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"The 'potlatch' was a festival ceremony practiced by the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The word means "to give away" or "a gift." Aspiring nobles validated their status positions through lavish distribution and ostentatious destruction of resources and property.
Warfare is ostentatious destruction. The "big men" of the Twentieth Century were Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Pol Pot. "Big history" documents gigantic episodes of potlatch. The "winners" are those who sacrifice the greatest number of lives.
The mass-murderers knew what they were doing: what was required to get their names into "history books." But the historians? Unconscious collaborators.
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