Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings

Abstract

A striking feature of the dominant narrative of the Rwandan genocide is the unprecedented emphasis given to the media, in particular radio, as a tool of genocide. The notorious privately owned radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) and the newspaper Kangura in particular are blamed for inciting and facilitating genocide. The charge was led by key human rights activists Alison Des Forges and Jean-Pierre Chrétien.¹ Des Forges makes this extraordinary claim about RTLM: ‘during the genocide, when communications and travel became difficult, the radio became the sole source of news as well as the sole authority for interpreting its meaning’.² Chrétien ascribes a central role to RTLM, saying that

[t]wo tools, one very modern, the other less [modern] were particularly used during the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda: the radio and the machete. The former to give and receive orders, the second to carry them out.³

These claims cut to the heart of so much that is written about Rwanda.