Beast, Vermin, Insect - Hate Media and the Construction of the Enemy: The Case of Rwanda, 1990 - 1994

Roger Bromley

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Beast, Vermin, Insect - Hate Media and the Construction of the Enemy: The Case of Rwanda, 1990 - 1994

In: Creating Destruction

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Roger Bromley

Roger Bromley
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 39–59

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401200387_004

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This chapter was prompted by a poem by Sam Keen, ‘To Create an Enemy’, in which the ‘other’ is metamorphosed and reified into ‘beast, vermin, insect’ (in Rwanda the term inyenzi - cockroaches - was used) to form an icon of the enemy. The purpose of the chapter is to show how moral disengagement - the readiness to slaughter with impunity - can be produced by a discourse of ideological justification. Radio and print media in Rwanda helped to construct verbal and visual caricatures of the minority Tutsi by a process of cultural and social exclusion and, what has been called, ‘emotional disidentification with its accompanying affect: hate’. It is not argued that the media caused the genocide. But both broadcast and print communications helped to facilitate it. By creating symbolic forms and ethnic absolutes, and by the use of repeated invective, fantasies, and de-humanised stereotypes, the media helped to mobilise Hutu militias, and others, to massacre and rape hundreds of thousands of Tutsi men, women and children, and their Hutu supporters, in a period of three months from April to July, 1994. ‘Know that the person whose throat you do not cut now will be the one who will cut yours’. Examples of ‘hate’ media are analysed from Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) and the journal, Kangura.

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Creating Destruction

Constructing Images of Violence and Genocide

Series: At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries, Volume: 75

E-Book ISBN:: 9789401200387

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 2011

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Beast, Vermin, Insect - Hate Media and the Construction of the Enemy: The Case of Rwanda, 1990 - 1994

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Creating Destruction

Constructing Images of Violence and Genocide

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