mortocracy

English

Etymology

Latin mors (“death”) +‎ -cracy

Noun

mortocracy (countable and uncountable, plural mortocracies)

1. (rare) Rule or government based on death in some way.
   • 2000, John Jacob Nutter, The CIA's Black Ops, page 215:

     In the 1970s and 1980s El Salvador was ruled by what might best be described as a "mortocracy": government by death. Ruled by a small group of wealthy elite, the country was controlled by death squads.

   • 2020, Richard Reid, Shallow Graves: A Memoir of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War, page xxix:

     Eritrean historical consciousness has long been characterized by mourning, loss and grievance, and more broadly it is possible to understand history in the Horn from the perspective of emotional response and remembrance, most obviously manifest in the martyrology—a kind of mortocracy—which underpins the Eritrean state in its modern form.