It was back in the 1990s that I began to hear a new phrase on the news, ethnic cleansing. This rather prosaic term for an ugly reality that is as old as civilization first came to be used in the context of the mass murders being committed in the post-Communist Balkans, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. The worst examples of ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, however, occurred in the east African nation of Rwanda. In the approximately one hundred days between April 7 to July 15, 1994, Hutu militants slaughtered between 500,000 to 622,000 Tutsis, Twa (Pygmies), and moderate Hutus.
Rwanda
How did this happen? How did people who had been living at peace with one another decide to pick rifles and machetes and start massacring their neighbors? Could something like that happen here, in America? The history of the relationship between the ethnic groups that make up the Great Lakes region of Africa is rather complex, and I can only give a brief outline here.
In any case, the inhabitants of the present-day states of Rwanda and Burundi, along with portions of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are divided into two major ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutus. The Twa comprise only around one percent of the region’s population and hardly count. The Hutus make up around ninety percent of the population, and were mostly farmers, while the Tutsis are most of the remaining ten percent and were pastoralists. Although they are very much in the minority, the Tutsis have historically ruled the kingdoms, forming an aristocratic class. The Germans, and later the Belgians who colonized the region, tended to reinforce Tutsi rule. The colonialist preferred a clearer distinction between Hutu and Tutsi for administrative purposes and perhaps as an attempt to divide and rule the population. This policy tended to cause increased tensions between the two groups.
In the last years of colonial rule, fighting broke out between the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Hutus massacred thousands of Tutsis before the Belgian authorities could stop the violence. Thousands more Tutsis fled to neighboring territories, particularly the region that would become the Nation of Uganda. When Rwanda became independent in 1962, the Hutus dominated the new government. Naturally, the Hutu majority decided it was time to get revenge for centuries of oppression by oppressing the Tutsis. The Tutsis were not pleased with this reduction in status from being the nobility to second-class citizenship, so the fighting between the two groups continued.
The violence settled down over the next two decades, although the Hutu-led government still discriminated against the Tutsis. Rwanda enjoyed some measure of economic growth. The rule of President Habyarimana was autocratic, but his government seemed stable. By the late 1980s, conditions deteriorated. Economic growth slowed, and there began to be increasing dissatisfaction with President Habyarimana’s corrupt and repressive rule. In response, Habyarimana used the oldest trick in the despot’s book. He secured his power by stirring up ethnic tensions. Government-sponsored newspapers and radio stations began to vilify the Tutsis. The Tutsis were cockroaches and termites who had spent centuries oppressing the Hutus. They were planning to re-impose a government based on Tutsi supremacy. The government began to organize Hutu militias to defend the Hutus against the coming Tutsi attacks. Naturally, Hutus who opposed President Habyarimana were traitors working with the Tutsis.
President HabyarimanaViolence broke out once again between the Hutus and Tutsis. In 1990, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda from its bases in the refugee camps in Uganda, and Rwanda plunged into civil war. This war did not go well for President Habyarimana, and in 1992 he began peace talks with the RPF. Habyarimana discovered that it was not so easy to put the genie of ethnic hatred he had unleashed back into the bottle and Hutu militants led by his own First Lady resisted the peace process. On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down. This was the cue for the massacre to begin. For the next three weeks, Hutus murdered Tutsis. The Rwandan Patriotic Front launched an offensive, and by August, they had captured Kigali, the capital. The Hutus, terrified of Tutsi retribution, fled into Zaire, sparking the Congo Wars.
Note that the Hutus did not simply decide one day to pick up rifles and machetes to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors. They were incited by years of propaganda depicting the Tutsis as an existential threat to their lives and freedom. At the same time, the Tutsis were also being dehumanized as vermin, fit for extermination. The fact is that engaging in pogroms and genocide is hard work. Most people would rather live in peace, minding their own business. They have to be motivated before they commit horrendous atrocities, generally by an appeal to fear, greed, or vengeance for past wrongs.
Could something like the Rwandan genocide happen here in America? There are a lot of differences between the culture and historical circumstances of North America and Central East Africa. Yet the narrative promoted by the “woke” left is disturbingly similar to the anti-Tutsi propaganda disseminated by the militant Hutus of Rwanda. The left is rewriting American history before our eyes changing from the shared history of a united people into a history of grievances. The institutions and traditions that unite us are denigrated in favor of ever-narrowing degrees of balkanization. White is increasingly becoming a synonym for wickedness. Whiteness is blamed for all the evils of the world. The White race is held to have produced nothing but hatred and racism, and Whites are seen as an accursed race bent on oppressing innocent people of color. To be White is scarcely to be human.
Consider the article from the Post Millennial, “Whiteness is Going to Have an End Date.” that prompted this post.
A 2021 video of a critical race theory scholar claiming that “white people are committed to being villains” and warning that “whiteness is going to have an end date” has recently resurfaced on social media sparking renewed outrage.
Brittney Cooper, who is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, made the comments during a podcast interview with The Root, during which she also said “We gotta take these muthaf*kers out.”
Cooper further portrayed the world before colonialism as a utopia of peace and tranquility, with black and brown people traveling the seas and oceans spreading friendship and prosperity.
“White human beings thought there’s a world here and we own it,” said the professor of gender studies. “Prior to them, black and brown people have been sailing across oceans, interacting with each other for centirues without total subjugation, domination, and colonialism.”
“My hope is that we would do it differently in the moments that we have some power,” she continued. “We will not do it perfectly, but I do think that all of us can sort of agree that a politics that says there are superior and inferior human beings just isn’t a way to go. And that’s the thing that white people don’t trust us to do because they’re so corrupt and their thinking is so morally and spiritually bankrupt about power that they fear, viscerally, existentially, letting go of power.”
“The thing I want to say to you is that we gotta take these muthaf*ckers out, but we can’t say that,” Cooper said before stressing that she doesn’t believe in a project of violence.
In Cooper’s view, Whites are the serpent that drove the Human race out of Eden.
How long before hatred of Whiteness becomes hatred of Whites? How long before Blacks and others, fueled by hatred and fear, spread by the likes of Cooper, form militias to kill their alleged oppressors? How long before Whites form their own militias in self-defense? Will America have its own experience of ethnic cleansing? Have the people who seem intent on fomenting a civil war between the races in America given any thought to how it is likely to end up? It won’t be pleasant, whatever happens.
As for Rwanda, there is a happy ending, of sorts. The leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi named Paul Kagame, turned out to be more interested in reconciliation and economic growth than vengeance. He formed a national unity government with a Hutu President and himself as Vice-President and Minister of Defense. The Hutu leaders most responsible for the atrocities have been tried for their crimes in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and lesser figures associated with the massacres have been encouraged to come forward and make restitution for their crimes. Discussion of ethnicity is outlawed in Rwanda. As far as the government is concerned there are no Hutus or Tutsis, only Rwandans. Kagame is a dictator and Rwanda is far from being a free country, but things seem to be getting better for the people of Rwanda.
Paul KagameWill we Americans be able to do so well if we manage to tear our country apart? Do we really want to find out?
David's Commonplace Book 