This is a great deep dive, one that I've never given myself time to do. Rwanda has always frightened me... I know internationals who went after the genocide. We make analogies of the AM band on US radio with THE Radio, and in a country of 25 million AR-15s, mostly in the hands of people with a certain world view the possibilities are dire. But Rwanda is tremendously complicated, it's not the same, and there were a lot of warnings before the actual catastrophe. Thanks for sorting this out.
Thank you so much <3 Rwanda is indeed enormously complicated. While genocides can happen just about anywhere, I certainly wouldn't place the situation of the US in the same realm as where Rwanda was. For example, the US has vastly higher literacy, and living in the information age today most of us enjoy other sources of information. However the episode that happened on January 6th was worrying - in the sense that it seems clear the US is vulnerable to a radical state/executive mobilising for internal violence - there isn't yet the kind of stratification that was achieved in Rwanda. You're also just as likely to see massive resistance to such a move in earnest. In Rwanda, the resistance was minimal.
Thanks for the very interesting article. But I think the situation with regards to free speech is slightly more complex. For instance, the prohibition of such views creates secretive and isolated groups and amplifies the conspiratorial mindset these heavily rely on. Moreover, most of these people have no interested in discussing their true intentions and viewpoints in public in fear the of the potential backlash. In fact restrictions on free speech in many instances allow such figures to exist in a kind of grey zone where they implicitly signal the more extreme viewpoints to their core ideological supporters while managing to project a more benign image to the wider public (see for instance the AfD in Germany). And if we look at current and historical examples of genocide - a crime that is almost exclusively committed by states, it is highly centralised propaganda by the state and other institutional actors that plays a much greater role than anything that can be reasonably called free speech. In fact one could argue that safeguarding free speech and association is the most effective way of combatting such propaganda. Finally, restrictions on free speech, including hate speech laws, can/are easily exploited/instrumentalised to silence those who oppose genocide.
In studying the fairly enormous scholarly work done on this subject, they tend to agree that it is hate speech as a vehicle of perception-shifting that makes acts of genocide possible. Typically, it is only the final stages at which states - captured by extremist groups - become so implicated. This is the "Hate from Above and Below" mechanism of the title, once at that stage, the target group is attacked from both directions, and action is either legitimated or coordinated by the state. However, beyond that, there is also a vast history of events which don't fit the literal meaning of genocide yet which are mass atrocities targeting specific groups which have no direct state coordination or backing necessarily. States are usually the guarantors of order, so this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise, and disorder in the populace to the point of mass killings by the populace alone would be a total failure of the state's mandate. Pogroms can be seen as variations on genocide whereby there is no coordinating hand, and they can be quite significant.
There is something to be said about the wolf in sheeps clothing situation with groups like AfD, I was more or less alluding to it when talking about the difficulties in identifying e.g "Nazis", such as someone who agrees with Adolf Hitlers entire ideology, but denies any and all association with Nazis.
Your final point is the same as the point my article in fact is making. It's part of the "Aftermath: Theory vs Practice" section.
This is a great deep dive, one that I've never given myself time to do. Rwanda has always frightened me... I know internationals who went after the genocide. We make analogies of the AM band on US radio with THE Radio, and in a country of 25 million AR-15s, mostly in the hands of people with a certain world view the possibilities are dire. But Rwanda is tremendously complicated, it's not the same, and there were a lot of warnings before the actual catastrophe. Thanks for sorting this out.
Thank you so much <3 Rwanda is indeed enormously complicated. While genocides can happen just about anywhere, I certainly wouldn't place the situation of the US in the same realm as where Rwanda was. For example, the US has vastly higher literacy, and living in the information age today most of us enjoy other sources of information. However the episode that happened on January 6th was worrying - in the sense that it seems clear the US is vulnerable to a radical state/executive mobilising for internal violence - there isn't yet the kind of stratification that was achieved in Rwanda. You're also just as likely to see massive resistance to such a move in earnest. In Rwanda, the resistance was minimal.
Thanks for the very interesting article. But I think the situation with regards to free speech is slightly more complex. For instance, the prohibition of such views creates secretive and isolated groups and amplifies the conspiratorial mindset these heavily rely on. Moreover, most of these people have no interested in discussing their true intentions and viewpoints in public in fear the of the potential backlash. In fact restrictions on free speech in many instances allow such figures to exist in a kind of grey zone where they implicitly signal the more extreme viewpoints to their core ideological supporters while managing to project a more benign image to the wider public (see for instance the AfD in Germany). And if we look at current and historical examples of genocide - a crime that is almost exclusively committed by states, it is highly centralised propaganda by the state and other institutional actors that plays a much greater role than anything that can be reasonably called free speech. In fact one could argue that safeguarding free speech and association is the most effective way of combatting such propaganda. Finally, restrictions on free speech, including hate speech laws, can/are easily exploited/instrumentalised to silence those who oppose genocide.
In studying the fairly enormous scholarly work done on this subject, they tend to agree that it is hate speech as a vehicle of perception-shifting that makes acts of genocide possible. Typically, it is only the final stages at which states - captured by extremist groups - become so implicated. This is the "Hate from Above and Below" mechanism of the title, once at that stage, the target group is attacked from both directions, and action is either legitimated or coordinated by the state. However, beyond that, there is also a vast history of events which don't fit the literal meaning of genocide yet which are mass atrocities targeting specific groups which have no direct state coordination or backing necessarily. States are usually the guarantors of order, so this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise, and disorder in the populace to the point of mass killings by the populace alone would be a total failure of the state's mandate. Pogroms can be seen as variations on genocide whereby there is no coordinating hand, and they can be quite significant.
There is something to be said about the wolf in sheeps clothing situation with groups like AfD, I was more or less alluding to it when talking about the difficulties in identifying e.g "Nazis", such as someone who agrees with Adolf Hitlers entire ideology, but denies any and all association with Nazis.
Your final point is the same as the point my article in fact is making. It's part of the "Aftermath: Theory vs Practice" section.
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