Demagogue

In my post on "Hotel Rwanda" last week, I speculated that the film's failure to explain several key aspects of the genocide would lead those who don't know much about it to simply conclude that is was just "another example of Africans killing each other for no reason."

Today, I came across a piece on the movie by Thomas Hibbs in the National Review. Hibbs admits that much of the history and relevant political background is overlooked in the file and then goes on to make this infuriating statement

What the film makes clear is the peculiar organizational shape of the Rwandan massacre. This is not a top-down genocide, not even a well-orchestrated plan. It is rather a mass bloodfest arising from innumerable local points, fomented by Hutu Power Radio, over which a broadcaster declaims against the Tutsi "cockroaches" and announces the start of killing with the words, "Cut down the tall trees."

Hibbs gets it exactly wrong. The genocide was not some spontaneous bloodfest that simply arose out of nothing, but rather a well-planned and carefully orchestrated genocidal campaign that involved detailed preparations.

As Linda Melvern, author of "Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide," demonstrated in her book

Conspiracy to Murder is the story of how that genocide was planned. It reveals how, from as early as 1990, the political, military and administrative leadership of Rwanda became involved in planning the complete extermination of the Tutsi population. A vicious race hate campaign filled the media, urging Hutu's to kill; a network of roadblocks was devised to prevent any escape; civil-defence groups were established throughout the country, with eventually every third Hutu being armed; half a million machetes and other agricultural tools, along with 85,000 tonnes' worth of AK47s and grenades, were imported into Rwanda and distributed country-wide in the year leading up to the genocide.

The genocide was indeed "top-down," orchestrated by the Akazu, the Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR) and the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND) through the "Hutu Power" movement they created and exploited via the radio station Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). In the months and years preceding the genocide, they armed and trained thousands of Interahamwe for the sole purpose of wiping out Rwanda's Tutsi population and, with the onset of violence on April 7, 1994, commenced the genocidal campaign that had long been in the works.

People do not just spontaneously take it upon themselves to begin slaughtering their neighbors. They have to be trained, equipped and psychologically prepared for such actions. And in Rwanda, they were.

I don't expect much from the National Review, but it would be nice if occasionally they could manage to exceed my expectations.