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Genocide (n.) The convenient elimination of a middle class by poor rural thugs organized by a cynical political elite.
Genocides are often described as ethnic or religious, but this analysis is both bleak in its fatalistic assumption that cultural diversity is a root cause of murderous violence, and naive in that it ignores the economics of social behavior. The victims of a genocide are almost invariably an educated and prospering middle class that is the focus of jealousy by poor rural youths, and a source of danger to a political elite. In the classic "blame the victim before you chop his head off" rationale, the genocidees are portrayed as an alien threat to the purity of the state, hence the focus on ethnic and religious explanations. Like the neutron bomb, genocide does not destroy property, thus conveniently leaving it for the political elite.