Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 328 - The Rwandan Genocide: Part 2

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Support the show on Patreon and get our next episode right now as well as years worth of bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Grab tickets to our live show in Belfast: https://www.universe.com/events/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-belfast-tickets-83V5QD Can't make it to Belfast? We're streaming it! Get your stream tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-lions-led-by-donkeys-live-in-belfast-tickets-1008166803047 Sources for this series: Scott Straus. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda Scott Straus. Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention Scott Straus. Rwanda, RTLM, and Mass Media Effects. Jean Hatzfeld. Machete Season. Philip Gourevitch. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Alison Des Forges. Leave None to Tell The Story: Genocide In Rwanda. Roméo Dallaire. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Case Files. https://unictr.irmct.org/en/cases

Hello Lions led by donkeys fans Just a heads up if you're interested in attending our Belfast show on October 26th But are not on this side of the Atlantic or anywhere close to it We wanted to present another option, which is live streaming The venue has a live stream setup and we have a ticketed event set up now as well where you can watch the show Live from wherever you are in the world. Check the link in the show notes. It's got all the information you need about how to get a ticket and also the time zone information which is obviously very important. Once again that is Saturday the 26th

of October in Belfast. So British summertime GMT plus one at 8 p.m. And if you click the link in the show notes you can find all the information that you need if you are interested. Anyway, thanks for being a Lions fan and we hope you enjoy this episode. Hey everyone! Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, I'm Joe, with me is Tom and Nate and we are still in the opening bit free zone, unfortunately. We're about to talk about some really really dark shit. Guys, how are you doing?

Tell me something happy. I'm excited to be in da misery zone. I will give you a little bit of very, very localized happiness, which is today, August 7th, 2024, at 9.42am. This is the nicest cycling weather I've ever had in six years in this country. It is such a gorgeous day. It basically feels like September in the Midwest, but like, but it's August. It's actually going to be decently warm today, but it was like flawless. So I came in, I'm like, you know what? Feeling good. Got exercise, got some sun, doing okay. You know, got some decent sleep last night. Got a cold, but I'm going to be all right.

Let me go and hear about absolute psychic death. Yeah. Yeah. I prepared for this by listening to Japanese power violence on the way to the studio. I was like, you want to hear about a band that has an incomprehensible name and is somehow part of the JRA? Fuck yeah. I just feel like I should just listen to who will save the world by modern talking. Like the fucking song that's playing in that embed with the Soviet army and Afghanis in video when they almost get nuked by an RPG seven. Yeah, that guy with the bitchin mustache and the aviator sunglasses.

Yeah, the logistics officer supply out. He's like a lieutenant who looks like he's the only person who successfully played Ignatius Riley in a movie, Confederacy of Dunces. But he's Soviet, yeah. Similarly, my cycling weather this morning into the studio is magnificent, and I do have a funny story to share with everybody. A little bit peek behind the curtain. When we were recording part one, I was coming to the conclusion for some reason I could hardly see the screen on my laptop and read the script. You guys remember that I kept rubbing my eyes? Yeah. Oh, I wear contact lenses or glasses, otherwise I'm completely blind. Fun fact, I was wearing them in the wrong eye that day. Which tells you

two things. I not only woke up and put contacts in the wrong eye that day. Which tells you two things. I not only woke up and put contacts in the wrong eye and managed to exit my bathroom without noticing. I then sat on a bicycle and cycled clear across the city, got into the studio and still did not notice that something was wrong. See, this is why, you know, you can be very, very good at one thing, but it's like, you know, a set amount of skill points and a character creator is like, you have to create a deficit somewhere else. So you were very good at your job, but you are a fucking moron when it

comes to, am I able to see? Yeah. It's, um, I'm a, I'm an idiot, but I'm a very dumb man. I know of a story that is, it is dark. It's funny, but it's dark So there was a guy in and around the Fayetteville area who was like an ex-Halo instructor who was now then a civilian Skydiving instructor and there's a lot of skydiving happens in that part of North Carolina for variety reasons now This is in the 80s This man was like when his gear post military looked like fucking if David Lee Roth was a skydiving instructor. That kind of rules.

Like we're talking like, yeah, like he's dressed like, it's like you're going to do a tandem jump with Ricky rocket from Poison level. Yeah, might as well jump, jump. Here's the thing. He was so good that he was basically kind of doing eighties style content for instructors to get better at skydiving instruction and did a jump and was extraordinarily Confident and ready to go and did his thing not realizing he jumped out of the plane Wearing his VHS camera rig backpack and no parachute

And the camera recorded it Ben survived. It's bad. It's very bad, but Ricky rocket burned into a fucking drop zone in goddamn North Carolina wearing, yes, like just full on Panama, like that. And then years later, Werner Herzog is like, you must destroy the tape. Yeah. Yeah, if anyone's going to watch that, it's Werner Herzog. Look at it this way. If that man was going to choose any way to die, he probably would pick that. Exactly. Exactly. One of my best friends from the army became a bush pilot doing hunting tours on like Robinson helicopters and burned in and you know what?

It's sad that he died, but like he absolutely died doing what he loved, like being a fucking moron whipping shit, he's in a helicopter. And I loved him to death and I really miss him and I'm so, so sad. Every time I see like a grim fucking British version of Mexican food, I can't snap a picture and text him and get like a wall of jaw, jaw, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja

back from him. But like, he died doing what he loved, you know? If only we could all be so lucky and said I'm probably gonna die of like some horrible cancer. We're all gonna find out that like, it was a secret plot to eliminate podcasters and they put like a slow release poison in Elf Bar AF 5000s. I actually still have your elf bar here.

They're the vape that never ends. Oh my, my coconut one. Yeah. The chicken corn is using it because we're, we're a family on the show. We share vape. We are a family. Yeah. When we went to the Hague for the live show, Joe texted me that morning we were supposed to go to the airport. Can you get me some vapes because they only have dog shit EU vapes in the Hague. And I went around the corner to wait, Joe, I just realized I'm going to cut your story off Tom, but you've got a blue elf bar. I've got a red elf bar and Joe has

so we basically have Armenia, the Armenian flag and fucking babes. Hi, Aston Vapocon. Exactly. But I went around to the off license that's down the street that is like, it's so weird because like they'll have, you know, beer, they have like your usual shit. They have an entire wall of vapes, but you can also get a pre-made karma. Yeah. We are so distracting from the grim topic, but let's just, so basically Elf Barf vapes in the law in the UK and I think it may be EU wide, but certainly in the UK, they can only have a certain amount of liquid in the pod.

And so the way they get around this is by basically creating a system that refills the pod from a tank. So technically the pod never has more than the legal limit. But this thing is like, it looks like a small handheld radio. It's a disposable vape with a USB-C charger and it lasts like, I've had it last like 10 days. And I vape a lot. Funny story for anybody who met me during our London live shows.

I came from Georgia, which has surprisingly restrictive vape laws for the caucuses. And by that I mean they have laws. And I had this massive cylinder of a vape in my hand that had four chambers within it, like a revolver. Because similarly in Georgia, you could only have 400 hit vapes but the cylinder has four 400 hit vapes in it so as you run out you can pop the top and switch them like a fucking vape gun. Just hitting the vape, doing Russian roulette with the vape.

Blue Razz Russian roulette. That's exactly what it is. My last vape story when we were on tour the vape. Blue Razz Russian roulette, basically. My last vape story, when we were on tour in Australia, flavored vapes were banned in Australia in the sense that you can get them, but they have to be zero nicotine. Same here. However, but you can buy them, basically every corner shop has them. It's just, they're illegal obviously, but like, if you don't look like a cop or a little kid, they'll sell them to you.

And because it's Australia, like, well also because like, okay, it's Pacific nation, you know, and I don't know if they're getting from America or elsewhere, but they had vapes of similar size to these big elf bars, except they were 7%, 7 milligrams or 7% instead of 2%. So like knock you on your ass, vape that lasts for a year. But that's like the corner shop near my house where that's like an Iron Man endurance triathlete for your lungs. I always, it's funny too, cause it's like, if I, if I smoke a cigarette, like a Marlboro light knob, like this doesn't

hit like a vape, it's not strong enough. Give me an unfiltered lucky strike. But the fucking like corner shop, they have like the big wall of vapes on the counter and then they have the, like saying this in the UK, the illegal vapes that are underneath the counter that are like, Oh, the writing on it is in a language I don't understand is somehow has 20,000 hits in it. Yeah. You actually have to buy it out of the mouth of an Excel. Well, boys, unfortunately for all of us and unfortunately for our listeners, this is the end of the point of the show. Well, actually, okay. I stayed corrected. There is one point of this episode. You will

laugh. And I want to say this, like we're not saying this because like, oh, poor us, we have to listen to this. It's more on the lines that we want to treat the topic with the subject, the seriousness that the subject deserves. But obviously like the way that our show works is oftentimes like just going, as I said before, people would think that we were arms traffickers carrying big flight cases. And it's like, no, it's AV equipment to record the dumbest podcast anyone has ever made. Like we enjoy that aspect as well, but like we wouldn't want to try to tread lightly on a subject that's very, very, very serious

and grim. And so we're going to try to be restrained and mature about it, but also like we only can be funny upfront and we only couldn't have some kind of laughs and enjoyment right here because from here on out, you just can't. It just, you're not supposed to. Before we get into it, Belfast 26th of October tickets are in description this episode. Come see us. Hopefully there won't be riots going on when we're there, but it's the North of Ireland. So that's a kind of a percentage chance that you can calculate yourself. That's a great sales pitch. Thank you, Tom.

Stiff little fingers fan memorabilia, ultra-sar poster, and now they're having anti-podcaster riots. Yeah, considering someone messaged me the other day and they have stolen a UVF flag that they had planned to give to me at the show. And I was like, do not take that out. Do not take that out in a venue. It's like when one of one of you texts me something and says, lol, I'm WhatsApp on the train. I'm like, do not open that out. Do not take that out in the venue. It's like when one of one of you texts me something and says,

lol, on WhatsApp on the train, I'm like, do not open that screen. Do not open that screen next to people. I have the same policy. I mean, I do have to say the guy who steals the UVF flag enters the annals of Legion

history along with the Zimbabwean dude who pissed on the Nazi grave. Yes. Fuck it. You guys rule. But also we're not encouraging you doing that because that's a crime. Now, when we left you last time, the Rwandan patriotic front, a Tutsi exile rebel army,

invaded Rwanda and stopped just short of taking Kigali. Rwandan president, Habyari Mana, used a literal false flag attack inside Kigali to secure a foreign assistance and violently persecute the Tutsi population, throwing thousands of dissidents in prison, and gave birth to the modern Hutu extremist political ideology known as Hutu Power. I should stop here and explain what exactly Hutu Power is. As its name suggests, it's an extreme form of Hutu nationalism. It first popped up during the struggle for independence, but it largely lacked mainstream appeal, it lacked a central identity, it lacked a central ideology, and even leadership all the way up until the 90s. As the civil war raged on in lower intensities,

the racist messaging coming from Habiyarimana's government only increased, as did the infrastructure needed to carry this message. The first mass media created to vomit out literal Hutu power ideology was a newspaper called Tangura, which began in 1990. Though calling it mass media isn't exactly accurate. This had the circulation numbers of like a shitty zine. It was like 3000 copies a month. Yeah, but I still feel like it's when you look at the circulation of extremist content now in different venues, it can, it can do a lot with not a big, exactly. A great example is Facebook having zero Burmese language moderators and all this

insane extremist content in Myanmar going viral in terms of the numbers of the audience. Exactly. You nailed it. Progroms against Rohingya people. Like, yeah, it's wild. It doesn't have to be a huge number of people so long as it reaches the right number of insane motivated people. I mean, reference the country we're in just about 300 miles north of us right now. Yeah. You look at like all the screenshots going around on like Twitter of like these telegram groups

that have like 300 people in them? That's exactly the point, you guys kind of nailed it. What isn't important is the circulation number, but the impact of its messaging and how it's delivered. Because the publishers of Kangura were members of both the military and the ruling party, which also happened to be its main source of funding. They knew about half of the company, give or take, was functionally illiterate, so a newspaper would not be that impactful to a common man.

Instead, they distributed that newspaper to the vast network of government supervisors that oversaw everyday life for the average person. That supervisor would then read it aloud to their subordinates in routine mandatory group meetings. Through this method, Kangra became something of a mouthpiece for the government, paid for unofficially by the government, being read to the Rwandan population by government officials. It was also the platform that Habiarimana used to test new ideas to see how people would react to them. Everything was written in a fantastical, over-the-top manner, framing Tutsis as the main threat

to the country and that every single one of them was plotting in one way or another. Though I should point out, it never called them Tutsis. Use the term in Yezzi, which you might know more commonly as cockroach. Cockroaches. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember this from, well, from Hotel Rwanda just because it popularized this story, but yeah. Oh, good news. We'll be talking about Hotel Rwanda in part three, not in the way that you probably think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Philip Gurevich's book also, having read that, yeah. In its sixth issue, Kangra published the 10 Hutu commandments, which included such gems as every Hutu should know that a Tutsi woman, whoever she is, works for the interest of her Tutsi ethnic group. As a result, we should consider a trader. Any Hutu that marries a Tutsi employs a Tutsi woman as a concubine or employs a Tutsi woman as a secretary or takes her under protection. And every Hutu should know that every Tutsi is dishonest in business. His only aim is

supremacy of his ethnic group. As a result, any Hutu who does the following is a traitor, makes a partnership with a Tutsi in any business, invests money or the government's money in a Tutsi enterprise, or lends or borrows money in a Tutsi enterprise or lends or borrows money from a Tutsi or gives favors to any Tutsi in regards to business. This is like, this is the kind of shit they're putting down. Yeah. And it's like, it's that thing. Um, I can't remember the exact theory, but it's about the propagation of violent media

and like how information is mediated out to the masses. And the best way to do it is not necessarily to make accusations of things as provable facts. It's more so like these are kind of intangible differences. This mainly arises in like inter-ethnic conflicts within the borders of a country because it's much harder to do in between countries because you're trying to, you're navigating like national identity and everything. Whereas when it's inter ethnicity conflicts within a country, you focus on like a dishonesty kind of thieving nature, like these things that aren't like, Oh, the Tutsis did this, which is like something that you can like

fact check and disprove. Right, that claims you to be more amorphous. Yeah, it's like poking holes in the character of an entire group. Yeah, it's something that's very, very common. Actually, it's not just common, it's like by the book, playbook, even though not everybody knows they're doing it when they're doing it, when it comes to not the genocide itself, but the buildup to said genocide. And that is you have to depersonalize and dehumanize whoever it is that you're targeting. But more specifically, you have to dehumanize them while simultaneously making them seem

incredibly weak and inferior, but also an existential threat. Which is why I talked about on part one is every genocide error sees their victim. They see it killing them as a form of self-defense. Yeah. And it's also like constructing a kind of a positive in-group identity that's antithetical to the out-group that makes that dehumanization easier. Now with all of this going on, Habibahri Mana is facing serious pressure to open up his government to other political parties by domestic and international bodies. Between this stalled war and the ongoing peace process, reformers saw this as their one time to leverage all of that and kind of sort of slow reform the government. And, you know, rightfully so.

Eventually, Habibahri Mana caved and revoked the law that made the MRND the state's only legal political entity. Overnight, dozens of parties emerged, the vast majority of which were Hutu dominated because after all, they are the majority. These parties ran the gamut from progressive to conservative to absolutely insane. Now, one of these insane extremist parties was the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic Party, or the CDR. The CDR is a far-right, explicitly Hutu power party that, while criticizing the government and occasionally Habibahimana personally, they worked closely with them and it quickly became apparent that they were more of a controlled opposition

than anything else. They existed as a separate body to voice opinions so radical that the MRND and Habiyari Mana could not say them themselves. They were in effect a mechanism in place to shift opinion further into Hutu power while keeping themselves clean. They were Kangura taking party form. The Rwandan genocide is really kind of like the modern conflict which prefigures essentially how conspiratorial and like tension building material is spread today. Like you can replace

you know the radio stations with the way stuff is spread on WhatsApp now. Oh yeah. And it's like almost one to one. Mass media is incredibly important when it comes to genocide or not even just genocide, but just engendering hate in a population. Yeah. I mean, we think about the things that people remember from Nazi propaganda, you know, like what is it, Volksdeutscher, Baerbachter, and Stürmer and stuff like that. But it was a very much an early 20th century or almost 19th century style mass media propaganda

thing, aside from the filmmaking. Whereas this sounds far closer to the modern day in terms of a kind of like mass media as a tool of disseminating and pushing ratcheting things further right, further to the extreme. And obviously I think that radio and print were stronger mechanisms, but don't have the kind of personalized interactive nature of social media. And it's wild to me because it's like this sounds so familiar. But then also we have so many examples of this done to an even greater extent. So the difference between in propagation of media, a top down versus not necessarily bottom up, but like kind of more grassroot roots.

Right. Certainly more lateral in the sense that like a lot of the people who aren't necessarily like leaders or figures, but survey purpose, like what you're describing in terms of like the relationship with who to power and the relationship with the governing party, they exist and they are useful, but they are not sort of officially sanctioned. They're doing this to spin things up. I definitely think you can see parallels with that with some of the things happening in this country, in the United Kingdom right now. Unfortunately, it's going to sound a lot more familiar in a little bit. The differences between like, um, fascist propaganda in World War II, particularly in

Germany and Italy, is that like, so much of it was state apparatus directive handed directly off to printing companies and like people who had the monopoly on broadcasting. So the message was clear when it was handed off. Whereas during the Romantic genocide, what was happening was a lot of this material was being handed off and then there was a kind of plausible deniability element of what people did with it. It's like, here is all the information. You put it on the radio. It's not quite. It's going to become explicitly directive very soon. Yeah. Understood. Now at this point, the CDR formed an organization that everybody here is and become unfortunately familiar with the enter a home way. Oh God means those who stand fight or attack together in the

Kenya Rwandan language now they started as a youth wing formed by politically engaging football hooligans yep ah that sound familiar to anybody I have never heard of such a yeah can't wait for that one person who was mad at us a couple of weeks ago to be really mad about this. Do they by any chance have a common recreational substance abuse thing that they use for both football hooliganism and also committing crimes and violence? They like to get drunk a lot. They were heavy drinkers. These hooligan firms or gangs had previously been state sponsored by the MRND, though unofficially kind of like Kangura.

The Enter Ahamwe quickly turned into a full on paramilitary force conducting group trainings with officers of the Rwandan military in Rwandan military bases with Rwandan military equipment. I'm just going to say also not being gl glib, but state-sponsored semi-paramilitary football hooligan firms, it's like Rwanda and Italians just handshaking forever. It's very similar to a lot of other fascist organizations that harness already existing criminal elements to do criminal shit, you know? Not even just harnessing criminal elements, It's like harnessing pre-existing structures of association and stuff like football, hooliganism, youth groups. Like it's attaching

or it's kind of inserting this new kind of violent tint into an already existing group of young people, which is usually what happens a lot in history, particularly in the past hundred years. But still, pressure began to mount on the government. Negotiations between the government and the RPF continued, along with several ceasefires that both sides routinely violated. It quickly became clear to Habiyari Mana that his position was growing increasingly tenuous. The RPF was getting stronger, while his own military was growing weaker. The Rwandan military, like the militaries of virtually every dictatorship in history,

is badly factionalized and corrupt. Habibarimana knew that, which is why he relied so much on the French to solidify his position. However, by 1991, the French warned him that they would be leaving and handing over their duties to the UN mission in Rwanda or UNAMIR. Habib Arimana hated this idea because he knew the UN would scare absolutely nothing for him. Since the 1990 invasion, the government had been dumping most of its money into its military and absorbing thousands upon thousands of men, and in a country with a badly imploding

economy, this made for rich career opportunities where previously there would have been nothing. Despite the government coming to tentative terms at the RPF in 1992, elements of the ruling party, as well as the CDR, began to warn the military what would happen to them should the war end. Your sweet lives of privilege and government salaries would go away, and they'd be tossed out into the Rwandan reality, having no idea where your next paycheck or even your next meal would come from. Terrified, the Rwandan military mutinied at several bases, protesting the peace talks which had formed into the Arusha Accords, and Hab Yari Mana, at least tentatively, agreed to them.

After facing continued mutinies and warnings from his own political party that the Accords might get you killed, he publicly disavowed them, despite signing a version of them three months before. But it did not matter, the damage was already done. The Rwandan military, largely loyal to the president rather than the party or the country, began to share memorandums in secret about how multiple high-level government and military officials were clearly working for the enemy, which means the Tutsis, both in and out of the country, while as possible moderate Hutu elements who dared socialize, converse or organize with Tutsis. BG If you are tracking your genocide bingo card, you can tick off the box that says the establishment

of a cult of personality planting on an ethnic identity onto a single person. Yeah, yeah. And the CDR and Kangura were lockstep and outlining and disseminating that message against those same enemies. They insisted anyone who spored the Accords were working for the Tutsis and therefore the RPF. They ended their statement with quote, the CDR party calls upon the government and the president to deal with this problem. If it does not, the great mass cannot stand by and do nothing. An enemy is an enemy and anybody who cooperates with an enemy is a traitor to Rwanda.

It's around now that Habibahimana was beginning to realize that the Hutu power demographic of politics, the one that he was harnessing to turn people against Tutsis and towards him was beginning to run out of his control. After the 1992 agreement, both the military and the CDR were openly and actively plotting against him and he knew it. The irony of this is pretty fucking rich because remember, some of the many rules of the Hutu power ideology was anybody who worked with Tutsis was an enemy. Though by signing the accord that the RPF, which would have allowed the exiled Tutsi populations which remember had been barred from returning to Rwanda to return to the

country as well as the RPF to become a legitimate political actor, Habiyarimana had made himself an enemy in the eyes of his own support base. These hardliners and the Inter-Ahamwe militia began attacking Tutsis across the country, wholly independent of Habiyarimana's orders or possibly knowledge. You see, previous to this, he wanted to harness those things to support himself, but now doing so, it actively went against his own survival because he needed the accords and the ceasefire with the RPF to hold. Having these guys run around and kill Tutsis was the last thing he needed for political

survival because then the RPF would tear up the ceasefire and go back to war and start the whole process over again, which is exactly what happened. He kind of became like a vessel that could not contain all of all it holds. Like it's he's put this into motion and it's now spread to the point where he is like apparatus to control it can't keep a hold of it anymore. Yeah. And he's not innocent in this. I don't mean to say that like he's a poor little baby. He's being outmaneuvered by extremists. He empowered them and then suddenly realized like, Oh, you guys believe this stuff for real for real.

But this is like, it's, it's such a tale as all this time of like, whenever someone in power creates a kind of extreme element within society, it almost inevitably ends with them turning against whoever started it. By nature, they kind of have to, right? As 1992 rolled into 1993, Rwandan Hutu society is rapidly radicalizing as the war began to rage around them once again. The propaganda was cranked up as Hab Yarimana's party began to lose ground, not in power, but in messaging. The Hutu power voices of his own party and the CDR grew louder than his own.

And like I said, this isn't even to say he was against it. He did believe in the concepts of Hutu power, as long as that meant him remaining president. He was not innocent in any capacity whatsoever. What I'm saying is the people he empowered were now sprinting past him on the route of radicalization, and he was simply rushing to keep up. He made no attempt to control anything, he made no attempt to moderate anything, or even remove any of these people from power. He was fine with it. Part of the propaganda effort by this who-to-power element that I'm sure everybody listening is familiar with is a new radio station, Radio Libre de Miqueline, or RTLM. It was effectively a government controlled and funded

who-to-power radio station, though the government would never admit to funding it. But I need to point out here, they absolutely did. It was so government-funded and controlled that it used many resources from Radio Rwanda, the actual state-owned radio station. RTLM was violent, racist, and most importantly, easily consumed. We already talked about how half the population was illiterate, but most families or groups of families had at least one radio amongst them. RTLM, despite being consumed. We already talked about how half the population was illiterate, but most families or groups of families had at least one radio amongst them. RTLM, despite being funded by the government, would routinely lash out at the government officials, of course assuming they had been considered enemies, or it was more of a polite nudging to get them on target

with CDR messaging. It championed the Rwandan military, simply made up attacks and mass killings committed by the RPF in order to instill fear in the population. And though I should point out, there were absolutely killings committed by the RPF. It made up ones even beyond that. It called for Hutu solidarity, which of course meant solidarity amongst the ones that were pure and untainted by any business with Tutsis. It also occasionally call out Hutus by name who were accused of working with Tutsis. It also occasionally call out Hutus by name who were accused of working with Tutsis. And this will become important later. This is the one kind of, I don't want to say funny thing. It's very weird. One of RTLM's

radio hosts was not who you picture it being. Oh God. It was a Hutu nationalist white man from Belgium. A whitey, a whitey. What is my line that I always say? Belgium is the dark heart of Europe that has infected Africa. This guy, Georges Henri Yvonne Joseph Rijoux was a five foot tall, rail thin white guy who lived with his mom until he was 35

who so he's a podcaster well nobody's entirely sure how this happened because Raju we'll talk about later but he never explains any of this why he did anything what his motivations were nothing he never fucking talked but as far as anybody can tell while living Belgium, he kind of fell into a Rwandan diaspora circle who were explicitly Hutu power people. And he stuck on that shit like a flight of shit for some reason. God, this is just the evil version of the white boy yardie from Brickson. I was genuinely going to say like, this is basically white boy shocks Rwandan diaspora

with perfect Hutu nationalism. Yeah, it's evil. Ali Jean. He also did not speak Kenya Rwandan. He only spoke French. So funny enough during world war two, there was a guy in Ireland called Lord Ha Ha who was a pro Nazi broadcaster and was just like broadcasting like stuff to like reach the UK and mainland Europe. And they fucking executed him, didn't they? Yeah, I was gonna say. One thing they did to Lord HaHa that unfortunately does not happen to Rizu.

He has no history in journalism, no history in radio. He barely has an employment history. He was working as a tutor in Belgium until he lost his job because some parent noticed that he was high at work. He was smoking, smoking weed and trying to teach kids. So he got fired and got on a plane and moved to Rwanda in 1993. He's like a fucking modern day disgraced broadcaster who got on a bit too much park thirties. I just said slurs on air. So it's like, okay, got to move to South Africa. Fucking broadcaster. That's the weirdest thing is he shows up to Rwanda and like the dudes from the Hutu power diaspora kind of like give him a contact. He ends up

getting a job with RTLM. He's nicknamed the Mizungu or the white man. The white guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm just laughing too at the idea. It's like, see, they didn't have the internet or social media back then because this could have been prevented and this guy could have just gotten on discord and become like a huge enthusiast for the Khmer Rouge. Yeah exactly this guy was gonna be weird as shit regardless of where he ended up in whatever time era. He took up 10% of the French speaking airtime on RTLM and the most anyone can tell because like I said he's never spoken about his motivations he's never had to but he

became a bloodthirsty psychopath and the who to power movement specifically the because like I said, he's never spoken about his motivations. He's never had to, but he became a bloodthirsty psychopath. And the Hutu Power Movement, specifically the elites of the Hutu Power Movement loved him. They treated him like a celebrity and they kept him around because he was a French speaking white guy. And they believed that this would help broadcast their message to the world and give them some form of like decencyency he's a psycho poster who got a job from it but basically yeah people who get really into Kind of like tangentially related to a thing and then decide to just take like a really extreme position on it And it's not like a position from any sort of discernible angle angle

Yeah, or any kind of like community experience or any kind of family stuff It's just more sort of like it's like like a sort of self reinforcing loop here that this person starts expressing this stuff and gains approval and like the more extreme it gets, the more approval they get. Self actualization isn't always a good thing. I didn't say self actualization. I mean, it's just more like, I don't know how to say it, but it's just sort of the more he does it, the more approval he gets. That's exactly what it is.

You just described somebody who's basically like, I'm not going to say work shy, but has effectively not had a normal sort of adult working experience and doesn't necessarily seem like the world's most socially adjusted person. He's a fucking weirdo. And then all of a sudden it's like, you start getting treated like a celebrity as you've just described, the more intensely you kind of jump on this bandwagon of saying pro-genocide stuff. Let that be a warning. Don't tell people to go touch grass. Sometimes it's better that they don't.

It's the definition of that tweet that you can't be talking like this white baby. Yeah. I mean, effectively it's like go touch grass, but outside, not in Rwanda. Don't go touch grass in South-Saharan Africa, please. Those deeply weird online freaks. He would have been, I mean, he's still alive. He could still be one, but he found a group that took his weird fucking ass and embraced him. And that's all he needed to believe in anything. He had no skin in the game and fucking who to nationalism in Rwanda as a whole, but he found a group that made him feel like a big special boy by including

him. And that's all he needed. That's all a lot of fucking psychos need. That is pretty standard in terms of the like narrative history of these things that a lot of people wind up being willing to suppress the sort of normal empathy switch circuit in their brain because of the effect of finally being accepted into a group. Yeah.

What that empowers them. Yeah. I mean, that's more powerful than people really want to acknowledge. And it can be something horrible. Now, another important thing that all this is doing is the government messaging, the newspapers, the radio, everything is telling people no matter where they lived, the enemy was within. It was all around them, you couldn't escape them no matter what you did. And nobody's like listening to these radio broadcasts at home, this is in those mandatory

government group meetings that we talked about before, so everybody's listening to the shit. The army was fighting the RPF but it wasn't doing well. The RPF was advancing and committing their own slaughters of Hutus as they went. These episodes were of course, relayed to the Hutu population of like, this is what the RPF is going to do. Therefore, this is what Tutsis are doing. And meanwhile, Paul Kagami, all of his friends are like, wow, are you planning a career change? It's so inspiring. You seem to be studying a lot of air traffic control manuals. The RPF made a rapid advance to the gates of Kigali before calling enough under pressure from the international community to return to their previous positions and resort to the peace

process to end the conflict rather than the gun. And I should point out here that this is the first stage this genocide could have been avoided. If the French and the UN simply let the RPF take over, this does not happen. Instead, they threaten the RPF, they say, if you take the capital by force, you'll be under sanctions, we won't recognize you as a legitimate government, things like that. Then another incident ratcheted up the fear of not only the Hutu population of Rwanda, but the Hutu power believers in its government. In neighboring Burundi, the same Hutu-Tutsi divide existed, and the president, a Hutu named Melchior Nanadende, was assassinated by the country's Tutsi-dominated military in an attempted coup.

The Hutu power government of Rwanda said, this is exactly what's going to happen. If we ever make peace with the RPF, if we ever let the Tutsis have any level of power This is what's gonna happen to us here and the RTLM made sure to explain to anybody who would listen Look next door. This is what's going to happen to us Also, they then blame the assassination on the RPF for added spice It wasn't the RPF in case anybody is. This spurred fears that the Rwandan military wouldn't be enough to defend the country from the ever-present enemy of the RPF, which is just Tutsi society in their eyes at this point.

These events, the RPF advance, the assassination of the Burundian president, pushed many moderate Hutus, people who had once been on board with the peace process and all that other stuff, to realign themselves as pro-Habiyary mana or pro-Hutu power. The government went forward with its final signing of the Accords in August of 1993 and pretty much immediately the Rwandan government and the RPF violated them. For example, the Accords called for establishing a transitional government, which would include the RPF, which was to govern until elections could be held. But both factions of this agreement fought

each other bitterly. No agreements could be made. So, you know, this power-sharing agreement, temporary as though it was, was tanked for fear one side wouldn't come out on top. You can imagine how this looked to the hardliners. To make matters worse, at least for them, the Accords permitted the RPF to station 600 soldiers in Kigali. Of course, they clandestinely brought in way more than that, but I don't think anybody can blame them if you look at the entire picture of what's going on here. Like, if I was the RPF, I'd do that too. And the Accords recognized the RPF as a legitimate party in the political process. And the RPF began to experience an increase of public support as adherents previously fearful of acknowledging their allegiance openly showed their leanings.

And others joined the RPF for the first time. And I need to point out the RPF is not just a rebel army. It is effectively a shadow government. It has a lot of grassroots aid things in play. It's teaching people how the political process will work, how to vote, things like that. But they were doing military training as well. If a Tutsi showed up to the RPF camp, they could get training, and the RPF would give them a gun to take home with them for protection.

But they were also giving them food, water, and medical aid. There's a lot going on here. While this was well known to the Hutu power factions, they began to conduct their own arms race in a sense. We've already talked about the Inter Ahamwe, but there's more at play here. They were getting weapons and training from the government, though. According to the main Hutu power players, much like the military, it was riddled with factionalism due to being connected with the government, the same charge they levied against the military.

Enter a man named Theoniste Bagasora. To make a long story short, even though the story will still be long, Bagasora is the architect of the Rwandan genocide. Full stop. Bagasora is a lifelong friend of the President, but most importantly of the President's wife, Agath. Weirdly, she was the Hutu power whisperer for the president. She was a hardline believer in Hutu power ideology and the nexus and connection for

many Hutu power people directly to the president. You had to win her over before you were allowed to speak to the president, to the point that her inner circle was nicknamed the Akazu or the Little House, made up largely of northern Hutu extremists as like a central advisory circle for the president. Nothing happened without the Akazu's input and Bagesaurus smack dab in the middle of that. He was the main organizer for the Inter Hamway and he was dumping guns on them as fast as he could. However, he suggested something else which would become a fixture for the coming genocide.

Guns were expensive, and Rwanda wasn't exactly swimming in rifles and ammo. Getting them was only made harder by the UN, who banned all importation of military supplies. Like we talked about during our Victor Boots series, there were ways around this, but it was still not a ton of stuff. So he thought what guns they did have should be saved for trained units, the military, inter-ahamwe, and the police. But the inter-ahamwe could not effectively be used to cover every city, town, and village in the country, and the military was obviously

a festering pile of shit. So he's decided that defense needed to fall into the hands of civilians themselves. Using the Rwandan administrative network that we have talked about for a while now, he ordered all Hutu men within every corner of this country to report to their administrative supervisor to be enlisted into the new civilian defense forces. These detachments would be commanded by both active and retired members of the military and police, and they would be armed with machetes. Yeah. And this is obviously a thing that we are definitely going to talk about in the

next two episodes is like part of how the violence was so widespread and so sudden was the fact that the method of violence was the machete versus like a gun, which you run out of bullets, what are you going to do with a gun? You can swing a machete as many times as you want. Also a lot of these machetes were delivered by Victor Boot. Yep. As agricultural aid. Yikes. Yeah. Now it's important to point this out once again, because it is what creates our whole picture of a genocide, right? Because like we pointed out before, what is required of genocide is intent of the genocidal

players, the ones committing the act, the ones planning the act. It is clear that this body is created with this in mind, and unlike the enter a hamway, which was, remember, not a function of the state,. And unlike the enter a hamway, which was, remember, not a function of the state, it was a function of a political party, the civilian defense forces directly fell under government command. The inner circle of the Hutu power movement, including Hab-Yarimana, use this vast surveillance state of the Rwandan, like they're effectively like village nannies. state of the Rwandan, like they're effectively like village nannies. Everybody has a supervisor. You could live in Kigali or a remote village somewhere. You have some dude watching you

at all times. But they use this network to create a rule of names that included but was not limited to anyone who was moderate Hutu, anyone who was not strong Hutu power guy, anyone connected to Tutsis through business deals, anyone who is married to a Tutsi. But it's important to remember that a moderate in this case could just be anybody who didn't believe in the government. If you're a Hutu and you're not that guy, your head was on someone's list. Another thing that was created was an extensive and strict chain of command and responsibility. This is from a document from the Rwandan government called Organization of Civilian Self-Defense.

And I know this might sound exhausting here, but these details are very important to lay out why this was a genocide and not just as it's often displayed as quote unquote ethnic violence. After an innocuous explanation of the need to organize the population in order to deal with, quote, crime and vandalism, the document then moves on to discuss the need for, quote, popular resistance in the event of renewed combat with the RPF. It specifies that such resistance must be led by members of the armed forces and national police officers, as well as retired soldiers and reservists

specifically, those that live in these civilian areas rather than in military bases. So they were just everywhere as well as by supporters of political parties to quote, defend the principle of the Republic and democracy. At the time of the genocide, this last phrase simply came to mean who to power. The plan to be implemented under the general chairmanship of the ministers of the genocide, this last phrase simply came to mean, who to power. The plan to be implemented under the general chairmanship of the ministers of the interior and defense create a complex hierarchy of organs and committees and subcommittees and sub-subcommittees to coordinate military, administrative, and political actors to be used in future violence.

This signed a variety of tasks from the level of the President all the way down to the local, lowest administrative sector, though the document purposefully leaves out members of government who they did not think were Hutu power loyalists, specifically that of the Prime Minister Agatha Uwilingmana, who was considered an accomplice to the RPF because she supported the accords. Yeah. It's kind of like, this is the point where it transforms from a kind of, albeit like very widespread stochastic violence to very structured, very organized and all actions are very intentional. There seems to be a detail that most people either missed or it's not taught about the Shannis eyes. It's Everybody seems to be under the understanding

of this explosion of random violence when it was as planned as any genocide has ever been from the top to the bottom. Now there's something to be said about the civilian defense forces. The individual dudes in play there had no idea what was happening, but there were people in charge of them. 100% did, they knew exactly what they were planning. Now this document goes on to state that participants would lead the population in quote self-defense against the RPF, protect public property, obtain information on the presence of enemy locally and denounce infiltrators and accomplices, provide information to the armed forces, encounter any enemy action until the armed forces, and counter any enemy action until

the armed forces arrived. Now it makes sure in this document to use terms like, quote, disguised RPF, which just means civilians. There are further letters and orders disseminated to the municipalities to be organized along these lines. The tasks of these civilian groups were also laid out. These neighborhood patrols were, when ordered, to move in groups of around 10, armed with machetes and other homemade weapons like spears and bows and arrows, to set up roadblocks

at pre-established points in their neighborhoods while the Entera Homwe and the military handled everything in between. These groups, the Entera Homwean military, were considered the spearhead of the entire operation. They had detailed fucking orders about what exactly was going to happen. The civilians were just to stand in the middle and act as something like a bottleneck that civilians would have to pass through if they meant to get away from the coming slaughter. They also built a large list of government administrators who, even down from the highest to lowest level, who were thought to be liabilities that needed to be

taken out at the first thing that needed to be done. Because it's very clear that Hutu power is not the government yet. They are not the president, but they aim to be, and anybody who doesn't fall in place behind them needs to go. And this is an important dividing line. The people in the civilian defense groups were not aware of the greater scope of the larger plan. As far as they knew, at least for now, they were to root out and stop the RPF from taking over their specific town and village. To take part in what they were told was a war that threatened their very existence and the existence of the state. The enter Hamwewe military were very, very different because in January 1994, a former member of the Rwandan presidential guard who had been tasked with training Inter-Hamwe men became

an informant for the UN. He ran to UN headquarters in Kigali, which was then under the command of Canadian General Romeo D'Alier, and told him that the that the Enter Hamway was specifically planning a genocide against the Tutsis, their stockpiling weapons, and would use them to quote kill 1,000 Tutsis every 20 minutes. The informant told Daliere exactly where these weapons are being stockpiled and exactly who was planning it. Another thing the the informant told him was the Enter Hamway is planning immediately upon things kicking off to attack Belgian UN soldiers specifically. The Belgians were the largest contingent of the UN, the UN

peacekeeper force there. They believed they killed a couple Belgians, the Belgians would pull out possibly causing the collapse of the entire UN mission. Oh Joe, do you want to hit me with an animal fact? I sure can. Alex, the African Grey Parrot, is the only animal known to ask an existential question. What colour am I? Damn. Deep parrot?

I don't even want to fucking think about that. Yeah, this is interesting because I mean, I think there's a lot of like narrativizing about Romeo de laire's role and character and it's been fictionalized in numerous things. He's a complicated guy. I will say at this stage, he did the right thing. The only problem here is this is going to be my constant critique of Daliere. He had too much faith in the chain of command. He was a general. He was a general, he's a

general officer from the Canadian military, a general is gonna be a military beast, of course, but he believed in the foundational goodness of his mission, which is the biggest pitfall any soldier could ever fall in. Yeah, process trusting always goes well in the military, particularly when it's in an international coalition thing with NGOs and state actors and so on and so forth. There was also another problem of when it came clear to him that the UN wasn't going to do anything,

even if he wanted to become a rogue actor, they had hamstrung him to the point he couldn't do anything physically, practically. He didn't have the men. He didn't have the means. He didn't have the weapons. If he wanted to get involved. He didn't have enough and he only realized that he's like it's too fucking late Well, this will never happen again. This will never happen with you in pro 4 and trippin eats So this will never happen with you Nama dutch bat. Yeah dutch bat. Yeah, that will never happen

It's just dutch bat is just a winged beast that flies at night, has no other associations. It's a beast that flies at night that likes really wet meals. Now, Daliere at this point is under strict orders that the UN could take no action without approval from UN headquarters in New York City. Now, there is a caveat to this. His rules of engagement, meaning the rules where his soldiers could go into combat was to stop crimes against humanity. So he sent the UN a message telling them exactly what the format had told them and requested permission to immediately raid these weapons caches instead of telling him to do it.

And I'm not going to say this would stop what was coming. It at least slow it down, possibly make someone re-evaluate their way of thinking. Maybe it could have stopped this in the long run. But the UN told him, absolutely do not, and instead, inform the president of Rwanda of what you've just been told. And Daliere, he was told by the informant, the president is involved in this. So yeah, creating the conditions where the genocide heirs are like, oh, we need to move now.

Also like, wow, are you planning on your informant having a long unexplained vacation? Like it's bad. It's really bad. It's just, I use Dalier's book, Shake Hands with the Devil as a source on his side of the story. And he is quite critical of his own performance, so I can respect him to that extent. But like he is very confused at this point.

He's like, what the fuck is the UN even doing? Yeah. Never has that question been asked. Yeah, or every year ever since. So now with Rwanda facing a multifaceted crisis, years of civil war, and an authoritarian government that was actively planning a genocide in both a centralized and decentralized matter. A population that is desperate, terrified, and beset by armed groups on both sides of

them. A UN peacekeeping force that despite being commanded by a man who actively wanted to stop what was coming but was not allowed to by UN headquarters, Rwanda was on the precipice of something much, much darker. It was required, that little match to set this pile of kindling off. That's going to happen on April 6th, 1994. Let's do a little air traffic control noises, planes landing, flying, taking off. Literally a year to the day before I was born.

Fuck me. Happy birthday. So yeah, the thing that I've been alluding to and I'm not going to come out and say direct is proven allegations, but there's definitely some people who are involved in Rwandan politics today that is pretty suspect. It's interesting. It's an interesting story. Actually, I read all of those investigations and we'll talk about them in a few seconds. So, on April 6th 1994, President Habibarimana was flying back to Rwanda from a regional diplomatic tour and was circling above the Kigali International Airport when a surface-to-air missile slammed

into the side of his plane. He was killed immediately, the plane plummeted to earth, ironically crashing directly into his own backyard. Just a side question, who do you think sold him that surface-to-air missile? France, actually. It was France. Yeah, it's not boot, it's the French. It could have been transported by boot, to be fair. More than likely.

You might be wondering who exactly shot down the President's plane. Nate kind of already alluded to this. So here's the fun fact, to this day, nobody has any fucking idea. But also the new president of Burundi, Supreme Atari Amina, was also on that plane. Yes he was. And so was the Rwandan chiefs of staff for the military. It's real bad. So it's sort of like in burger terms, it's like what if Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau and like Mark Milley were all on a plane and it got shot down. Yeah, by Oklahoma.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I don't know, the Archbishop of Boston is like, just hands cut, his face smeared with fudge, except that it's with manuals for an SA-7. It's like, I have nothing to do with this. Yeah, in the aftermath of everything else we're talking about, when all of the plans for the coming genocide were discovered and literally used in court, nobody has found anything concretely linking any specific person to the downing of this plane. There's been many investigations, which I will talk about. There was a French one and an American one, which point out the missiles were fired from

a Rwandan military base. So possibly the Hutu power movement, possibly the presidential guard. Most people point to it was a Baguessora that he ordered it, but again, no solid evidence to confirm it. Then there's a second camp that that shit was done by the RPF and specifically Paul Kagame. There's been multiple investigations done at this point that say that it was the RPF. Independent French, Spanish, and German investigations put the blame on Kagame personally, and they issued multiple arrest warrants for people in connection to the shoot down, but not Kagame himself. But again, there's no concrete evidence here. It could honestly go either way. It makes a lot more sense. The trajectory of the missile certainly came from Rwandan military base, which the RPF was not present at,

but nobody can link any kind of orders to anybody or anything. But also, thinking practically here, again with no evidence, because this is all just kind of an amorphous blob that's going to be lost to time, is it really didn't benefit Paul Kagame to shooting down that plane? No. It benefited the Rwandan military to kill the president so they could take over. That's the easiest explanation. There are also elements in, if I understand it correctly, within significant elements

within the Hutu power movement and the Rwandan military who were not at all pleased with the peace accords, even though they were not particularly comprehensive. And so like any political engagement at all with the RPF, they were like, this has to stop. And not to mention, remember, Habibari Mana set himself to be seen as an enemy of the people by his own political ideology, by embracing Hutu power, embracing this hatred for Tutsis. Anybody working with Tutsis is a traitor, which made him a traitor. What did I say about half an hour ago?

I mean, I've think about this recently that like, I was just joking about presidential politics in America and the very strange sorts of things where like, it's nowhere near the same, but it's just like, you can see a couple of rhymes here and there. And particularly like the way that you have this sort of unbroken chain of like, you know, the Republicans building their power base. But then it's like, Oh no, but apparently instead of having your VP be your next presidential candidate, he has to be hanged by a bunch of like QAnon and Facebook guys, because this Mike Pence is somehow enemy number one now to this group, even though Mike Pence was like one of the most right-wing governors of Indiana. And it's

one of these things where it's like, no, the ideology got so out of control, it snowballed so far that like, doesn't matter if you were... I mean, Mike Pence was a right-wing talk radio host in Indiana before he became a congressman and then the governor. Like, he was instrumental in building all of this shit. And yet... And then the movement outran him. The movement outran him and they're like, you're betraying the true Trump victory that Soros has sabotaged. We're going to hang you on the white, you know, the steps of the Capitol. Yeah. And we need to replace you with a Magic the Gathering playing couch fucker.

Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just one of those things where you find it like, it's not the same. I'm not saying it's in any way the same, but like you can look at that sequence of events. It's like a home example of how ideology can outrun the person who empowered it, for sure. I mean, Mike Pence, it was like massively sabotaging Indiana's economy because he wanted to do weird right-wing shit. Like he absolutely, he is the avatar

of this weird evangelical, non-denominational Christian right-wing sort of like, you know, moral majority focus on the family shit, you know, in terms of Midwest and just American Republican governance. And it's like, and now Mike Pence is named to the actual Republican base. It's basically Benedict Orm. Yeah. It's poise. Look at that. There was many elements of the early Nazi movement that the Nazi movement then quickly turned around and cannibalized, you know, Ernst Ruhm was just too gay. Yeah, it's this evergreen tweet that has since been deleted, but loads of people have screenshotted

it. You listen to JD Vance talk for more than 30 seconds and you understand why someone would trade him for a bottle of Perk 30s. Now, somewhat cryptically, multiple people who were listening to RTLM at the time of the plane being shot down said that the person on the radio announced the president's plane was landing, and then within seconds of the plane being shot down, the radio broadcast ceased and instead they switched to classical music. So I guess the long and short of it is, we legitimately don't know who did it.

But all hell was breaking loose on the ground. Word got to General Dallier about what was happening and he immediately called the Rwandan Prime Minister, Yu Willing Mana, and said like, hey, you're next in line to be head of state. You need to get your government together. Like, this shit is bad. We need to have a government meeting immediately and I'll be there. She told the general she was trying, but her cabinet ministers were too terrified to leave their families. Furthermore, she warned him that the Hutu power ministers in the government disappeared, nobody could find them. She asked the general to help her regain control of the spiraling political situation. And he agreed.

Meanwhile, the army was also in complete chaos because their chief of staff had just died. Officers gathered to determine who would be their new boss. And while they were doing so, Bagasora, who was only the director of the office of the Minister of Defense, he was not the Minister of Defense, walked in and said, it's my job to chair the meeting. This is an important part of Bagasora's plan. He had the enter a Hamway and his own civilian militia groups under his influence. Their loyalty was without question, but he didn't have was the military, and he needed the military. By inserting himself into the meeting, he can now influence them and their choices that they made.

Most importantly, what they did next, because his plans could not go forward without the military at his back. So he was pressing them on a correct chief of staff while also telling them, we can never fall under the authority of the prime minister. She is not fit to govern. She works with Tutsis. She's a traitor." Of course, he left out the part about like her name literally being on the inter-Homway death list that he created. He suggested that the military simply stage a coup and take over the country, which was surprisingly shot down by the rest of the military officers. They're like, absolutely fucking not. We're not doing that. Instead, the other, I guess you'd call them moderate officers, said, the accords are still

in place. We need to invite General Daliere to this meeting. That is what we need to do. And they did. Daliere showed up. And according to him, the gathered officers in the room were trying to convince him that there was no military coup, but it was clear to him that Tagasora is controlling this meeting. He is in charge.

Remember, he's sitting in this meeting as Kigali is falling apart outside the door. Things had not fully imploded yet, but there's riots and violence already kicking off. Daliere was also concerned what would happen if he was forced rather than allowed to stop what was going on outside if the UN would let him. More than that, they were hardly equipped to do it. I was going to say, do you have any information about the task organization and what they actually had at their disposal? They only had a few thousand soldiers. He requested reinforcements. He had no heavy

weapons, for example. So he had basically a brigade's worth of troops. What nationality were they? Because normally the UN throws lots of things together. It was a mix. The Belgians were the largest contingent followed by Bangladeshis. There's some Togolese people and then Ghanaians. So they also only had eight armored personnel carriers, but only like three worked. For anyone listening at home to, we don't really have time to go into it, but like you should look up some of the first hand, like

eyewitness reports of like what was happening in Kigali while this meeting was happening. Oh yeah, we're going to get to that. Don't you worry. Oh no. These vehicles, the armored personnel carriers, which had been obviously very important in any operation to stop this, they had no mechanics. Nobody was trained to use them. And the only operation manuals that show up were in Russian, a language that nobody in the UN command spoke whatsoever. He had no heavy weapons, but he requested them and ammo, which was approved. But then it was slowed down due to the UN and Belgium arguing over who was going to pay for it. According to Daliere, the Belgians and the

Ghanaians were really good crack troops. Same with the Congolese. They're well led, they're well ordered. While the Bangladeshis were pretty much there to march in parade formation and dress uniforms. But he knew he would be fucked if shit went sideways. It's also important to remember while he's sitting in this meeting, he knows about the genocide. The person ratted on them to him, he knows about their ties to the enter Hamway, he knows that Bagasora is planning all of this and now he's sitting in a meeting with them. Daliere continued to point out as far as he was concerned, Rwanda still had a government. According to the constitution, the prime minister was the next in staff to be

head of state. Furthermore, in order to make sure things did not get even crazier, the prime minister needed to be allowed to address the nation over the national radio, Radio Rwanda. Bagasora refused, while the minister of the gendarme said that the UN and his forces should patrol Kigali in order to keep violence at a minimum. And they agreed. They sent a detachment of UN soldiers, Belgians, to secure the president's crash site in order to conduct an investigation. However- Let's just point out that there's something that I think gets left out of a lot of stuff about UN stuff at this era. Is that a few years prior in Mogadishu a bunch of Pakistani UN troops had been killed and the UN was super super super casualty

averse I mean I'm not excusing them at all but like Americans remember Mogadishu because of Black Hawk Down the book and then the movie and you know all these guys from I think it was the third range of Italian getting killed. But the Pakistanis lost even more in a very large scale ambush that took place and they were under UN control. And so there's a lot from what I understand of reading about this. Everybody's very gun shy. Yeah. Beyond the institutional sort of like snail's pace of the UN, there's definitely hesitation to have UN groups in

a position where this might happen. Pretty much the only person within the UN chain of command at this point that was like, we need to go, we need to do something, was Daliere and a few officers around him. The larger organization was like, whoa, whoa, absolutely not. The presidential guard was also seemingly acting on their own and Daliere saw this in the streets. They had no orders from the committee to do anything, but they refused Belgian's access to the plane crash site.

And this is where Daliere got something of a clue that there was more going on. Because when he and another UN officer, along with Bagasora, got into a car to drive over what was, to see what was going on at the crash site. Presidential Guard members remaining checkpoints in the street and stopping traffic, which was not their job. Then Bagasora ordered the presidential guard to move and they immediately listened to him. Eventually, Daliere told the prime minister he would give her protection in a group of Belgian soldiers to make sure that she'd be safe and they would escort her to the radio station the next morning because at this point she was far too afraid to leave her house on her own.

All of this while elements of the Rwandan military, mainly the presidential guard, were engaging in running gun battles with the RPF across Kigali. And this is again where Daliar gets kneecapped by the UN. During a call that night with the UN headquarters in New York in order to brief them about what was going on, Daliarre outlined what the main threats were. Namely the government had stopped functioning, there were multiple genocidal militias in the country, and the military was fighting the RPF in the street, all while regular Rwandans were caught in the middle.

The UN man that he spoke to, Iqbal Raza, informed Daliére that his forces were absolutely not to fire unless fired upon no matter the situation, even to protect civilians. He was ordered to pull the UN forces back to their bases and stop patrolling the streets immediately. And this, like we pointed out, was completely new. Prior to this, Dallier's mandate said his force could directly intervene using deadly force to stop a crime against humanity. Dallier reminded Reza that this is my rules of engagement. You gave these to me. And he said, not anymore. No, you can't do that anymore. I feel like the UN often struggles when you have a situation like this where it's effectively

supposed to be a super national military organization in these particular missions. But then like the people in charge are like, you know, have the business acumen of like guy arguing about how many freight Containers you can fit on you know, like a boat that's registered in Liberia Like it's like right what you are just saying is, you know maximum self-protection risk management risk aversion and it's like this but how is it gonna play out when the UN military is rightfully the military force is rightfully portrayed as more or less like putting up a camp chair and watching a million people die? Yeah, pretty much. That's what happened. They're not alone, but yeah.

Then the next morning when he was preparing to send the prime minister to the radio station, the radio station manager called and told him the presidential guard had moved in and took the radio station over. So he called the prime minister and told her, stay at home and stay under the guard of the Belgians. Outside in the city, the first stage of the genocide had officially begun. Elements of the Presidential Guard, the regular military, and the Enter Ahamwe launched their attacks against Hutus and Tutsis that were on their death list. Most of these people had been promised protection by the UN because Daliere had previously been given permission by the UN to grant it. If these people were ever in trouble, he was authorized to use force to save them. However, when he

phoned Reza at the UN headquarters, he was once again told, absolutely not. You cannot do that. Do not cause quote, provocation. They were left to die. I promise I'm not being glib in saying this, but the UN declaring or promising a safe area and then being unwilling to defend it, this will never happen again. Unfortunately, it is. It's very easy to say this is a safe area all the way up until you have to mean it. Yes. And for people who are not familiar, what I'm referring to is the Bosnian genocide

and specifically Srebrenica, but there are other safe areas that were declared that then were effectively undefended They were prevented from defending them or physically unable to because they just put in a position where they couldn't do anything Yeah, and by by they mean the troops on the ground not the UN fuck the UN Yeah, the truth I mean like in situations where for example like they were massively outnumbered and The UN denied the use of any kind of air support that would have made a difference And so element these these Dutch bat as an example,

but other ones and Dutch bats got some fucking problems. So I'm not trying to defend them. They've got some serious fucking issues. We will talk about them at some point in the future. In the closet. But what I'm saying is that like they wanted to call in airstrikes to stop certain militias from killing unarmed civilians and it was denied.

And so this tendency will repeat itself. And obviously Rwanda is this horrific example. And it's just institutionally so this tendency will repeat itself. And obviously, Rwanda is this horrific example. And it's just institutionally, that does not seem to change. It's very easy to go into a place like you're going to stop doing this. In my head, it should be easy, but it's also, it's very hard for an organization like you want to fucking prove it. And it's like when you have a brigade of troops that have relatively little cohesion from different countries, different military disciplines, different amounts of equipment, you are under manned, you are under armed.

Purposely so, may I add. And then you're basically faced against a situation in which hundreds of thousands of militants are doing this. It's a situation in which even if you try to violate orders and do the right thing here, what will most likely happen is, in my opinion, just my opinion, is that your forces will become combat ineffective very quickly and or refuse orders. Yep. Before that point. Almost certainly. Because it is in a

human nature to resist and refuse to put yourself in a situation where you know that you will get killed without accomplishing the thing you want to accomplish. In darkest terms, that is what they're facing. I think the main problem when it comes to using the UN as a military force is soldiers will do things that they know will get them killed. That's not the issue. That kind of is part of the job. Yeah, it's... But the main issue is nobody that is serving under the UN likes the UN. There's no cohesive force, even though Daliere is by all accounts, a fine

officer, as big compliment as I can give a fucking general on the show. I know. But the problem is, is if he orders these men into combat, some of them absolutely would go. But then the other one's like, everyone knows we're fighting for the UN. They will leave us to die. Fuck the UN. We're not fighting for our countries. We're not even fighting for the right thing to do. We're under the shitty flag that we all hate. If this was a unit from the Canadian military under Daliere's command, the Belgian military, you name it, and they're

given orders to do that, they'd probably do it. They're like, yeah, we'll fucking die. That's fine. And that's not to disparage the forces from the Bangladeshis or the Ghanaians. it and they were given orders to do that, they'd probably do it. They're like, yeah, we'll fucking die. That's fine. But- And that's not to disparage the forces from the Bangladeshis or the Ghanaian Togolese. Nah, getting them, they do too, but they don't want to work for the UN either. It's just the fact that you are in this hodgepodge command and also the only thing that you have in terms of sheer animal brain survival is that if you retreat to these UN bases, the Inter-Hawaii militants, the Rwandan military, they'll leave you alone. Whereas if you become combatants, they will not.

And I should point out here, we're going to talk about many UN soldiers who completely disregard UN orders and do good things. None of them are Canadians or Belgians. Soldiers individually will do the right thing from time to time. And they would even stop this from occurring if they were allowed to. And in my my opinion if they were not under the command of the UN No one is gonna put their fucking life on the line fighting for the UN Nobody because it's important to remember and then I promise I'll get back to the topic Most of these guys are there because the UN pays their country to rent you That's why a lot of UN soldiers come from places that you probably

aren't even aware make up the bulk of UN peacekeeping forces. Places like Bangladesh, Senegal, Togo. The UN pays the government to rent those soldiers and it's a huge amount of money for the government. Those soldiers, they don't care about the mission. They're effectively being rented. One of my good friends from the military is a Nepali Gurkha officer and he did a very long deployment to the Lake Evie area of the Democratic Republic of Congo because Nepalis are cheap soldiers for the UN to rent. Of course. And they had very, very little in terms of coordination or logistics things on the ground

that would allow them to do anything about the situation. This was when in the early 2010s when there were large flare ups of violence. And because they are soldiers from a developing country, they get put in these places and basically it's been like, well, UN's done its job. It's two hands here and both of them suck. You have the government that's renting their soldiers out to the UN to make money, who are doing it knowing the UN isn't going to do anything with these guys. They're not going to put them in harm's way. That's going to give us bad PR. And then the UN who doesn't care about the soldiers they're being given, because they don't plan on doing anything with them,

they're just going to stand out there. I'm also going to say one thing though, just, and it's not even defense of the UN. Plenty of other countries have done this. And one great example of this is the United States doing this with South Korean troops in the Vietnam War. Oh yeah. And paying the military dictator of South Korea, Park Chung-hee, basically a going rate for their troops and paying the soldiers just their standard South Korean military wages and pocketing the rest of the money.

This is absolutely a thing that has happened with other countries. It still happens today. And I will say for the soldiers who do volunteer to go on these UN missions, they are paid much more than they would for their standard salary. So it's very profitable for these guys to go and do it. No hate on them. I guess they're just trying to pay their bills. Fuck the UN though.

It's understood that if things pop off, the amount of institutional support material you get is zero. Yeah. Well, Daliere was told effectively, stay out of it. The government and allied militias were going door to door, hacking people to pieces with machetes or shooting them in the streets. They were cutting the head off any possible who to resistance to the Baguessora takeover of the government. By noon the next day, virtually everyone on

the hit list was dead. Now Daliere was trying to find Baguessora. He had gone missing since their last meeting, at least to him. He wasn't answering Daliere's calls. He was actively dodging him. The man was literally walking around Kigali. Daliere was walking through Kigali, going door to door at government buildings, knocking on doors like, where the fuck is this guy? He was nearly killed by a member of the presidential guard while demanding to see him. And during the search, a UN officer from Togo found where Bagasora was. And he also

told them the Belgian soldiers that were guarding the prime minister had been detained, disarmed, and were getting the shit kicked out of them. The Belgians had also accompanied by a few Ghanaian soldiers. The presidential guard disarmed them, but then let them go. So there is some argument here about what's going to happen next, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But the RTLM began broadcasting that the Belgians had been the one to shoot down the President's plane, and to Daliere, it was clear what the informant told him was actually truly unfolding. So he immediately wanted to intervene, but couldn't, both legally and practically.

Even if the UN gave him the green light to immediately stop what was happening, his UN force would be wiped out. He couldn't fight the entire Rwandan state. He knew that if he was going to stop anything, he had to stop Baguassora. And to do that, he had to find him. And he finally did, in mid-meeting with the rest of this emergency committee he had set up. Dallier was asked to address the meeting, and he did. Now this address has come under fire for years since because while he was talking the Belgian soldiers had already been murdered. Daliere probably knew about this and the way he explains it is I knew something bad had happened to them like he literally walked past where their bodies were but his hope was he knew something

he didn't know that all ten were dead. He knew something bad had happened because he saw members of the presidential guard members of the inter-ahamwe walking around wearing bloody blue braids. They had to have gotten them from somewhere. The way he's thinking is well that's already done. Maybe I can stop this from getting worse. Obviously that doesn't work. Now another thing happens next. The Belgians guarding the prime minister are dead. The prime

minister, soon to follow, brutally murdered with machetes in her own home. The RTLM began broadcasting that people needed to rise up and kill the UN peacekeepers, kill all Tutsis, in conjunction with a concerted, highly organized effort by the military and the paramilitary Controlled by elements of the Hutu power government the beginning of what would become the Rwandan genocide began with a simple Coded radio message over RTLM cut the tall trees and that's what we'll pick up on part three Fuck Jesus Christ. I have to say Dahlahlir kinda is an asshole in a lot of ways. He's reevaluated this for, he's still alive today, he talks about his experience, he's written many books about it, and he's reevaluated a lot of the statements he previously made in the book Shake Hands with the Devil.

But I kind of understand why he had to go on with that meeting. What could he have done? This is where he gets the majority of his criticism from is how could you go and talk to these people knowing they've killed peacekeepers? But like what could he have done differently? I don't think he could have done that. Yeah, because people are going to say oh, why didn't you, you know, hold Bagasor at gunpoint is like and then yeah, just shoot him right there. They'll kill you. That's the thing is then it's 3,500 dead UN peacekeepers. It's an impossible situation and it's like... The ball's already rolling here. Exactly.

That was what I was going to say is that you're trying to evaluate it basically on that specific moment when it's like there have been weeks leading up to this where intervention could have perhaps changed. There's another part of that meeting because it's unknown at that point how many were dead and what method they were killed. And in that meeting, he doesn't even bring up the Belgian soldiers who he knew at minimum were being held captive. He believed that I can't address this with the committee.

I'm going to address it privately with Baguessora because if I'm going to get the presidential guard to do anything, it's going to be through him. And if I'm going to get him on a personal level to release the Belgians, it's going to be with a one on one. But they were already dead. It didn't matter. It didn't matter if he addressed it with the whole committee. They were already fucking dead. Jesus Christ. It's like, yeah, you're put in the impossible position of the best you can do is make an attempt to stop it getting worse. And even at that, you kind

of you're going in there knowing that like, I'm probably not going to be able to do it either. Yeah. His book is overly hopeless as well. Like so much of your ability to influence hinges on the institutional respect and the sort of like representation of power that you and has. But once you're in a moment where people are like, we don't care, all you have is what you have on the ground, which is not much. But also as well, like knowing that Daliere knew how widespread this was going to be outside of even government forces like the Inter-Haram way and the military, like the weapons cash is going to rural areas to average civilians.

Like knowing there is an entire nation of people out for blood. Yeah. And this is only happening in Gali so far. Next episode, we're going to talk about the wider picture, but yeah. But obviously the mission here is get the prime minister on the radio and it's like maybe address the nation. There's a crisis crisis the president's been assassinated and every minute that this doesn't happen is the crisis gets worse and now it's like well radio stations been taken over prime minister's dead Belgian peacekeepers are dead they clearly don't respect the UN they're saying they're gonna target the

UN you are basically in a corner yeah you're fully fucked in this situation and it's like it's one of those things where it's like I don't want to armchair quarterback this stuff because you realize like what is happening in this moment Is the worst case scenario of stuff that was not acted upon and that's that part is not del airs fault Yeah like I said He was and that's to say nothing of all the other things in place that needed to fail to even get to this point Which of course we already talked about but like there there's nothing Dellier could have done.

And he was put in a unwinnable position by the UN and then left to watch, you know, he could only watch. There's nothing he could have done to stop it. There's nothing he personally could have done to stop it, of course. The UN, yeah, absolutely. Literally any world power that could have stepped in, which we will talk about them in the future, but him as a commander, he was just left picking up the pieces. I think it's even more depressing knowing what's going to come of like the UN kind of doing nothing, but also other bodies kind of doing nothing. And it's like being one person against a force of hundreds of thousands

of people and you've known that like peacekeepers are dead. That is kind of a foreshadowing of what's to come. It's like, what the fuck do you do? Yeah. I highly recommend people read his book, Shake Hands with the Devil to get a better insight on his thought process because he's very knowledgeable dynamic guy in this situation. He's trying everything, but again there's only so much he can do, which isn't much. He's hamstrung by the UN, the government in Rwanda, the various militias, his own officers, not to mention not just the UN, individual actor states of the UN who have soldiers there who are also politically dragging things in one way or another which all actively work UN, individual actor states of the UN who have soldiers there, who are also politically

dragging things in one way or another, which all actively work against the possibility of stopping this. But we will talk about that more in parts three and four. This is the end of part two. I won't say I hope you enjoyed it, but I hope it was informative. Fellas, thank you for joining me here. You have other shows that are not this sad. Plug those other shows.

Trash future podcast about why the technology industry is really bad. What a hell of a way to dad a podcast about don't join the military, but also about being a dad killed James Bond, a film criticism podcast. That's funny. Oh, I I'm not promoting shit. Fucking climb a tree. I have some ice cream, do contemplate on the darkness at the heart of man. I don't know. Fucking do anything else other than

listen to another fun book. Read some of Joe's. I said fun. Yeah, true. Fellows. Thank you so much for joining me. Everybody else. We will talk to you next week.