What The Rwandan Genocide Can Teach Us About Fox News

Félicien Kabuga. Photo:France 24

by Ben Cohen

Netflix’s original “World’s Most Wanted” is a sobering documentary series profiling the most dangerous criminals on the planet. From Sinaloa cartel leaders to Islamic terrorist masterminds, the series gives a fascinating insight into the extraordinary efforts made by law enforcement to bring mass murderers to justice.

The second episode profiles Rwandan businessman Félicien Kabuga – the Hutu financier who funded RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines), a radio station dedicated to inciting the 1994 genocide against the minority Tutsi.

The hunt for Kabuga is a riveting story, but it is the remarkable archival footage uncovered by Netflix that gives chilling insight into the events leading up to the slaughter of roughly 800,000 ethnic Tutsis, and a history lesson that is relevant to modern day America.

Kabuga: Media mogul turned war criminal

After President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali airport, RTLM began openly inciting violence against the Tutsis. Their increasingly vitriolic language caused Faustin Rucogoza, the Minister of Information at the then Transitional Government, to threaten RTLM with closure. In a televised meeting with Félicien Kabuga, Rucogoza, himself a Hutu, warned Kabuga and his associates that RTLM was spreading “news that fuels hatred” and that it did “not belong in this country”.

A chillingly calm Kabuga told Rucogoza that “RTLM cannot please everyone”, and that “RTLM only tells the truth, and only what is really happening”. He claimed that he founded RTLM “to enlighten the people”, despite the station calling Tutsis “inyenzi” (“cockroaches” or “pests”) and openly calling for their genocide. “Someone must…make them disappear for good…to wipe them from human memory…to exterminate the Tutsi from the surface of the earth,” one commentator proclaimed. A powerless Rucogoza was forced to back down, and just two months after meeting with Kabuga, he and his family were assassinated.

RTLM is widely perceived as being one of the major forces behind the mass killings that took place in Rwanda over just 100 days. The genocide occurred at a truly ferocious pace with machete wielding militia groups — funded largely by Kabuga — roaming the country searching for Tutsis to slaughter. Hutus killed their neighbors and men even killed their own Tutsi wives in an orgy of death and destruction that stunned the international community.

Decades in the making

While RTLM played a pivotal role in the slaughter, the mass mobilization of regular Hutus who took to the streets to butcher their neighbors was not an overnight sensation. As Kennedy Ndahiro notes in The Atlantic, the propaganda exacerbated an already agitated community that had been fed “hate mongering” and “indoctrination” for decades:

The dehumanization had started long before RTLM urged its listeners to “exterminate the cockroaches.” The killings in 1994 were a culmination of decades of hate-mongering, the indoctrination that began even before independence.

In 1959, Joseph Habyarimana Gitera, a leader of the radical Hutu political party Aprosoma, openly called for the elimination of the Tutsi “vermin.” The stigmatization and dehumanization of the Tutsi had begun. When the first of the many anti-Tutsi pogroms broke out that year, Gitera was overjoyed.

Over the years, whenever a sitting government ran into political trouble, it always played the Tutsi card to rally its supporters. Anti-Tutsi incitement came to the fore in November 1992, when an official in the ruling party, Léon Mugesera, openly called for the mass killings of Tutsis and for their bodies to be dumped in a river.

The historic lesson here is clear. Mass killings in places like Rwanda do not occur in a vacuum — they are the result of a highly deliberate and sustained assault on the dignity of one group of people over a long period of time. Combined with a fraught political environment, well-financed instigators, and a willing media apparatus, extreme acts of violence become a near certainty.

It is a lesson Americans would do well to pay attention to.

Fox News, America’s RTLM?

In the US, the right wing media system has morphed into an industry of hate over the past few decades. It has inspires hatred in its viewers, then monetizes it with slickly produced propaganda it passes off as news. Just as “RTLM only tells the truth”, Fox News is “Fair and Balanced”. Just as Tutsis were “cockroaches” and “pests”, immigrants make make America “poorer and dirtier”. Just as Tutsis were accused of destroying Rwanda like a “disease”, Democrats “actually hate America” and want to “destroy it” for “political power”.

While Fox News hasn’t openly advocated violence against minorities and liberals, they are not that far off. Tucker Carlson, for example, defended white vigilantes killing Black Lives Matter protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

“Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it. People in charge from the governor of Wisconsin on down refused to enforce the law. They stood back and they watched Kenosha burn,” Carlson said.

“So are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

This is crucial: killing liberals is not murder in the eyes of Fox News. It is maintaining order.

Exponentially worse

The vitriolic rhetoric from Fox and other right wing media organizations has increased exponentially during the era of Donald Trump. Hate crimes have surged under the Trump administration, as has white supremacist domestic terrorism.

“From the frequency of attacks to the scope of ambition, racist terror groups – encouraged by the president, are showing unparalleled activity in the modern era,” reported the Guardian recently.

With the continued presence of unabashed ethno nationalists like Tucker Carlons, Lou Dobbs and Laura Ingraham, it is clear that Fox News is not remotely worried about the corrosive effect its programming is having on society. The network has ignored multiple advertiser boycotts and pleas from media watchdogs to rein in the racist vitriol, preferring instead to stand by their top performers and pay them handsomely.

This can only end badly. Propagating hate for profit and political power has consequences, and they are often deadly. Fox News is not RTLM, but it holds unique leverage over the government, is accountable to no one, and routinely exacerbates racial and political tensions in America.

With a president unwilling to accept the results of a free and fair election, millions of supporters willing to take to the streets, and a media apparatus openly propagating wild conspiracy theories, the ingredients are there for disaster. Just this past weekend, Black Lives Matter were burned and destroyed at historic Black churches in Washington, D.C by Trump supporters in a march to overturn the 2020 election.

Fox News has spent decades priming their viewers to take to the streets and “maintain order”, and now they are beginning to do so in increasingly aggressive fashion.

What could possibly go wrong?

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