)).  It was introduced to US English by Alben Barkley (1877-1956; VPOTUS 1949-1953), reputedly because his young grandchildren found “vice-president” difficult to pronounce.  In the press, the form became more popular when the 71-year-old VPOTUS took a wife more than thirty years younger; journalists decided she should be the veepess (pronounced vee-pee-ess).  Time magazine entered into the spirit of things, declaring the president should be Peep, the Secretary of State Steep, and the Secretary of Labor Sleep.  In the US, a number of VPOTUSs have become POTUS and some have worked out well although of late the record has not been encouraging, the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; VPOTUS 1961-1963, POTUS 1963-1968), Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961, POTUS 1969-1974) and Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2008-2017, POTUS 2021-2025 (God willing)) 1963-1968 all ending badly, in despair, disgrace and decrepitude respectively.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei (b 1939; supreme leader of of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1989) hands Masoud Pezeshkian (b 1954, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2024) the presidential seals of Office, Tehran, 28 July 2024.

Even in political science it’s not uncommon to see comparisons between “presidential system” and “parliamentary system” and while that verbal shorthand is well understood within the profession, it’s more accurate to speak of “presidential systems” because the constitutional arrangements vary so much.  Essentially, there are (1) “ceremonial presidencies” in which a president serves as head of state and may nominally be the head of the military but all executive functions are handled by a chancellor, premier or prime-minister (or equivalent office) and (2) “executive presidencies” where the roles of head of state & head of government are combined.  However, those structural models are theoretical and around the world there are many nuances, both on paper and in practice.  While there are many similarities and overlaps in presidential systems, probably relatively few are identical in the constitutional sense.  Sometimes too, the constitutional arrangements are less important than the practice.  In the old Soviet Union, the office of president was sometimes filled by a relatively minor figure, despite it being, on paper, a position of great authority, something replicated in the Islamic Republic of Iran where ultimate authority sits in the hand of the Supreme Leader (both of whom have been ayatollahs).  Many systems include something of a hybrid aspect.  In France, the president appoints a prime-minister and ministers who may come from the National Assembly (the legislature) but, upon appointment, they leave the chamber.  A US president appoints their cabinet from anywhere eligible candidates can be found but creates no prime-minister.  In the “ceremonial presidencies” there is also a spectrum of authority and the extent of that can be influenced more by the personality and ambition of a president than the defined powers.  One president of Ireland described the significance of the office as one of “moral authority” rather than legal power.

Some presidents who like being president.

(Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999).

Mr Putin was prime minister from 1999 to 2000, president from 2000 to 2008, and again prime minister from 2008 to 2012 before returning to the presidency.  The unusual career trajectory was a consequence of the Russian constitution forbidding the one person from serving as president for more than two consecutive terms.   Russia has an executive presidency, Mr Putin liked the job and his solution to (effectively) keeping it was to have Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (b 1965; president of Russia 2008-2012 & prime minister of Russia 2012-2020) “warm the chair” while Mr Putin re-assumed the premiership.  Generously, one could style this arrangement a duumvirate but political scientists could, whatever the constitutional niceties, discern no apparent difference in the governance of Russia regardless of the plaque on Mr Putin’s door.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), pictured here meeting Lindsay Lohan, Presidential Palace, Ankara, Türkiye, 27 January 2017.  Palace sources say the president regards this meeting as the highlight of his time in office.

Mr Erdoğan has been president since 2014 having previously served as prime minister between 2003–2014.  As prime-minister under Turkey’s constitution with a non-executive president, he was head of government.  After becoming president, he expressed his disapproval for the system and his preference for Turkey’s adoption of an executive presidency.  On 15 July 2016, a coup d'état was staged by the military and, as coups d'état go (of which Türkiye has had a few), it was a placid and unambitious affair and the suspicion was expressed it was an event staged by the government itself although there’s little evidence to support this.  Mr Erdoğan blamed an exiled cleric, his former ally Fethullah Gülen (b 1941), for the coup attempt and promptly declared a state of emergency.  It was scheduled to last three months but the parliament extended its duration to cover a purge of critical journalists, political opponents, various malcontents and those in the military not overtly supportive of Türkiye.  In April 2017 Mr Erdoğan staged a national referendum (which the people duly approved), transforming the Republic of Türkiye into an executive presidency, the changes becoming effective after the presidential and parliamentary elections of June 2018.

Reichspräsident (Reich President) Paul von von Hindenburg (right) accepts the appointment of Adolf Hitler (left) as Reichskanzler (Reich Chancellor), Berlin, Germany, 21 March 1933 (Potsdam Day).  Standing behind Hitler is Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945).

Of course, if one has effectively “captured” the state, one can just decide to become president.  When in 1934 Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was informed Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934; Reichspräsident (1925-1934) of the German Weimar Republic 1918-1933) was dying, unilaterally he had replaced the constitutional procedures covering such an eventuality, the “Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich” (issued as a cabinet decree) stipulating that upon the president’s death the office of Reichspräsident would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor under the title of Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor of the Reich).  Thus, the leadership of the party, government and state (and thus the military) were merged and placed exclusively in Hitler’s hands, a situation which prevailed until his death when the office of Reichspräsident was re-created (by a legal device no more complex than a brief document Hitler called his “political testament”) as an entity separate from the chancellorship.  Interestingly though, in a manner typical of the way things were done in the Third Reich, although in 1934 there ceased to be a Reichspräsident, maintained as administrative structures were (1) the Chancellery, (2) the Presidential Chancellery and (3) what became ultimately the Party Chancellery.

Mercedes-Benz 600 Landaulets a 1966 short roof (left) and 1970 long roof ("presidential", right),  

Between 1963-1981, Mercedes-Benz built 2190 600s (W100), 428 of which were the long wheelbase (LWB) Pullman versions, 59 were configured as Landaulets with a folding roof over the passenger compartment.  Built in both six and four-door versions, the Landaulets were available with either a short or long fabric roof, the latter known informally as the "presidential" although the factory never used the designation.  Twelve of the presidentials were built, a brace of which were bought by Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1948-1994) and subsequently inherited (along with the rest of North Korea) by Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1994-2011) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011).

The 1970 Landaulet pictured was purchased by the Romanian government and used by comrade president Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989; general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party 1965-1989) until he and his wife were executed (by AK47) after a “people's tribunal” held a brief trial, the swiftness of which was aided by the court-appointed defense counsel who declared them both guilty of the genocide of which, among other crimes, they were charged.  Considering the fate of other fallen dictators, their end was less gruesome than might have been expected.  Comrade Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; prime-minister or president of Yugoslavia 1944-1980) had a similar car (among other 600s) but he died undisturbed in his bed.  The blue SWB (short wheelbase) car to the rear is one of the few SWB models fitted with a divider between the front & rear compartments including hand-crafted timber writing tables and a refrigerated bar in the centre console.  It was delivered in 1977 to the Iranian diplomatic service and maintained for Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980; the last Shah of Iran 1941-1979).

Crooked Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) chatting with crooked Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969).  His credibility destroyed by the Watergate scandal, Nixon is the only US president to resign from office.

The term Watergate has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration but the name is derived from a break-in into Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC on 17 June 1972.  A series of revelations made it clear the White House was involved in attempts cover up Nixon’s knowledge of this and other illegal activities.  He continued to insist he had no prior knowledge of the burglary, did not break any laws, and did not learn of the cover-up until early 1973.  Also revealed was the existence of previously secret audio tapes, recorded in the White House by Nixon himself.  The legal battle over the tapes continued through early 1974, and in April Nixon announced the release of 1,200 pages of transcripts of White House conversations between him and his aides. The House Judiciary Committee opened impeachment hearings and these culminated in votes for impeachment.  By July, the US Supreme Court had ruled unanimously that the full tapes, not just selected transcripts, must be released.  One of the tapes, recorded soon after the break-in, demonstrated that Nixon had been told of the White House connection to the Watergate burglaries soon after they took place, and had approved plans to thwart the investigation.   It became known as the "Smoking Gun Tape".  With the loss of political support and the near-certainty that he would be impeached and removed, was “tapped on the shoulder” by a group of Republicans from both houses of Congress, lead by crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998).  Nixon resigned the presidency on 8 August 1974.

Mr Nixon assured the country he was "not a crook" although in that he was speaking of matters unrelated to the Watergate scandal.

One thing even his most committed enemies (and there were many) conceded of Nixon was his extraordinary tenacity and Nixon fought hard to remain president and the most dramatically Shakespearian act came in what came to be called the Saturday Night Massacre, the term coined to describe the events of 20 October 1973 when Nixon ordered the sacking of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox (1912-2004), then investigating the Watergate scandal.  In addition to Cox, that evening saw also the departure of Attorney General Elliot Richardson (1920-1999) and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus (1932-2019).  Richardson had appointed Cox in May, fulfilling an undertaking to the House Judiciary Committee that a special prosecutor would investigate the events surrounding the break-in of the DNC’s offices at the Watergate Hotel.  The appointment was made under the ex-officio authority of the attorney general who could remove the special prosecutor only for extraordinary and reprehensible conduct.  Cox soon issued a demand that Nixon hand over copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office; the president refused to comply and by Friday, a stalemate existed between White House and Department of Justice and all Washington assumed there would be a break in the legal maneuvering while the town closed-down for the weekend.

Before the massacre.  Attorney-General Elliot Richardson, President Richard Nixon and FBI Director-Designate Clarence Kelly (1911-1997), The White House, 1973.

However, on Saturday, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox.  Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.  Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.  Nixon then ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork (1927-2012), as acting head of the Justice Department, to fire Cox; while both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to congressional committees they would not interfere, Bork had not.  Brought to the White House in a black Cadillac limousine and sworn in as acting attorney-general, Bork wrote the letter firing Cox; thus ended the Saturday Night Massacre.  Perhaps the most memorable coda to the affair was Richardson’s memorable post-resignation address to staff at the Department of Justice, delivered the Monday morning following the “massacre”.  Richardson had often been spoken of as a potential Republican nominee for the presidency and some nineteen years later, he would tell the Washington Post: “If I had any demagogic impulse... there was a crowd... but I deliberately throttled back.” His former employees responded with “an enthusiastic and sustained ovation.”  Within a week of the Saturday Night Massacre, resolutions of impeachment against the president were introduced in Congress although the House Judiciary Committee did not approve its first article of impeachment until 27 July the following year when it charged Nixon with obstruction of justice.  Mr Nixon resigned less than two weeks later, on 8 August 1974, leaving the White House the next day.

Lyndon Johnson (left) & Sam Rayburn (1882-1961, right), Washington DC, 1954.

Nixon’s predecessor also liked being president and few have assumed the office in circumstances more politically propitious, even if it was something made possible by the assassination of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963).  Johnson had for over two decades worked to achieve control of the Senate and at the peak of the success of the Johnson-Rayburn congressional era the Democrats held majorities of 64-36 in the Senate and 263-174 in the House of Representatives.  In the 1964 presidential election (facing Barry Goldwater), Johnson won a crushing victory, securing over 60% of the popular vote and taking every state except Goldwater’s home state of Arizona and a handful south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Relatively uninterested in foreign policy, Johnson had a domestic agenda more ambitious than anything seen since the US Civil War (1861-1865) a century before and what he achieved was far-reaching and widely appreciated for its implications only decades after his death but it was the US involvement in the war in Vietnam which consumed his presidency, compelling him dramatically to announce in April 1968 “…I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”  As a message, it was strikingly similar to that in July 2024 delivered by Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025), something nobody seemed to think a mere coincidence.  Also compelling are similarities between the two, both spending a political lifetime plotting and scheming to become president, having no success until curious circumstances delivered them the prize with which genuinely they achieved much but were forced to watch their dream of re-election slip from their grasp.

Nicolás Maduro (b 1962; President of Venezuela since 2013, left) and Hugo Chávez (1954-2013; President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela 1999-2013 (except during a few local difficulties in 2002, right)).

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) of course liked being president and the events of 6 January (the so-called "capitol riot") are regarded by many (though clearly not a majority of US Supreme Court judges) as an attempted (if amateurish) insurrection, something Mr Trump denies encouraging.  To the south, in Venezuela, Mr Maduro also really likes being president and is from the comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) school of democracy: “It matters not who votes, what matters is who counts the votes”.  Accordingly, in July 2024 there was some scepticism when the National Electoral Council (the NEC, controlled by Mr Maduro’s political party) announced the president had won the 2024 presidential election with 51.2% of the vote, despite the country being in a sustained economic crisis during which it had suffered a rate of hyper-inflation at its peak so high the economists stopped calculation once it hit a million percent and seen more emigration than any country in South or Central America not actually in a state of declared war.  For a country which possesses the world’s largest known reserves of crude oil, the economic collapse has been a remarkable achievement.  Mr Maduro came to office after the death of Hugo Chávez, a genuinely charismatic figure who took advantage of a sustained high oil price to fund social programmes which benefited the poor (of which his country had a scandalous number) who, unsurprisingly voted for him; Mr Chávez won his elections fair and square.  The decrease in oil revenue triggered a chain of events which meant Mr Maduro hasn’t enjoyed the same advantages and some claim his victories in the 2013 & 2018 elections were anything but fair & square although the numbers were so murky it was hard to be definitive.  Details of the 2024 results however are not so much murky as missing and although the NEC provided aggregate numbers (in summary form), only some 30% of the “tally sheets” (with the booth voting details) were published.  Interestingly, the (admittedly historically unreliable) public opinion polls suggested Mr Maduro might secure 30-35% of the vote and the conspiracy theorists (on this occasion probably on sound ground) are suggesting the tally sheets made public might have been selected with “some care”.

In the way these things are done, the regime is sustained by being able to count on the reliability of the security forces and the conventional wisdom in political science is this can be maintained as long as (1) the members continued to be paid and (2) the percentage of the population prepared to take to the streets in violent revolt doesn’t reach and remain at a sustained critical mass (between 3-9% depending on the mechanics of the country).  So the streets are being watched with great interest but already Mr Maduro has received congratulations from the leaders of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the DPRK; North Korea), Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua and Russia so there’s that.  Mr Maduro runs the country on a basis not dissimilar to being the coordinator of a number of "crime families" and on 2 August the US State Department announced they were recognizing the leader of the opposition as the "legitimate winner" of the election and thus president of the Bolivarian Republic; gestures like this have previously been extended but the regime's grip on power was strong enough to resist.  The opposition numbers are now greater and generous will be the resources devoted to ensuring a critical mass of protesters isn't achieved and Caracas doesn't see its own "capital riot".  For as long as the security forces remain willing and able to retain control of the streets and ensure the population isn't deprived of food for three days (another trigger point for revolution established by political scientists), Mr Maduro should be able to keep the job he so obviously enjoys. 

1955 Studebaker President Speedster.  As well as the styling motifs, there was a sense of exuberance in the two (and sometimes three) tone color schemes the US industry offered in the 1950s.  

Studebaker used the President name (they also offered a "Dictator" until events in Europe made that a harder sell) for their most expensive models, the first three generations a range of sedans, coupes and roadsters produced between 1926-1942.  The name was revived in 1955 and used until 1958, the range this time encompassing two and four-door sedans & station wagons and two-door coupes and hardtops.  The last of the Packards (the much derided, so-called "Packardbakers" which had a brief, unsuccessful run between 1957-1958) was based on the Studebaker President Speedster, the most admired of the range.