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Holocausts involve large-scale, systematic state-sponsored extermination of large number of civilian non-combatants over an extended time period based on their ethnic, racial, class or religious identity.
All the holocausts of the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries were preceded by state or civil society violence against the victimized peoples. In general, prior to the execution of the holocausts, important sectors of the state and civil society opposed violence directed against the victimized population. However once the perpetrators of the holocausts gained state power they were able to neutralize, silence, repress or co-opt previous oppositionists.
A number of theorists have attempted to explain holocaust(s) by focusing exclusively on a single case Nazi Germanys extermination of large sectors of the Jewish communities in Western, Central and Eastern Europe. Methodologically this focus on a single case involving only European Jews fails the empirical test: it cannot explain previous, contemporary and subsequent holocausts affecting other European, Asian and Latin America victims.