The Radio and the Machete: Mass Media as a Tool of Apartheid and Massacre
Interior of Catholic Church Genocide Memorial Site with Piled Clothes of Victims - Nyamata - Rwanda (Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Do you know how the events of April-July 1994 came to be a horrific reality for the minority Tutsi populations of Rwanda? How, over 100 days or so, ~800,000 Tutsis and sympathizers were suddenly massacred in their homes, shops, churches, and fields at machete-point? As is so often the case, it begins with colonialism by European powers.
Throughout the late 19th and early-20th centuries, Imperial Germany (and later Belgium) interfered in the politics of central-Africa, building systems of extraction and subjugation as they raced to claim the vision of Cecil Rhodes. Reinforcing lighter-skinned populations ascendancy and providing the resources, favoritism, and legal frameworks to cement the situation as such, the Tutsi in Rwanda were proclaimed “better-than” their Hutu and Twa neighbors, their cheekbones or height or melanation creating a legal caste system (read: apartheid) from the remnants of a decaying, ancient kingdom.
They imported machines and promises of development, extracted resources while ensuring those they needed/valued most were ever more entrenched in wealth while their fellows slipped increasingly into deprivation all around. In Rwanda, European powers found an ideal class already in power following prior colonization from White populations to the North and East some centuries before. Utilizing their power to reinforce an already unfair hierarchy, they lent it the legitimacy needed to become a useful playground for imperial weapons, soldiers, and corporations of Europe and the West.
As we know today, such unjust systems do not maintain themselves; they must be reinforced constantly with propaganda and force, the cries of the miserable drowned out by the manufactured consent which maintians that state of despair for the benefit of the powerful class. Allow me to introduce: Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM).
Running from July 8th, 1993 until July 31st the following year, RTLM was a radio station run by Hutu Power hate groups who utilized government-run and/ or captured radio networks to spread misinformation under cover of catchy tunes and edgy media coverage. The station gained popularity quickly with young Rwandans who enjoyed the access to the more contemporary and international music selection which RTLM played between bouts of xenophobia; many then, as today, ignoring and dismissing the worst in favor of the benefits of easy entertainment – the former being consumed alongside the latter with little noticed by the listener as to the manipulation of their sensibilities.
The station played news with an anti-imperial bias, promoting reactionary populism among the masses and connecting Tutsis explicitly to the worst atrocities of the Europeans; lifting voices such as Kantano Habimana, Georges Ruggio, and Felicien Kabuga who used the influence of their position to call for acts of extermination while simultaneously positioning themselves for massive profits following the genocide and all the resources which would suddenly be up for grabs afterwards.
In the end, RTLM was the primary apparatus by which the massacre of almost a million innocent people was accomplished over a span of just three months, the vessel which drowned out dissenting voices and organized the masses around a small nucleus of hardline genocidaires and which left the bones of entire communities bleaching in the sun or crammed where they had tried to hide behind a church’s alter.
Today, watching as US technocrats line up to kiss the ring of governmental censorship, they are also lessening the reins on all the worst voices among us. Following the leadership of Techno-king Elon Musk, META’s Mark Zuckerberg has decided to likewise open the floodgates to right-wing reactionary propaganda edgelords whose favorite jokes still consist of “identifying as a helicopter” or “transvestigations” into totally innocuous people who, these actors have determined, must be otherized before the gleeful masses of hogs; the people who think SWATting is funny and who believe the State exists to perpetuate their will alone.
And it isn’t like I’m stretching here, we have seen how an increase in right-wing content which dehumanizes people based on race or gender or orientation or belief online can lead to increased tensions, rhetoric, and outright violence in the real world. We have seen it here at home, hate-crimes rising alongside reactionary coverage by right-wing outlets and organizations; individuals radicalized into hate by misinformation who then destroy communities through acts of mass violence. We know the mechanism at play here.
And while there is (likely) no direct link between – say – Joe Rogan allowing blatant transphobia to go unchecked on his platform to the 2024 murders of Cam Thompson, Ra’Lasia Wright, Quanesha Shantel, San Coleman, Honee Daniels, Kassim Omar, Redd, Vanity Williams, Tai’Vion Lathan, Dylan Gurley, Monique Brooks, Kenji Spurgeon, Shannon Boswell, Pauly Likens, Liara Tsai, Jazlynn Johnson, Yella Robert Clark Jr., Michelle Henry, Tayy Dior Thomas, Reyna Hernandez, Kita Bee, Starr Brown, Sasha Williams, Andrea Doria Dos Passos, River Neveah Goddard, Tee Arnold, Africa Garcia, Meraxes Medina, Alex Taylor Franco, Diamond Brigman, Righteous TK Hill, and Kitty Monroe, it is clear that the focus on otherizing such people has been normalized on his platform – arguably the most influential media platform in the US today.
And that is the thing, we all loved old Joe, his dumbass takes and conspiracy mindset with no real stakes, but that has been warped now by political expediency and exponential access to power, the stakes are no longer ignorable. Joe does not care about the weird, he cares about profit and – more importantly – maintaining his proximity to those he now depends on wholly for relevance.
Similarly, Zuckerberg’s META is guilty of perpetrating and perpetuating the genocide of Rohingya Muslim groups and their sympathizers in Burma/Myanmar from 2017 until today, Facebook’s “moderation” and virality features being used freely by hate groups and influential demagogues to spread misinformation, fear, and ethnic bigotry across the burgeoning population of internet users until such an echo chamber existed within the siloed network that the country erupted into genocidal violence. Facebook, the internet provider and primary access point at the time for the entire country, allowed the profits generated by hate content to be distilled until the very leadership of the nation’s military– one of which, then-General Min Aung Hlaing, would launch a successful coup of the country in 2021 – were proclaiming their support for a Rohingya-free country and national identity.
The game being played on the US population is an old one, a tried and tested method of manufacturing consent and enabling the worst actors to bring their most vile ambitions to fruition. Genocide is a reset switch for Capitalism, a failsafe which (successful or not) often leaves the same people/parties in power while conveniently allowing enemies and dissenters to be culled from the ranks of society generally, the masses to release the pressures of extractive society on their neighbors rather than the ones who maintain the bonds on their wrists, ankles, and throats.
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
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