 The term is also used in reference to attacks on non-Jewish ethnic minorities, and accordingly some scholars do not include antisemitism as the defining characteristic of "pogroms".Reviewing its uses in scholarly literature, historian Werner Bergmann proposes that pogroms should be "defined as a "unilateral, nongovernmental" form of "collective" violence that is "initiated by the majority population" against a largely defenseless ethnic group, and he also states that pogroms occur when the "majority" expects the state to provide it with no assistance in overcoming a (perceived) threat from the minority," but he adds that in Western usage, the word's "anti-Semitic overtones" have been retained.Historian David Engel supports this, writing that "there can be no logically or empirically compelling grounds for declaring that some particular episode does or does not merit the label [pogrom]," but states that the majority of the incidents "habitually" described as pogroms took place in societies that were significantly divided by ethnicity and/or religion where the violence was committed by members of the higher-ranking group against members of a stereotyped lower-ranking group with which they expressed some complaint, and the members of the higher-ranking group justified their acts of violence by claiming that the law of the land would not be used to stop them.