Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 329 - The Rwandan Genocide: Part 3

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Support the show on Patreon and get our next episode right now as well as years worth of bonus content: www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Grab tickets to our live show in Belfast: www.universe.com/events/lions-led…t-tickets-83V5QD Can't make it to Belfast? We're streaming it! Get your stream tickets here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-l…-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. 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. the Hey everybody, welcome back to the Lions, led by Donkey's Podcast. I am Joe, with me is Tom and Nate. Fellas, tell me something good, tell me something happy because we're about to enter the no happiness zone again. Uh, I got a new bike.

Join the bicycle crew. Yeah, I joined the bicycle crew. Sorry, I'm kind of weighed down by the knowledge of what we're about to talk about. So it's kind of fucking hard to. Yeah. I'd went to my own personal hell last night, AKA the Camden arms BrewDog while I waited for the guy to sell me the bike.

For non-British listeners, Brew Dog is a horrible, horrible pub chain and brewery chain and they they'll have bitch in hell IPA and stuff like that. Just general awfulness. So yeah, I didn't know Brew Dog was a chain. Like I saw Brew Dog and brew dog sold as like a microbrewery in American stores? I didn't know that was like a weird British chain, alright. Like imagine if, you know, the Pod Save America Johns started a brewery, like it's that sort of aesthetic. Oh, it's that same idea of like, it's been a while since I've lived in an area where this is popular, but like, when I was living in the Pacific Northwest,

every like third beer from a brewery you never heard of had like, I mean of course all IPAs, but the names would be like Bitchin' Hard IPA or Not Your Mother's IPA. Yes, yes, yes. Take that with a little bit of British twee. We have them to thank for that? Yeah, kind of. This is some deep Tom lore. Before I moved to the UK, I used to host a podcast about independent brewing in Ireland, where I'd talk to like people who make like pretty cool craft beers and like interviewed a guy who synthesized or isolated an 8,000 year old

yeast strain from a fucking cave and made a beer out of it. A guy who like found wild hops on his farm and like was wood firing his kettle to like make beer. And a BrewDog have forever been like the cringe loser beer. It's like, Oh punk IPA and we're a fucking billion dollar company. I learned something new on this show every day. Yeah. And like their pubs are like hell on earth. The one in Waterloo has a slide inside of it.

I feel like that's something you shouldn't have in a place where people are drinking mass quantities of alcohol, but maybe that's just me being a Puritan. Like BrewDog exists for like annoying account executives to have post drink beers. Hmm. Okay. All I can say Joe is, you know what? My positive thing is really small. I'll just say this. being account executives to have pulse drink beers? Mm. Okay. All I can say, Joe, is, you know what, my positive thing is really small, and I'll just say this, I actually, a little over two weeks ago, went to help my friend track some demos for actual serious musical work in a studio in Brighton, and actually, he liked one of

my original compositions enough that I actually got to record a serious song for the first time since, well, ever, because the only songs I ever wrote when I was in A misfits cover band called donkey punch were not serious And I was 15 16 So so you're telling me is your life has come full circle You used to be in a cover band called donkey punch and now you work at a show called lines up by donkeys. Yes Yes, how did I never know this? This is incredible. This is seriously denigrating the musical output of Johannes vonk. The reason why I even became a podcast producer in the first place or digital media producer

before that was because having been in a punk band, I at least knew how to plug in microphone and you'd be amazed how many people in corporate jobs do not understand that. I think it's like some kind of wizardry you have to be born into. You've just taken the same career trajectory as Danny Elfman. Well that implies that when I'm 60 I'm going to be jacked as fuck, so... I'd cover it in sick tattoos. Yeah, fuck it. Yeah. Hell yeah. He's way older than that. He's like in his 70s now.

All right. We look forward to Nate's jacked grandpa life arc in the future. Sick hair too. Danny Elfman's got like, just the wildest redhead you've ever I mean, it's amazing But you know what we have to leave all those positive things in the past We have to focus on the present and well the past in a different way Which is the horrors we're about to face and as we said before we're not saying this to be like, oh well is me It's just more along the lines of it So we're trying to treat it with a seriousness it deserves and it's sort of like hey guys

Let's stare into the void for 90 minutes. Woo! Great. Yeah, I think this episode is going to have to be preceded by the strongest content warning we've ever had to issue on this show. The next two parts are pretty bad. I have nothing nice to add to the donkey punch and beer lore. I cycled into work today, weather's shit. It's not raining. I live in the Netherlands. It's not raining. Dutch people, you could be like, yes, that is nice weather. I'll take it. Yeah. It's nice here, which I can't believe. Nice summer in Britain. And as always, I do have animal facts available, specifically cute animal facts available upon

request from my fellow co-hosts, use at your discretion. So whenever you need them, I will read them. This is like a fucking, I'm going to be like a Balkan war criminal swallowing poison in the Hague for animal facts. It makes you feel any better. That means you'd only be like 15 minutes away from the studio. Now we're on the Rwandan genocide part three. And when we left you last time, the Hutu power extremists of the Rwandan government launched their plan to wipe out the Tutsi population along with any Hutus that might stand in their

way. 10 Belgian peacekeepers were killed along with the Rwandan prime minister. Death squads of the Rwandan military and inter-Ahamwe militias were going door to door in Kigali, hunting down politicians, government officials, and anyone who'd stand in their way against taking over the government. Before long, they were moving on their Tutsi neighbors, as civilian defense groups were called into action, manning checkpoints, armed with machetes, bows, and spears. The Rwandan genocide had begun.

These roadblocks and checkpoints are probably what people think of when they think of the Rwandan genocide. And they're probably the most important, like, integral part of the genocidal plan. As violence erupted in Kigali, it was obvious that people would naturally go and try to get the fuck out of there, right? So controlling the roads and paths of exit were most important for the people attempting to eliminate them. Every road in and out of Kigali was now closed. Drunk and high enter a homway and civilian defensemen would check papers before letting people pass. Remember, your ID card, your identification paperwork, would denote your ethnicity. That's all I could think about in the last episode, when we were building up as like,

oh fuck the identity cards. Any form of government ID that anybody would have, paperwork, picture ID, passport, whatever, would say what your ethnicity was. Anybody with paperwork that said they were Tutsis or people without paperwork were immediately pulled aside and killed. Their bodies were left on the side of the road to rot. No effort was made to conceal what was happening. At these roadblocks, bodies would simply pile up. And at each checkpoint, at each roadblock, and we're still specifically talking about

Kigali here, we'll talk about the rest of the country in a little bit for a very good reason. There's radios blaring RTLM, music, messages, commentators, urging them more violence, more killing. And this is where we need to stop and talk about RTLM in depth. We've kind of talked about its foundation and we're talking about it so frequently so far during the series because no narrative about the Rwandan genocide is complete without talking about it. However, there's an unfortunate belief that none of this would have happened without it or that it made the genocide uniquely worse by spurring those who wouldn't previously start committing violence to pick up a weapon and start literally killing their neighbors. And for some reason, people want to believe this. And I, me,

and I don't want to consider myself an academic in this field. I do not have a PhD. I have a graduate's degree, but a lot of people, when they look at the Rwandan genocide, they tend to believe this narrative and reduces Rwandans to mindless robots triggered into killing by magical overpowering voice of radio. Romeo Daliere himself, who I probably respect more than any general officer we've ever talked about on this show, believes this. It's not an unpopular talking point when referring to this genocide. Scott Strauss, who I've sourced extensively for this research, not only for this podcast, but also when I was in school, actually tested this theory by doing something that somehow nobody had ever done before.

Checking RTLM's broadcast range. How many people possibly owned radios? And if those areas happened to overlap with the worst violence. Well, thanks to the international criminal trial that would come later, we now know that RTLM barely covered the entirety of the Kigali region, not even close to the entire country. I mean, this is, when you think of Rwanda, is a very simple explanation, the topography, very, very hilly. I mean, that's what the name Rwanda is a very simple explanation, the topography. Very, very hilly. I mean, that's what the name Rwanda means. Yeah.

And you'll notice that Mule Colline is the word that is used in Belgian and in French language stuff, and it literally means thousand hills. Yeah. And because of the technology, I mean, obviously there's places with mountains and hills that have very good radio coverage that requires a large series of repeaters, right, to send the broadcast out further. Rwanda simply didn't have that. They didn't have a endless stream of repeaters available to them to broadcast RTLM or even state radio that far. There's also zero correlation to broadcasts being available

and violence levels during times that RTLM was on air. Now to the amount of killing that erupted so quickly in Kigali in comparison to other places where it took longer, but it didn't mean the killing didn't happen there. Also only 10% of people in Kigali owned radios. So when Dali Air says Rwandans listened to radio broadcasts quote, as if they were the word of God? I feel like he's missing the mark. Remember, we have gone into detail here of the efforts that the Rwandan state took turning Rwandan Hutu society into an authoritarian police state, overseen by a small army of government overseers, all of whom were stitching on everyone, where frequent, mandatory group meetings of everyone under their charges were commonplace. And it was only because of those meetings where they

listened to RTLM, if it was available, that this radio is even, you know, a thing. The radio did not start this genocide, nor did it organize it. It was another tool. If the broadcast didn't go through the strict system of governance that the Rwandan government had instituted for decades as a remnant of colonial society as well, they would have just had those meetings anyway. And then from there, the death squads from the self-defense, the enter a home way would have done what they planned to do. The radio wasn't for the enter a home way.

They had been planning everything for months. Remember? I would say that there's a parallel, not as extreme, but there's a parallel in the situation would happen with the Rohingya in Myanmar, which is that Facebook is the vector in this case. And one of the things that you'll find in places like that, or at least at the time was that a lot of people access the internet via mobile data solely and internet providers, mobile data providers in those countries would actually give you exemptions where you wouldn't be charged for data if you were using Facebook or WhatsApp.

And, but obviously here's the thing, right? The vector didn't create the prejudice, didn't create the disinformation, didn't create the organizing calls to, you know, avenge imaginary slights. What you just saw recently here in this country is exactly how things started in Myanmar and led to killings and mass rapes

and expulsion of tens of thousands of people. The point being that Facebook's got a responsibility, but it's not the sole cause, it's not the proximate cause, it was the vector. Of course. And I think that this is a similar thing here where for lack of a better term, foundational logistics of the genocide would have happened

regardless. It's just that the messaging, the animating, call to action, things along these lines came through the radio or were amplified by the radio or intensified by the radio. And the radio as such is like the image that seems permanently associated with it. But it's not as if you, you know, you fucking cut the power to all the transmitters to somehow this wouldn't have happened. Yeah. A good way of thinking about this or a really awful way of thinking about this

is a genocide requires a ton of planning and the RTLM did not help the enter a home way plan this. They did not help Bagra Sora plan his take over the government. It did not help the stockpile of machetes. It did not help compile these death lists. The radio did not give compile these death lists. The radio did not give who to power power, but it's kind of like when you're growing something and you put water on it, it will grow. However, if you add things to

it, it grows faster. It doesn't mean it's gonna not grow without it. You know what I'm saying? And from like my own, like a bit of background, I used to actually work in radio, particularly in current affairs and kind of daily talking about the news type thing. And the general line is that radio acts as a conduit and amplifier for pre-existing sentiments. So you can impose whatever you want onto a radio show, like people calling in, people kind of regurgitating news, but like it can't create these things. Well, in some exceptions it can, but like in this case it was responsible for like the deepening of sentiment rather than like creating

this environment completely whole cloth. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, all of the things that made this genocide possible were already in place before RTLM. And we'll talk about the lifespan of RTLM in a second, but like you have decades of animosity, you have years and years of civil war, you have an explicitly racist and eliminationist government who was putting all of the things they need in place. It's like saying the Holocaust never would have happened without like Der Stürmer. Mm-hmm. It's insanely reductive.

Something I'd point out too in the United Kingdom is on similar lines right now, is that these things we've been seeing, these vigilante mobs of far-right anti-immigrant fascists, organized on Telegram or on WhatsApp, but the rhetoric they're invoking, the kind of like formation that they're using, the way in which they're going about it, you can see this echoing throughout Britain, you know, in the early 2010s, in the 2000s, certainly in the 80s. They had the, in the late 70s, early 80s when you had the emergence of the National Front. Really to the end, it really starts in its modern version in the end of the sixties when South Asian citizens of former British colonies in Central and East Africa were being expelled and many of them came to Britain.

That's kind of the origin of the modern, really the modern like eliminationist xenophobic British racism, or at least how it's expressed. But now it's happening faster because of the fact that this exists. And similarly in Rwanda, as you described, Joe, you see this a kind of a, to use the military term, kind of force multiplier. That's a good way of looking. I mean, like I said, a good way, unfortunate way of looking at it, but it is true. Yeah. And I'm picking my words carefully here in the same way that I almost said the sort of bread and butter elements of coordinating a genocide. And I'm like, I really don't like that metaphor, but like- But you're not wrong. I mean- But that's what you would call it. When you look at it I really don't like that metaphor. But like. But you're not wrong.

I mean, that's what you would call it when you look at it, like from the thing that this is a deliberate thing planned like a military operation or like a big civil project. That is fundamentally how a project manager would see it. And it's fucked up to say that. But like, I think the thing that really is so stark and so jarring about these things is that you feel soiled and depraved analyzing it through the framework of a project like a civil service project or construction or a

military operation. But that is 100% how its perpetrators and planners viewed it. Of course. Because it required that coordination. And Scott Strauss is an amazing academic and he has spoken about how, and I can agree with him, is academically studying genocides kind of makes you feel disgusting because it does require a certain amount of divorce from the emotional and the empathy and the things that make you human to be able to study and understand what causes them. And that's not to say that propaganda and calls to violence are nothing. They're disgusting, they're illegal, and they should be prosecuted.

But it is, as I said, it's a tool. But a tool is useless without someone who is prepared and knows how to use it. I just hate the idea of when people hear about their wand and genocide, the first thing that leaps to their mind is looking for the hows and the whys, they land on a radio broadcast. Up until now, we're in part three. We have covered over 100 years of Rwandan history. RTLM existed for a little over one year. RTLM is not what caused this. It was not even the top three causes of this. And it is exhausting to see that it is always the case. And I understand when people are looking at some a topic as large as this, not just the Rwandan

genocide, but the concept of genocide and mass violence, people are looking for easy explanations, things that make it easy for them to conceptualize how people end up in these places. They want simple answers to complicated questions and I understand why. But RTLM is a much smaller piece of a much larger machine. And you might be asking, since I've just spent so much time talking about the radio, what was the cause? What motivated people to literally start killing their neighbors? Like what motivated the people in Kigali specifically, because we're still talking about Kigali, to seemingly within a few days start murdering someone they knew very closely, very personally? The answer to that is painfully simple. Kigali is the capital. It is also the headquarters of Hutu power.

The government and all of the mechanisms that centralize all of these things that we've already talked about is much more powerful there. In rural areas, this is not the case, hence why people like Bagasora and others were trying to lock down who was loyal to him and the supremacist ideology. In the aftermath of the president's assassination, the mobilization of the presidential guard, the enter a hamway, the civilian defense groups will naturally be much faster in galley than anywhere else. In areas where loyalty to Hutu power, but more specifically Baguessora, is not so ironclad,

they had a lot more work to do to get the local administrators to buy into this wholesale slaughter. Pro-Hutu power officials from Kigali were sent to these rural areas to spread fake stories about RPF infiltration, Tutsis causing mass killings, and wiping out villages, more specifically Tutsi civilians, not just the RPF, and failing that local administrators who still didn't buy in were bribed and murdered. There's a string of many Hutu coups across Rwanda during this same time to replace those with pro-genocide people to take control of these areas who were more hesitant to turn

their backyards into killing fields. So if people were mobilized much faster in Kigali and common people were not driven to kill by mind-controlling radio, what would cause them to kill their neighbors? Well, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, this is one of those times in history we can literally ask the people who did it. Because thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them are still alive and many people have interviewed them. I would also say that there are examples of this.

The most contemporary one is the Bosnian genocide. But then also there has been a lot of documentary stuff. Polish nationalists really do not like talking about this, but a similar phenomenon existed during the Holocaust because Poland was a country that had in previous eras, sort of monarchist Europe had cordially invited Jews to settle there to form part of the civil administration and many other roles. And many Poles did the exact same thing when the opportunity arose to what you're just describing. Basically, it was like, oh, I can kill my neighbors now. That is 100% true.

And then, of course, Polish nationalism has to cast Poland as an equal victim to the victims of the Holocaust, when in fact, many polls were. Many polls were victims. Jewish, Gentile. Overwhelmingly so, yeah. Many non-Jewish polls were victims of the Holocaust, but also many, many Gentile Poles committed acts just like what you're describing. Yeah, there was at least two cases that I can think of during the opening stages of the Polish part of the Holocaust where people turned on their neighbors as soon as they heard that the Nazis were coming.

And when the Nazis actually showed up in the villages, the pogrom had been completed without them. Yeah, this is also true in the Baltics, particularly in Lithuania. But there's contemporary stories from the Armenian Genocide as well, where people turned on their neighbors. And the one thing that these all have in common is something we will get to. And it's something that is painful when it comes to people's conceptualization of humanity as a whole. And when it comes to Rwanda, for many of these people, why they hit the streets with weapons and you name it, it comes as no surprise. The vast majority of

Hutu men that took up weapons were simply mobilized by the guy who they knew was supposed to mobilize them. Just to underline here how much the administration planned this and how much this is a top-down organized genocide throughout as any other that's ever occurred. In many places, mass murder did not come at the hands of roaming groups of machete-wielding gangs. Rather, it came from government administrators operating under orders from people in positions of authority.

They ordered Tutsis from their homes, loaded them into vehicles, and transported them to already prepared killing grounds where murderers were waiting for them. But that brings us to our more complicated question. Why would an everyday person begin slaughtering others in the street? Or in many cases, like I said, killing people they knew personally. This is a bit more dark, and it is unfortunately correct throughout genocidal history. In every genocide, there's a very small core of true believers. In this case it would be the presidential guard, elements of the military, enter a hamway, you name it. In

other genocides there's SS, the very very core of the Nazi belief system. In the Armenian genocide there is Turkish nationalists at its heart. But they're never the majority of any mass killing or genocide. That core of believers, the administrators above them, are just needed to organize it, start it, and come up with something that keeps the ball rolling. At the most basic level, the Rwandan genocide is like every other genocide. Regular people were sold on the benefits that they would reap if they took part and saw the danger they would be in if they

didn't. This is from Leave None to Tell the Story. Quote, they delivered food, drink, and other intoxicants part of military uniforms and small payments in cash to hungry jobless men. They encouraged cultivators to pillage farm animals, crops, and such building materials as windows, doors, and roofs. Even other, more important than this land-hungry society, they promised cultivators the field left vacant by Tutsi victims. To entrepreneurs and members of the local elite, they granted houses, vehicles, and controls of small business, or other such rare goods as a television set

or computers. Yeah. It is a thing that always comes up when you look at various genocides throughout history is like that element of expropriation that like, not only are they your enemy, they have what you want and you deserve to have us. And they're keeping it from you. Yeah. This isn't a genocide and I want to make sure that I emphasize this, but this is a similar rhetoric, exactly, exactly the same rhetoric to the expulsion

and internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. The exact same thing. And the expropriation part was- It even had the dehumanization and the propaganda of the enemy within to go along with it. Yes, and the reparations provided didn't, in most cases, didn't account for the loss of property. There was compensation eventually and an apology from the government, but white people wanted

in California was the land that Japanese Americans had and they got it. Yeah, of course. And you can see how close it could come to turning into something much worse. Absolutely. The circumstances were different, obviously, but I'm not trying to cherry pick and I'm not trying to just grab at any random example. I just feel as though when you look at the rhetoric that was holding the floor in America in 1941, end of 41, 42, 43, what led to the internment of Japanese Americans in places

like Paus and Manzanar. The rhetoric is the exact same. It's just what the end result was, was ethnic cleansing. Yeah, and I don't want to continue comparing what happens throughout history to the Holocaust, but it is what everybody, what their mind jumps to when they think of these topics. But remember, the Holocaust did not start with gas chambers.

But even outside of like a genocidal example, like the use of expropriation as a method of encouraging mass mobilization. So you look at like Fenshen that happened towards the end of the cultural revolution in China, it was like you, the kind of redistribution of ownership of objects in among the rural Chinese population. And it got to the point where people were being reported to village councils for like absolutely nothing in order to fenshen their belongings to other people. Of course, to compare this to like the Armenian genocide, for example, one of the main things

that they use was very similar to Jews in Europe, Tutsis in Rwanda, you name it was like, you know, they have this land, they own businesses, they are hoarding wealth and things that you should have. And they turned a desperate poor population on people who are literally their neighbors and villages going back generations so they could steal it. And something that I'd also point out too is that none of this is meant to say that

the Rwandan genocide shouldn't be treated with the level of seriousness that we want to treat it with and we want the listener to treat it with as well. But rather to say that I am wary of the portrayals that look at it and say this is some kind of base inhumane animal evil. It's not. This is something that has happened throughout history and whatever country you are from, you are really in the grand scheme of things, never that far. And that's one of the things that jumped in my mind years ago when I finished grad school

was like, people want to believe that the people who do these things are uniquely evil. Yeah. And I think that when you look at it, it's a sub-Saharan African country. I think that there's a lot of kind of Eurocentric views of the world that see this and say, we'll see these people are just barbarians. And it's like, Of course, or they'll say like how we started the series. You know, they've just hated each other for generations. Ancient tribal hatreds, etc. I can't understand it, you know, which is a fucking cop out.

Like I'll say this a million times. Ancient tribal hatreds. They don't exist. These are all modern representations of modern hate. Ancient tribal hatreds that are younger than the telegraph and were invented by the Belgians. Yeah. I know not really, but you know what I mean. Any conflict, any fucking conflict, and I'm saying this as a historian, I'm saying this as an Armenian who saw people take this exact same talking

point when talking about the wars that have occurred there the last couple of years is like, oh, they just, they just hate each other for a thousand years. We can't possibly comprehend why. Like it makes no sense. It's a fucking cop out. You can easily understand it if you want to. That is just a talking point. So you can act fucking worldly and you're an idiot. You're a fucking moron What were the borders of Rwanda thousand years ago? Did Rwanda exist? Why did those borders get there? What y'all want to talk about that? Maybe but also as well like given I suppose my expertise on this show and stuff like terrorism Not calling myself an expert in terrorism, but modern terrorism expert Thomas Omani

an expert in terrorism, but. Terrorism expert Thomas Omani. Yeah. SAS veteran with a deep down, like pitched down voice because he's on operational status here to talk about terrorism. Well, listen, everyone accuses us of being members of the CIA and no

one really expected the real member of the CIA to be the Irish guy. But it's so funny about the curveball here. Not only am I not in the CIA, but all my friends who are in the military still have to report me as a known foreign contact.

So they have to do that for me now too. Yeah. Like when you look at particularly to remember with stuff like this, when you look at terrorism and particularly terrorist movements in the mid to late 20th century, that like escalated to not like widespread violence, like the Rwandan genocide, but a level of stochastic violence that couldn't necessarily be contained. What happens is it's very easy to instill a sense of anger among a populace who are disenfranchised. And then it's even easier to mobilize that anger into violence.

Of course. Once that ball gets rolling, when it is outside of a organized body, say like the state or the military, you, once it's that box is opened, you can't put it back in. The toothpaste is out of the tube. And once you have motivated people to commit acts of stochastic violence on a kind of local level, you then, that's when it just escalates and escalates and escalates until something stops it. And talking about that population here, like I know maybe some people listening have gotten

this idea that the Hutus were privileged, like the general Hutu population was privileged over the repressed Tutsis. Rights-wise, sure, but they were still in dire, dire poverty. 60% of the Rwandan population, Hutu or otherwise, was living hand to mouth. So that is one hell of a motivator when it comes to you don't know where you're going to get your next meal. Not everyone in this situation is a killer. Not everybody is a fucking criminal. At first, the first stages, the enter a home way, you know, whoever would kill a group of people and then turn people loose to pillage their homes and their places of business, their farms, whatever. But then it would turn into, oh, just rob them in their homes while they're still there. And then they would be

like, well, you can't leave witnesses or they would shame them through group pressure. And this is something that is incredibly common. Once again, going back to that's called the Holocaust by bullets. So when the Holocaust first started, many of the killings were of course done by death squads, but other parts were simply done by the Nazi German Reserve Police who were not hardcore Nazis. They were not members of, you know, a purpose-built death squad, but, and most importantly, they were not mandated to kill anybody. However, they were pressured into it through group dynamics. They were told, if you don't want to do this, raise your hand and leave, but they knew they would

do it in a group of their people they saw as their comrades. It would shame them and convince them, I have to take part. And this is the first stage here. This would change. But at first it's like, well, if you want to raise your hand around all of your neighbors who are doing this and say, you don't want to do it, I mean, that's on you. That's your perfect right. But we've got a plan for people who aren't willing to support

the cause. That's the second part. Now in other places, and over time, if you didn't want to take part, you must be an RPF sympathizer. And sympathizers are as good as tootsies. And remember, that not only meant you were going to die, that meant your family was going to die. But still, in other places, in areas that were not so pro-Hutu power and were very well integrated, were different.

Not only did these Hutus refuse to victimize their Tutsi neighbors at all, they helped them fight off those who tried to do it. It was only when the military, the enter Hamwe, the police, all showed up and threatened these people not only with their deaths, but like I said, the anti-hamway, the police, all showed up and threatened these people not only with their deaths, but like I said, the murder of their entire families in front of them before they were killed. Not to mention, they would do other things in front of people to people's wives and children before they were killed. And I don't need to go into details here for people to understand what that means. Sometimes they were forced to do it themselves.

Not to constantly bring it back to the Holocaust, but one thing that I'm really interested in is propaganda media materials that get propagated in times of war. And if you look at a lot of the Nazi propaganda from the late thirties going into the 40s and you see that, I suppose we have to bring up the specter of Noam Chomsky. If he makes you feel any better, he does fit in here. He did once write a forward for a article or a book, I don't remember which one, that put the blame of this genocide on the Tutsis. Yes, yes, yes. I know.

Also, it wasn't a genocide according to him. Yeah. But I suppose to mention like Chomsky's work on like manufacturing consent in politics, like you look at the essentially pre-war propaganda from Nazi Germany and like the building of public sentiments against Jews and other ethnic and minority groups. And it's like we were saying earlier, it starts with, you know, they have all these things that you want and then you start building consensus around like undermining of character of an entire group. And then you start to do things like blood libel and attribute acts of violence either correctly or incorrectly or mostly

incorrectly and untruthfully in order to build consensus among like an in-group versus an out-group. And that's how you, at a grassroots level, get to something like this in like rural areas. Well, I don't, as much as I fucking hate Chomsky, and I do, he did not invent any of that shit. The term genocide was invented by a Polish lawyer named Rafael Lemkin. And he wrote about all of that in his earliest genocide works years before Chomsky ever congealed in a gutter somewhere. And Chomsky is a man that could have vastly benefited from reading some of his own earlier work before the brain worms took over. But again, fuck him. Yeah, it's, I think, do you know what? We leave it to the fourth episode to talk about

the international reaction to it because I think Chomsky will come back up at that point. But I've talked about him so much at this point. I just left him out of it because you can assume when he's talking about a genocide other than the Holocaust, he denies it because that is true. Like we were talking about, once motivation, that punishment aspect of not taking part took hold, let's say you're someone who was pressured into killing someone else, upon fear of death or the death of your loved ones or worse, then you'd be approached of, well, you already killed one person, you're as guilty as the rest of us. Now you have to keep going until the job is done. Mm-hmm. And any Hutu who refused to take part would be taken in front of a group of men,

normally a group of men who were also not really wanting to kill someone, and they would be murdered in front of them. So they would see what would happen if they didn't join in, because if you refuse to kill the Tutsis, you must support them, and you have to prove that you don't. And this is what was happening not only in Kigali, but across the country as the genocide began to unfold and the dead began to pile up in the streets. People were going door to door, murdering those they found, and you know, not to mention the roadblock, which were now full of drunken enter a home way and civilian defense forces because generally people don't want to murder anybody and they have to get fucked up in order to do it as Rwanda spiraled further and further into violence and chaos

or as what Dali air points out the last real chance to stop it from becoming full on apocalypse the UN once again bulked the. The Belgians, having just lost 10 men, did exactly what the Hutu power government thought they would do. They pulled out. The UN force went from a few thousand to even less, all as international powers pulled their civilian and diplomatic staff out of the country. Now that last part is what you'd expect anyone to do as a nation collapses into civil war, genocide, you name it, they're going to pull diplomatic staff out. Simultaneously the RPF fully called off the ceasefire and the war was on all over the

country once again. However, I couch this by saying most countries would pull their diplomatic staff out of a situation like this and I do not blame them for that. However, what France does next is beyond that. Oh, fuck. I forgot about this, fuck. I have very vague rumbling, but I have forgotten the details. Oh no, it's bad. I will say, what France is about to do is horrific.

It will not be the last time France comes up during the series. They launched an operation on April 9th called Operation Amarthis which was only about a hundred and ninety soldiers maybe 200 soldiers and their job was to evacuate any French citizens and select employees of the French government out of Kigali. Like I said what you'd expect any government to do in the situation is people that work for the embassy, their families, they're going to get them out, right? This is all while violence is going on all around them. And it needs to be said here, France fully knows what's going on, that Tutsis specifically were being slaughtered.

Every UN nation knows this, every UN nation is aware of what the full plan is, because Dalière told them. Not to mention these French soldiers and French diplomatic staff could see bodies piled up everywhere and Hutu-powered death squads were not trying to hide any of this from anyone. They didn't even try to redirect French vehicles as they drove past scenes of mass killing. When Tudis connected and working with the French government, this could be people working in the embassy, working for diplomatic missions, people married to French citizens, Tutsis married to people who were Hutus that worked for the French government. They piled them all into buses and trucks and began to drive them towards the airport. Now, they get to the airport and they're confronted by Rwandan military, police, and enter a hamway, and they told the French that no Tutsis could leave the country.

Period. The French shrugged and handed them over. French soldiers, spouses, parents, childrens of Tutsis all watched as these people were forcefully separated from their families and murdered in front of their eyes. They didn't lift a finger to stop it. And just to underline here how involved France is, they allowed the President's family, specifically Agath, remember the leader of the quote unquote little house, a prime figure in the Hutu power movement, to hide in their embassy, all while refusing to take in the

family of the Prime Minister who was murdered. France eventually moved many of these Hutu power figureheads, Agathe included, to Paris. To this day, Agathe Habiarimana remains protected by the French government. In 2011, they refused Rwanda a request to extradite her back to Rwanda to face charges of genocide. That is absolutely shocking. That is, I mean, wow.

I guess being somewhat familiar with France's actions in the modern, call it post end of Cold War era in Sub-Saharan Africa, I guess I'm less surprised, but still that detail, that particular detail is, that's horrific. And it's another important asterisk here to point out. We're going to talk a lot about the Catholic Church later, and most of the clergy involved are Rwandan, they're Hutu Rwandans, but they're all, of course, clergy of the Catholic Church, which was used as a hand of French colonialism over the years, right? Always has been, and all of France's colonial enterprises, they work through the Catholic Church. A few

clergy are brought to justice, but the vast majority of them simply disappear. And this is all done between France and the Catholic Church. And we legitimately have no idea how many clergy they disappeared. Yep. Well, if there's one thing they're really good at, it's moving priests around. Yeah. Though we do need to circle back to the RPF. They're using their own radio station and they announced that they were restarting the war specifically to end the slaughter of Tutsis and called on elements of the Rwandan military who so far refused to take part in the killing to join them in deposing the government and

stop the genocide. They went so far as to publicize the names of Rwandan officers who did not join the genocide. Kagame and the RPF even had some people within the Rwandan military and hoped that Daliere and the UN would force them to kind of help out and all join forces. But obviously Daliere didn't have the permission to do any of that. However, now you have a situation where Hutu power extremists who had been insisting that the RPF was infiltrating the government for years, were now actively calling for it and saying they had already kind of done it.

The government moderates in open dissent were all dead by now, but not everyone still alive was pro-genocide, even if they were, you know, Hutu power. Though now the RPF announced the continuation of the war, and the actual no-shit prospect of RPF spies in the military, combined with the implicit threat of death, should they disagree, knowing that they could expect zero help from say, the UN or France, all but eliminated functional opposition within the military. They're like, now we have to be

full on board or people are going to be 100% convinced for one of these possible RPF turncoats. So Bagesora got the committee together and formed effectively a pro-genocide military government, though it wasn't really a military government in aesthetic. They appointed Jean Combanda as prime Minister and Theodore Sinacuboando as the President. That meeting and the government formation, by the way, happened at the French Embassy in Kigali. Yep. Yeah, Nate, you're in for a ride with all the shit France does. I mean, I'm not surprised, I guess, but like, I don't know, that specific detail about just

abandoning the people you were supposed to evacuate is genuinely so horrifying. But like, I'm not being glib, I'm really not being glib in saying this, but having paid attention to deployments of French troops to places like Central African Republic, Mali, Niger, you get the impression that what they wind up doing is more or less standing by while violence takes place, but finding time to sexually abuse children. Yeah, I mean that is, yeah. Unfortunately, the UN as well. Yeah, I mean the UN obviously has been implicated in this quite often as well, but in Carr,

it was particularly, I believe it was the regular army equivalent of the French military and potentially also some elements of the Foreign legion, but I'm not sure Almost certainly. Yeah, that was a huge scandal about ten ish years ago, but it's it's a thing that you hear about all the time Nate, Joe, I don't know if it's in the script, but wait until you hear about the shredder. Oh Don't yeah, we'll get to that. Don't worry about that Roger Unfortunately, this is where I have to tell both of you guys that all of this, including what the French do, and also another character from the genocide that everybody's probably aware of, what he does, is all going to get much, much worse.

The president, the newly appointed president, is probably the most bloodthirsty of the new government, and he was a practicing medical doctor. He began to tour the country, congratulating people for their quote, work, meaning mass murder. He went back to the medical school he attended and previously taught at, telling doctors quote, as medical doctors, you know which part of the body to touch and a person cannot recover from injury. However, much effort can be deployed. Use and give citizens that tip so when they get a Tutsi, they have no chance to escape them. He then dispatched doctors to different parts of Rwanda to instruct the militia and civilian

defense groups how to best murder someone with a machete. I think I told you in the first episode that Jim Noctoway's book Inferno made a huge impression on me. It's a big, big glossy photo compendium of his work as a war journalist. And it is making a lot of the things that I saw in the photos of Rwanda make more sense. What you're just describing. Yep. He also ordered all doctors and nurses and all hospitals in Rwanda to quickly kill any Tutsis who showed up there looking for medical treatment and any who are

already there. And this is where we get to Hotel Rwanda, or also known as Hotel de Michelin, ran by Paul Roussaspagina. Everybody's heard this story. Unfortunately, there's more to it. Now he did convince the hotel's corporate owners in Belgium to make him general manager so he could then control everything that happened inside the hotel. And he opened the doors to Tutsis fleeing violence in Kigali. I should point out that Paul is a Hutu, his the doors to Tutsi's fleeing violence in Kigali. I should point out that Paul is a Hutu, his wife was a Tutsi. Paul is a strange character

and he has been proven to be a liar on countless occasions. For example, he claims the UN forces offered him no help, and I am not here to defend the UN, but he also says that they abandoned him, when in reality the reason why the hotel was such a safe Largely unassailable spot was specifically because the UN was stationed there In fact when it became too dangerous for Tutsis to make it into the hotel UN soldiers acting against orders from the UN itself Ventured out into the city and rescued people to bring them into the hotel. There's also pervasive rumors that he charged every person that he brought into the hotel the going hotel rate. If they couldn't pay, they were evicted.

Some people say this did not happen, and it seems to be on a piece by piece basis. Like he would charge some people and not others. It seemed to be if he knew you had money, he would charge some people and not others. It seemed to be if he knew you had money he would charge you. Yep. There is also kind of sort of rumors that he was very comfortable to two power players and if the enter a home way came up to him and said we want this person and we know they're in the hotel you would give it to them. Now I do have to point out here, however, Paul Russa Spagina is a vocal critic of Paul Kagame back then and today, and he has actively called for and allegedly planned for his removal from power through violent and nonviolent means. He's been arrested by Paul Kagame, and I need to point out, Paul Kagame is a shitty fucking

dictator and he spins Rwandan genocide history to favor the RPF story. However, with that being said, Paul Rusasbagina also blames the RPF for shooting down the president's plane and even blames the RPF for being the enter a homway and it all being a false flag. Paul Rusasbagina Oh, fuck's sake. Nick That being said, this area is very gray. I just feel like it'd be a disservice to not tell. I'm not using what Paul Kagame says about the Russa Spagina, because you cannot trust what Paul Kagame says about him.

These are what people within the hotel have said. That being said, Paul is credited with saving about 1,200 people, and his wife Tatiana, like I said, a Tutsi, lost the majority of her family. And Paul writes about this, quote, we all knew we would die, no question. The only question was how we would die. Would they chop us up into pieces? With their machetes, they would cut your left hand off. Then they would disappear and reappear a few hours later to cut off your right hand.

A few hours later, they returned for your left leg. And this went on until you died. They wanted to make sure you suffered as long as possible. There's one alternative, though. If you had money, you could pay the soldiers to just shoot you. That's what Tatiana's father did for her family. So he is a very complicated character and the movie is not like there's a reason why Romeo Daliere, who personally fucking hates Paul Russo Spaghina refused to go see

the movie and he still hasn't seen it so yeah though I do have one bright spot in the middle of all this and that's a captain from Senegal named Mabaye Degagne he was a UN officer obviously he's from Senegal and he did more to safeguard civilians than the entire UN on his own. He ignored orders not only from the UN but personally from General Daliere to not go back out into the city and get involved in what was happening. But he would anyway.

He would go out alone in a car and smuggle Tutsis from around the city and bring them back into the Hotel de Mecaline. And he did this while going through various checkpoints via bribes. However, sometimes bribes wouldn't work, and people would try to murder the people he was carrying. So he would simply stand directly between them like, well, if you want to kill them, you have to fucking kill me too. Do it. They wouldn't. Of course.

Daliere figured out pretty quickly that this guy was doing this, and he did not stop him, though he never helped him. In one situation a group of machete wielding militia attacked the car that Degonnier was riding in along with five tootsies inside. Degonnier got out and fought them all off with a backpack. What? Yep. He beat the shit out of them with a children's book bag. Getting hit with the Dora Explorer bag. Yep. He faced down like a dozen machete wielding genociders like, I like my odds. All you just hear, he just has a brick in the bottom of it and all you hear is backpack, backpack.

A sock full of pennies, but if it's not available, you know, the Toy Story 2 backpack with a brick or just like a piece of scrap metal. Who knows? You know what? I mean, it's better than nothing, right? Mm-hmm. And he saved close to a thousand people doing this. Holy shit. Unfortunately, he didn't survive. He was eventually killed, but not by a gang of machete-wielding genocidal militiamen, but by a random mortar fired by the RPF. And in some form of sick fucking irony the UN created a Humanitarian medal in his name fuck off fuck the UN

Now when people are in times of danger and uncertainty they tend to flee somewhere they think is safe and untouchable Rwanda is no different and Rwanda specifically these safe spaces are thought to be churches. No, no, no I'm, Joe give me an animal fact. I know what's about to happen and please. The peacock mantis shrimp can throw a punch at 50 miles an hour. It accelerates quicker than a 22 caliber bullet. The shrimp's got hands. The shrimp's got hands. So basically a shrimp could fry this rice. Put a man size

shrimp in the ring with Mike Tyson, see who wins. That shrimp would punch the world in half. I'm voting for the shrimp. Yeah. I'm just so not excited for what's about to happen. Nate, do you know what's about to happen? I think everybody knows what's about to happen. Enough of the groundwork has been laid here to explain it, foreshadow it. Like as someone who vehemently hates the Catholic Church. You're going to hate him more in about 10 minutes. Oh, as someone who knows about all of the horrific shit that the Catholic Church did in the 20th century, this is like up there with some of the worst things they've ever done.

And like, the church in Rwandan society had previously always been a safe spot. Previously like, even during times of like Hutu and Tutsi violence, or even back in the day when it was Tutsi and Hutu violence. Run to the church, the church was a safe haven. That wouldn't be the case this time, however. These churches were all largely led by Hutu priests and their archbishop as we already pointed out was a hardline Hutu power figure with a seat as Bagursor is like right-hand man. So on April 12th, six days into the genocide,

which at this point I need to point out at least 20,000 people were already dead, thousands of Tutsis and Hutus packed into the Niangye Church. Soon militia arrived and surrounded the church and after a short conversation with the Paris priest they entered the church. They demanded all Hutus stand up and go with them. Afterwards they began throwing grenades through the windows, set the building on fire, and then ran it over with bulldozers. A few days later at the Naryu Buye Catholic Church, around 90 miles away from Kigali, the same thing would occur. The priests would meet with the local militias, go into the church, and the priests would specifically separate Hutus from the Tutsis.

The priests would take the Hutus away and then turn the remaining population inside over to the waiting death squads. In this church alone, the death count is unknown, but it's thought to be as high as 20,000. I'm just actually speech just like this is of all the crimes that the Catholic Church committed, not even just like in Africa, just everywhere. Like what they did during the Rwandan genocide is just... All of these priests are still free if they're still alive. Yep. Yep. And these are not the only attacks on churches. There is another one on Nitarama church that killed

5,000. These happened all over the country because people universally ran to the church for safety. But that wasn't even the worst massacre of its kind or the entire genocide. When I am describing the violence that has occurred so far, it's still mostly the greater Kigali area for reasons that we've already pointed out, but the violence is now reaching every corner of Rwanda. For some, it just took longer than others. For example, in Kibuyi, an isolated rural community on Lake Kivu, which was majority Tutsi, things did not happen overnight like they did in Kigali, but that one last lung.

The first murder was committed by Dr. Fulgenz Kayeshema, the governor of Kabuya, Anahutu. He murdered a man who, by some accounts, he was like a professional rival as well, who was a Tutsi. He cut the man's head off and stuffed it onto a pole in the middle of the town. At this, accompanied by the stories of survivors that were already flooding into the area from outside the community, everyone panicked. Seeing that it had come to their doors and they ran to the church, overseen by a father named Sinyezi. Soon, 25,000 were packed inside as militia closed in. Tutsi men hiding inside the churches began

to build barricades, and when the gangs closed in on the church they pushed them back armed only with homemade weapons and rocks. Meanwhile, Kayeshema demanded that the father move everyone from the church into the nearby regional stadium with obvious implications. Remember he's the governor. The militia passed multiple letters to the father Senyazi telling him, a Hutu, that he must abandon their flock to their fate and the Hutus and he personally would be saved. All while the militia danced and sang outside, chanting, quote, let us hunt them in the forests, lakes and hills. Let us find them in the church. Let us wipe them from the face of the earth.

The priest refused. He told the militia to leave the church and told everyone inside, quote, I regret to inform you these are our last hours. Prepare ourselves to be received by God. Prepare your hearts to be received in heaven. The priest would not leave his flock behind. Then the death squads moved in, setting tires on fire and throwing them against the doors, starting fires and pumping black smoke into the church. People ran but there were killers waiting at every door to cut them down as they went. Grenades were thrown in through the windows, wounding

so many that they couldn't escape the encroaching fire. Anyone who ran for the nearby lake was caught, tortured, and left to die. The only survivors inside the church were because they hid under the 11,000 dead bodies they were now inside, most of whom were their own family. After the death squads were done at the church were because they hid under the 11,000 dead bodies they were now inside, most of whom were their own family. After the death squads were done at the church, the governor ordered them to turn towards the stadium where 12,000 people had already taken shelter, which would then be wiped out. And this is hardly the only stadium this happened across the country. Virtually no stadium Rwanda was free of an event like this. Stadiums, churches, and schools became the scenes of some of the worst acts of human

cruelty the world has ever seen, and people had gone there for safety on their own or after being ordered to evacuate by the government to make their quote, work easier for them. I've just been doing the fucking dead eyed stare from Come and See for the past like six minutes. Yeah, likewise. Specifically, the stadiums are part of a larger plan to exploit the Tutsi tendency to in previous explosions of violence to still trust the government in the very early stages of the genocide. Remember, it's only been about a week.

In many cases, they were told to get to a church school or government building or failing that the local football stadium for protection from the militia or the RPF. And they'd get there, and see uniformed members of the police guarding them. It was only once they were already inside that they saw what was happening. One genocide heir who was arrested later commented, quote, it was like sweeping dry banana leaves into a pile to burn them more easily. However, there's one thing that's arguably worse, and that's being told an area was safe by the UN only to be abandoned.

And that's exactly what happened at the École Technique Officielle, or the ETO, a repurposed college. In the days after the genocide started, thousands of people fled to the ETO for protection, which was run by Catholic priests and protected by a detachment of Belgian UN forces. At first getting in was easy, but then the UN soldiers began turning people away even though they could see roving bands of enter Ahamwe waiting for them in the distance. This is because, according to Belgian officer Luc Lamarier, that the UN had given them orders

not to let anyone in for fear of quote sparking an incident. This erupted into fights between the UN and the Catholic priests inside who were arguing that everybody needs to be let in otherwise they'll die. The Belgian soldiers and the UN told them effectively fuck off and die. Then without warning like we talked about the Belgians left, abandoning everyone inside the ETO to their fate. No effort was made to save a single Rwandan within its walls. The death squads waiting outside invaded the ETO before the UN vehicles were even gone.

They were personally led by George Rutaganda, the Vice President of the Entera Hamwe. Anyone who couldn't run, or couldn't run fast enough, was killed. Virtually everyone that got out of the ETO was captured by an outer ring of security and force-marched in Inyaza in a blinding downpour of rain. As if this wasn't all bad enough, these people were force-marched to their certain death, and they watched as a convoy of UN soldiers drove by them, not even slowing down when they saw what was happening. The death squad even mocked their victims saying, quote, Where's Unimir?

Unimir being the UN mission in Rwanda. Aren't they going to save you? And then laughing at them. Like, I think just to say it, like, for anyone listening at home, like, think about the sheer amount of effort and time it takes to kill like 10, 12, 15, 20,000 people. How long that takes. And hours, hours, days. Yeah.

Cause remember most of this is not with gunfire. Unlike I think the hardest thing to think about with this is lot of people who are trapped in these churches and stadiums and schools, it's taking hours or days to get through everyone and the fear you feel knowing there's no escape. It's soul destroying to even think about let alone someone actually experiencing it. This is, I mean, it's kind of hard to describe. I think it's indescribable. This group that was being death marched, they got to a prepared killing area and their killers asked are there any Hutus in the crowd?

The man stepped forward and presented his ID paperwork. The death squad then went over a list that they had, discovered he was part of a reformist moderate party, and hacked him to death with a machete in front of everyone. After this, pre-implaced machine guns opened fired into the crowd and 4,000 were dead. By now, word had gotten to all corners of Rwanda, if you're a Hutu, have no fear. Only the Tutsis were for killing, and the radio stations did say this. They wanted the Hutus to come out of hiding and help them. And many Hutus, previously in Haini, did emerge, either just to go home or join in. Others were left with a harder choice. Maybe their

spouse was a Tutsi. And if that spouse happened to be a man, that meant their children were, legally, Tutsi. As the Hutu power people believed the ethnic identity would pass from the father. In some cases, people chose to stand with their families. But not always. One woman abandoned her Tutsi husband when told by a soldier that since she was Hutu, her and her 11 children would be saved. It was a lie. She was safe, but her entire family was killed in front of her. Now, Tutsi resistance was common. Banding together to put up a fight, oftentimes with their Hutu neighbors,

but easily, the most famous of this was on a single hill that held off the genocide, Bissacero, who was a hilltop with a good view of the surrounding area. Tutsis quickly gathered there once word had gotten out about what was happening. The various death squads gathered at the foot of the hill, led by government administrators, cops, military officers, clergy, and one case, a fucking local tea factory manager, and launched attack after attack up the hill. The defenders were armed much the same way as their attackers, with farming tools and

homemade weapons, leading to pitched machete on machete, a line of spears and shield warfare, with only the occasional gun showing up. In one case, a member of the presidential guard, flanked by several cops, showed up to try to get a handle on the situation, only for defending Tutsis to ambush them and stab them to death with spears. The hill was never conquered, though thousands of Tutsis died fighting and defending it, defending themselves and their family and their neighbors to the bitter end, in turn killing thousands of members of the death squad that were coming for them. You might be wondering, during all of this, what was the international community, the mechanism of diplomatic pressures, all those letters of strong concern, what

were they doing and how did they influence what happened next? And that's where we'll pick up next time on our conclusion on part four. Oh, Jesus Christ. I don't think I've ever experienced an episode of this show that has like as deeply affected me as sitting here for the past hour and fifteen minutes? I uh yeah, part four isn't any better. I will say one of the things that bothers me about all of this, on top of everything else of course, is normally at the end of whenever we do in these series, the people who did it, like they're held accountable for, there's some form of justice. Like even when we eventually

cover like the Armenian genocide or something like that, like justice is fleeting but at least the people who planned it were killed by partisans. Like there's some form of international pressure or mechanism that comes in and stops it, but in the end of all of this is just hopelessness. It's utter and utter hopelessness. Yeah it's it's just so fucking bleak, man. I think for me, I remember reading about this, reading Philip Gorović's book years ago. I mean, decades ago at this point. I've seen Hotel Rwanda.

I remember the news when this happened, but obviously Western news was pretty late to report it in any detail. And the understanding of what took place was pretty surface level. But I think what's different for me now is that I'm married and I have a kid, and it's impossible to look at a situation like this and not think about how, what would you do to protect your family if I was in a situation where it was possible to save my daughter, to save my wife, to save both of them, even if that meant I had to be killed. Of course I do in a fucking heartbeat. But I think there's so many stories you keep bringing up of people having to make these horrible desperate choices and still being killed. And it's just, like you said, it's just, it's the hopelessness, the kind of all-consuming darkness of it,

because you realize that like these are cherry-picked anecdotes. Not you doing the cherry picking, but rather you've taken, you know taken illustrative details of this. But these are small anecdotes. These are tiny pebbles in what amounts to an entire gravel lot of these kinds of stories. The things that I've outlined here is just a very, very small piece of the overwhelming amount of horrific violence that's taking part. I had to make a choice when writing this, and that is, what do I include and what do I not include?

Because you can't skim over the details because you do need to impart on people what is happening. But you also, in an academic sense, you need to show people how awful everything is while not being exploitative. And I, to be honest with you, I don't know if I've done that, but I tried my hardest. I understand that this is a entertainment show. Most of the time it is comedic in nature, but yeah, I'm kind of left, I don't know, I'm kind of left trying to figure out the best way to approach these subjects so people can A, understand it and B, empathize with it and C, be armed with the knowledge of what it looks like.

Most importantly, the buildup to it. The violence is not the most important part of a genocide to learn about. What is important to learn about is how we get here. Because once people start dying, it's already so far beyond the point of comprehension. So much has already happened. So much that we have all lived through. Not maybe personally, of course, depending on who's listening, but we have seen the rhetoric in the news, on the internet, maybe your family has said it, that leads to this. And that is the most important part about learning about these events in history,

is I agree with Raphael Lemkin when I say that education on genocide is the best weapon to defend against it. Because the only way to stop a genocide is before it happens. To kill it in its womb before it ever festers into people dying. Because once that starts, the only thing that stops it is military force. And that has been proven throughout history. The only way to stop it effectively before mass human misery is the outcome is before it starts and the best way to do that is with education. Yeah, and I guess I think one of the reasons why we talked about this earlier, you don't want to hold up this example in isolation and say, this is, you know,

this is the apotheosis of human cruelty. This is a singular event. This is an event outside of history because its antecedents, its precursors, its beginning stages are very, very similar to things we've seen in our lifetimes, in the histories of the regions and countries that we're all from. The listeners, I presume, can understand this as well. And not every one of these incidents that we described unfolded the same way, very few to the same level of severity or worse, but the intention, the rhetoric, if not the exact same was so similar

that you'd have a real hard time picking it out of a lineup. Exactly. And I feel like that's to me the important part because people with an incentive to foment genocidal views love to paint any comparison to genocide as hysterical and it's sort of like okay well do you have to wait to the point where it is no longer deniable and a genocide is unfolding before you can say wow this sure looks like a genocide and that to me I mean I think you can look at Palestine today you can look at what we

described in Bosnia, in Armenia, in Poland, you know, as an ancillary event in the Holocaust. You can look at all these things and you will just see. You can look at the dehumanizing rhetoric around trans people in many countries right now. And similarly, I think what's happening in the United Kingdom right now,

the rhetoric of the existence of other people in this country is an affront to my rights and they have to be expelled. What does that sound like? Because they're attacking me in some way. It's always, remember, it's always dehumanization. These people are X, Y, and Z somehow ruining our way of life, whatever that way of life may be, they're also weak and sick and ill, but also an existential threat simultaneously. And the only reason why we're ever talking like this, the only reason why we're ever even talking about

doing any of these drastic measures that whatever it is they're talking about is to defend myself. If you ever hear something that fits that mold, it only ever means one thing and it's not excitable, it's not over-the-top, it's not hyperbole to correctly frame these things as eliminationists, genocidal in nature. I want to quote from a recent interview given by genteel socially acceptable racist and xenophobe fascist, let's call him for what he is, Douglas Murray, who's a British commentator who is implacably anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, but sells it in a way that is socially acceptable within the strictures of British society.

Describing what's happening in the United Kingdom, he has said, if the army will not be sent in, then the public will have to sort this out themselves and it will be very brutal. Describing migrants, he says, I don't want them to live here. I don't want them here. They came under false pretenses.

These people came into our house. Many of them broke into our house illegally. Many of them were never wanted here. They have betrayed all of our attempts at hospitality. They spat in all of our faces and now they want to trample everything we have underfoot and I ask you outside of Comedy voice and entertainment podcast the listener to this show and the subject matter. What does that sound like? That's exactly what it sounds like exactly what we talked about to start the series. These people are outsiders They're attacking your way of their vermin're vermin. They're pestilence. They're invaders.

Exactly. Yeah. And people need to quote, sort it out. Sort it out. Exactly. What could that possibly mean in any other, like there's no way that you can quote, sort this out in any other way than what he is inferring. And I know British libel laws are quite strong and I invite him to try something. He would not be the first person to lose that case in a British court. I promise. Yeah. All I'm going to say is Douglas Murray pull up, bitch. Yeah. I mean, meet me at the Senate. I'll sort you out. He's someone I'm remotely familiar with. I've talked about him before on the show. And I mean, there's plenty of other

rhetoric coming from other parts of British and American and Dutch society as well when it comes to people they see as quote unquote outsiders. They could be racial minorities, they could be gender and sexual identity minorities. And it is disgusting the amount of leeway they're given and the media does not have to be RTLM in a way, so viciously violent in order to foster those voices and those narratives. They just have to allow them in for the sake of both sidesism and decency. And just asking questions. That is enough. Yeah, or just asking questions. That is enough. That itself is enough. And

we, as a people, as a human fucking race, need to be smart enough to see it for what it is. And what's most important here is there is not two sides to every story. Both voices are not equally important and human decency demands that we reject these fucking people. I think as well, people should be aware of, while Douglas Murray is one of, by far the most egregious examples once again, I will state Douglas Murray pull up wherever whenever I'll meet you at the Senate at and we can sort it out between us. You just sort it out. You could just, you can say that in the UK now. You could just

sort it out. Oxford Union debate rules don't fucking give you a murder, murder twink force field outside of the Oxford Union and else fucking taste out of your mouth. But like, I think it's outside of someone like Douglas Murray is to be aware that this sort of rhetoric is like multi-layered and comes in like many forms. It's why we, the term dog whistles exist and like be aware of it because the best way to fight against it aside from doing what people did with the national front in the 80s, and if you want to learn about that, look up that, I fully support it, is to be aware of how they communicate, how they use

soft rhetoric to onboard people into their bullshit fascist ideology. And so we've seen it in London this week, like people that me and Nate are friends with being afraid to go to work or have to close up their businesses because these absolute scum of the earth feel have been given enough oxygen that they've been allowed to propagate their ideas. And they've done it in the darkness, some places like telegram and now they're doing it in public and the soft version of it is being pushed and stuff like the telegraph and GB news, which is a explicitly fascist organization. And you have Douglas Murray at one end. Then you have people who are just saying, Oh, well, I'm just, you know, defending traditional values. I'm like, well, what are our traditional

values? Tell me about them. Come on. What do you really mean? Say, I mean, remember in context of this series, what did you know, have your Imana do? He empowered fringe characters that he was allies with to say shit he couldn't. And then, you know, effectively did what we see all the time now is like, you know, I don't agree with them, but they have some points. Yeah, yeah. That's how it starts. Fellas, this is one hell of a way to end a podcast, but that's a podcast.

Thanks for joining me, I suppose. Everybody, thank you so much for sticking through this. I know these episodes are long. I know these episodes are dark as shit. I do find it to be very important. And for everybody who sat through so far, I thank you. Guys, you have other shows? Yeah, I can't really plug my shows after this episode, I'm sorry.

Honestly, listen, if you're- Go listen to their shows, they're much happier, Trash Future will make you laugh, Hill James Bond will make you laugh, this fucking won't. No. So go listen to those afterwards to kind of clean your brain out. Yeah, I would say, like listening to this, like a lot of people displaced by through and in genocide, some of them ended up in the UK and have opened businesses, restaurants, go eat at them. The food fucking slaps. Go eat at other refugee and displaced people, restaurants,

businesses, show up to protests, you know, fight against all of the injustice that's going on right now, Joe? Until next time, go do something that brings you joy, and we will talk to you next week.