Myth of Propaganda in the Balkans and Rwanda Essay

By establishing humans as inherently capable of evil, and perpetrators of evil as no less human, Hatzfield encourages a nuanced understanding of the causes of genocide. In doing so, Hatzfield warns readers of the ease with which genocide can take place and cautions against allowing prejudice to take hold in communities. In Rwanda, Hutus lived with Tutsis as friends and neighbors mere days prior to slaughtering them. However, the groundwork for the massacres “was the result of plans and preparations formulated essentially by collective decision” long before the genocide began (52). Radio propaganda drove tensions far in advance, and the assassination of the Hutu president was not the reason for the genocide but the signal for it to finally begin. Hatzfield establishes this point by humanizing the Hutus. One of the interviewees explains that when “you receive a new order, you hesitate but you obey, or else you’re taking a risk. When you have been prepared the right way by the radios and the official advice, you obey more easily, even if the order is to kill your neighbors” (71). While this could easily be dismissed as an excuse born of fear and guilt, understanding the truth of this statement is crucial to the prevention of further mass violence; indeed, if the preparation through propaganda and conditioning can be identified,

In her essay, “Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled”, author Donna Woolfolk Cross explains the different types of propaganda and how it is used in the United States. The essay was first published in Speaking of Words: A Language Reader (1977). Cross defines propaganda as “simply a means of persuasion and so it can be put to work for good causes as well as bad” (247). In her article she discusses how propaganda works and explains how propaganda is used with thirteen different devices to manipulate people’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas. She uses this essay as an informative piece, giving advice on how not to be manipulated by propaganda.

Propaganda is hard to define as most definitions do not cover the full meaning of the word. The Webster's Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary defines propaganda as " the systematic propagation or discrediting of a given doctrine or cause by circulation of polemical material, such as posters and leaflets" (1353). However, this definition does not cover the full scope of the of the word. Terence Qualter also feels the definition for propaganda needs to be more refined for its new usage. The definition that he gives is "the deliberate attempt...(to) form, control, or alter the attitudes of other groups...(with) the use of the instruments of communication" (27-28). He goes on to say that the propaganda must be aimed at the group in general because that is the basic nature of the word, in that the most effective propaganda is the propaganda which has a large audience. Qualter does mention, however, that there need be no difference in the propaganda to persuade one and the propaganda to persuade the many (28). Germany did this by controlling the flow of information into the country.

One of the reasons propaganda has such power is because of it, in a way, brainwashes people to believe something over the other. People can easily use propaganda to control people or convince them to believe that they are correct even if they were talking complete nonsense. Document

While writing an essay about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda utilizing writings from the play Maria Kizito and the script from the motion picture Hotel Rwanda I found more data by writers who wrote journals and articles that explained particular areas I had interest in. These journals and articles discuss with more detail Rwanda’s History, the history of the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes, Colonialism as the catalyst for genocide in Rwanda. The area this paper will focus on is the role of the media during that time. My goal in this paper is to expand what I read from the course about Genocide in Rwanda into a larger discussion about how media and more specifically radio played a significanant role in inciting violence against the Tutsi. To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into three main sections beginning with a brief synopsis of the event, the origin of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes and the role of European Colonialism played as the root cause of their social indifference. In conclusion, the third area which talks about the role of media and how it was use to induce a violent eruption of mass killings against the nation 's minority, the Tutsi which explains the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word “genocide” as “the killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group” (Merriam). But aren’t genocides much more then that? Over the past hundred years, there have been several attempted genocides around the world. Two of the most well-known genocides are the Holocaust (the Nazi’s attempt to destroy the Jewish people) and the Bosnian genocide (the Serbians attempt to destroy the Bosnian population). This paper analyzes a political cartoon relating to genocides, describes the events that led to the Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide, describes several similarities and differences between them and explains why genocides continue regardless of the saying, “Never Again”.

Genocide was not new in WWII, nor was it an isolated incident, but the ease with which the Nazi’s were able to significantly reduce the Jewish population was only the beginning of a new era in warfare. Personal responsibility would take a back seat to nationality, patriotism, and advancing technology.

"Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea." ( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1926).

During the 1994 genocide, propaganda played a vital role in converting moderate Hutus to join the extremist Hutu side. The main source for such propaganda was two radio stations, Radio Rwanda and Radio Television des Milles Collines, also known as RTLM. Radio Rwanda was owned by the government and under the second Arusha Accord, it was banned from spreading hate propaganda. In result, RTLM was formed and became “immensely popular as a young, hip alternative to the official voice of the government. It played popular music, and encouraged the public to phone in and participate in radio broadcasts” (“Rwanda Radio Transcripts”). This station attracted unemployed youth and interhamwe militia. From October 1993 to late 1994, Hutu extremists used

Immediately following the assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6th 1994, Hutu extremist radio stations in Kigali began broadcasting throughout the entire country. They repeatedly called out for Hutu’s to “take their country back” by simply telling them to “go to work”, all of which was a kind of dog-whistle terminology calling for the mass murder Tutsis. These radio stations would used to broadcast mobilizing rhetoric and to give orders to the armed Hutus throughout the four month killing spree in Rwanda. However, these radio extremists never referenced Tutsis as human-beings, but they instead referred to them as “cockroaches” (Szekely 4/17/17). This constant dehumanizing language played a huge role in the Rwandan Genocide because it managed to convince regular Hutu civilians to take up machetes and brutally murder their Tutsi neighbors.

In analyzing the Rwanda Genocide as an ethnic conflict it's far vital that ethnicity is tested because it influenced and became encouraged via economic, political and social factors. The venture for outlining the violence in Rwanda as an ethnic warfare is that while, on the one hand, the atrocities were a clean reduce case of genocide, devoted with “the criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group” (Lemkin, 1947), The lines along which the victims have been grouped were not just ethnic but also

Propaganda is a tool for manipulating and changing the opinions people. The bases of propaganda have come forth form the modes of persuasion, Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

First, one must define propaganda and since many have done so already, I shall use the Sheryl Ross model. Her model defines propaganda as “an epistemically defective message designed with the intention to persuade a socially significant group of people on behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause.”

Is there a difference between genocide and war? The idea and concepts of conflict are often misunderstood. To many, any form of conflict is war. War can be defined as a direct violent encounter between two or more opposing parties with a view to gaining access to an object of their mutual interests. It is usually accompanied by the use of weapons such as guns, bows and arrows, machetes, sticks, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. (Insert bibliography #1). Genocide has been described as a specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against particular groups, with the intent to destroy the existence of such groups (insert bibliography #1). Having said that, one common factor often exhibited by genocide perpetrators is to destroy a group perceived to be a threat to the ruling power. The purpose of this paper is to take a look at both the historic and political causes for the Rwanda Genocide, and to distinguish whether ethnicity was the cause or was it the aspect of the conflict.

There are two types of propaganda: sociological propaganda; the spreading of an ideology through the mass media, and political propaganda; efforts that are sponsored by governments and political groups that alter a persons’ interests. All propaganda has a direction, and the overall quality determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect over the masses. Our entire nation is a vast propaganda operational system that is greatly linked to education, consumerism and politics. A great deal of what makes up propaganda and how it is placed among the masses lies in understanding the overall emotional and physical states of these groups of people and in finding a way to draw a persons’ attention to capture their hearts, breaking down