[HN Gopher] Hate Radio (2011)
___________________________________________________________________
Hate Radio (2011)
Author : thomassmith65
Score : 135 points
Date : 2025-06-07 14:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rwandanstories.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rwandanstories.org)
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Apparently the music of Simon Bikindi was a favorite of RTLMC.
| After the genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for
| Rwanda indicted him. His details also make interesting reading:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bikindi
| dav_Oz wrote:
| An interesting read on that topic an nyt-article from 2002
| "killer songs"
|
| https://archive.ph/fy9SC
| copx wrote:
| Something more people should know about the Rwandan genocide is
| that the Tutsi were not innocent victims but had previously
| committed genocide themselves - against the Hutu
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiza].
|
| The hate of the Hutu was not artificially created by some
| "extremists" with a radio station, but was and is instead the
| result of the long and bloody history between these two peoples
| where neither side can claim to be the innocent victim.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| The dynamic here is the Tutsi were considered superior (taller,
| thinner noses, lighter skin) by the colonizers and made up most
| of the ruling class during and after colonialism. Pre-
| colonization these groups were genuinely fluid. The genocide
| was essentially an uprising.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| Rwanda was under German, then a Belgian rule. I don't believe
| Britain was involved.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Yes you're right.
| at-w wrote:
| Rwanda was never colonized by the British.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Pre-colonization these groups were genuinely fluid.
|
| Where did you read this? I've seen many people make this
| claim but I've never seen any evidence that it's true. The
| only source I have found for it is Philip Gourevitch's book
| "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with
| Our Families"
|
| I could not find the actual page where this claim is
| ostensibly made, just an unsourced claim that the identity
| cards made such mobility impossible. A similar claim is often
| made about the caste system in India (which gets attributed
| to the British), and the scholarship there is similarly very
| poor.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| "Rwanda and Burundi" (1970) by Rene Lemarchand
|
| Quote "Tutsi and Hutu distinctions were more occupational
| than ethnic, with intermarriage and status change being
| fairly common."
| lurk2 wrote:
| Will take a look. Thanks.
| brookst wrote:
| It is very wrong to look at murdered children of one group and
| say they're not innocent because their grandparents were
| killers.
|
| This conflation of group and individual responsibility is at
| the heart of pretty much every atrocity.
| lukan wrote:
| Indeed, but it seems widespread.
|
| Even the trial against a musician who incited violence argues
| in that direction.
|
| "In addition to other evidence, the prosecution cited a song
| celebrating the abolition of monarchy and the regaining of
| independence from 1959 to 1961: a Rwandan expert in the trial
| later expounded that the latter song could not have been
| addressed to the Rwandan nation as a whole, because the
| Tutsis were associated with the Rwandan monarchy and colonial
| regime, and that it was impossible to hate the monarchy
| without hating the Tutsis"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bikindi#Details
| eviks wrote:
| What % of the killed Tutsi in Rwanda did themselves kill Hutus
| as part of the government/army of another country two decades
| prior?
| energy123 wrote:
| You're buying into a genocidal mindset of collectivizing an
| entire ethnic group and assigning collective blame.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I vouched and upvoted your comment to counter the many
| downvotes. Like other respondents, I strongly disagree with
| your conclusion that "neither side can claim to be the innocent
| victim", but I think the rest is valid context. The reason many
| Hutus were so easily swayed was because they were afraid of
| Tutsis effectively doing the same to them, and there was
| historical precedent of just that.
|
| This is exactly the same story as why Croatians were trying to
| de-Serb their villages and vice versa. Fear of what the other
| would do made them do the same, first (or even worse). See also
| the comment about "Accusation in a mirror" further up.
|
| People often have the idea that the Rwandan genocide was some
| people spontaneously rising up and killing their neighbours
| with farming equipment because someone on the radio told them
| to. You're right that it was more complicated than that.
|
| Still doesn't mean murder victims aren't victims though. They
| totally are, and they can't be blamed for actions done by other
| people vaguely similar to them.
| throwanda wrote:
| Not constrained to Rwanda, the late '80s and early '90s saw the
| (re-)emergence of this flavor of broadcasting in many places
| around the world - especially in the US on the AM bands.
|
| Fortunately, the conditions weren't present in the US to speedrun
| to civil war and genocide. Still, I grew up in Limbaugh-lovin'
| country during those years and was exposed to this... stuff...
| for more hours of the day than I care to think about. (In public
| school! Literally, teachers having Rush and assorted fellow-
| travellers on in the background while we did our classwork.)
|
| I do not believe for a second that the fact it went different in
| the US wasn't for lack of trying. The trying hasn't even stopped.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I never was a regular listener to Rush but if I were driving
| from Pt A to Pt B in rural America I might find the only thing
| Icould find reliably from noon to 2pm was an AM radio station
| that had _The Rush Limbaugh Show_. I tuned in deliberately on
| Jan 7, 2021, just a few days before Rush passed away, and found
| he was shocked and aghast at what had happened to the day
| before... but did not draw the connection to how the culture he
| created contributed to it.
|
| Korzybski and Van Vogt warned us of "A=A" thinking but today
| I'm aghast at thinking that can best be described as [?]x,y:
| x=y. Back in the 1960s you'd expect an article in a Trotskyite
| newspaper to start with "The Red Sox beat the Yankees" and to
| end with "... therefore we need a socialist revolution." Today
| teen girls read _Man 's Search For Meaning_ because they think
| their school is like a concentration camp, politicians of all
| stripes [1] are accused of being fascists, and people delude
| themselves that adding a stripe to a flag will magically
| transform people into allies. Glomming together all social
| causes into one big ball has a devastating effect on popular
| support
|
| https://phys.org/news/2025-06-social-issues-civil-rights-bac...
|
| _across all demographics._
|
| I disagreed with Rush about most things and thought he had a
| harmful effect on the nation and the world but I'd never accuse
| him of advocating genocide. No, being against universal
| healthcare isn't the same thing as genocide and if you're
| interested in winning elections you'd be better off spraying
| random voters with pepper spray than talking this way.
|
| [1] sci-fi writer Charlie Stross made the accusation against
| Keir Starmer
| brookst wrote:
| It's going too far to say Rush advocated genocide, but he
| absolutely preached that all who opposed him were not just
| wrong but evil, that ends justify means, that people with
| different views are subhuman.
|
| It's the age-old populist / proto-fascist playbook. He didn't
| attempt to convince on the merits, but on the argument that
| those who disagree aren't real people.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| How about
|
| https://www.etsy.com/listing/500290818/we-believe-yard-
| sign-...
|
| ? Complex issues get distilled into 3 or 4 word slogans
| with the total effect of suggesting that the person with
| this lawn sign is superior in every way to people who
| disagree with her, that there's one exact right way to
| think about every issue, people who disagree are evil,
| deluded, subhuman, affected by perverse psychology, etc.
| You can find people on Mastodon and Bluesky say the most
| terrible things about the 70% of people who have concerns
| about transgender athletes in women's sports.
|
| I don't have the numbers to prove it but my belief is that
| kind of thinking is basically right wing and that putting
| one of those yard signs in your yard shifts the vote +0.05
| R or something just as 15 minutes listening to Rush does.
| Advocating that 99.4% percent of people should just shut up
| and give 0.6% of people everything the want all the time is
| what I expect out of Peter Thiel, not the left.
| pstuart wrote:
| Edit: just waking up.
|
| > suggesting that the person with this lawn sign is
| superior in every way to people who disagree with her
|
| Da fuq? No, it's a statement of beliefs (which I share).
| None of it is meant to belittle those that disagree, it's
| simply stating a belief system.
|
| As opposed to calling Democrats DemonRats and implying
| that they're all evil and are destroying America?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| "No human is illegal" are four well-chosen words that
| would be a meaningless truism _except_ in opposition to
| the construct of "illegal alien."
|
| If you thought "Science is Real" you might read something
| like
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/03/how-
| migration-...
|
| and understand that the discourse of politically oriented
| folks about immigration is not at all evidence based.
| Tacking one cause to another cause tends to work terribly
| for progressive causes
|
| The best critique of "Science is Real" is the Habermas
| classic
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book)
|
| which points out a failure mode of our civilization in
| terms of reconciling expert knowledge, popular
| participation, and reality which remains unanswered.
| drewbeck wrote:
| It sounds like you think that any statement of values
| expresses superiority. Is that correct?
|
| Also, this is something you made up, not something
| anybody on the left has expressed, and especially not
| represented by that sign: "Advocating that 99.4% percent
| of people should just shut up and give 0.6% of people
| what they want is what I expect out of Peter Thiel, not
| the left."
| patcon wrote:
| > not something anybody on the left has expressed
|
| I very much agree with your larger point, but let's be
| real: Some do. There is a very small and vocal minority
| fascist-ish left, but this sign is in no way
| representative of it.
| CalChris wrote:
| Houle said _the left_. He didn't say _small and very
| vocal minority_.
| keybored wrote:
| Source: let's be real.
| CalChris wrote:
| Pre-2016, I might have agreed with you. We shouldn't be
| so strident. We should be more accepting. Today, yeah,
| fuck that. You take your +0.05 R and you reconsider your
| position. I'm fine with mine.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > You can find people on Mastodon and Bluesky say the
| most terrible things about the 70% of people who have
| concerns about transgender athletes in women's sports.
|
| I think if this was just an isolated position or opinion
| it'd be easier to have some charity and understanding.
| That doesn't seem to be the case.
|
| A good example of this is the international chess
| federation banning trans women from women's competition.
| [1] What advantage does higher testosterone offer for
| someone playing chess? That's where these concerns seem
| to be more "I just don't want to accommodate trans women"
| and less "I'm concerned about an unfair advantage".
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/08/18/1194593562/chess-
| transgender-...
| bobalob wrote:
| Chess is male-dominated from childhood onwards, and the
| women who do play are highly outnumbered by men. So
| women-only chess clubs and tournaments are a way to try
| to redress the balance by encouraging women and girls to
| play.
|
| How does it benefit women to allow men who say they have
| womanly feelings into such spaces? It doesn't - and
| that's why they are excluded, along with all other men.
| tzs wrote:
| They are also penalizing trans men. How is that
| justified?
| bobalob wrote:
| Women's chess is a protected category. On that basis,
| FIDE are stating that women who don't want to be women
| can opt out of that category if they so wish, but men who
| say they are women cannot opt into it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| They are talking about someone born with a vagina that
| identified as a man (a trans man) being banned from men's
| competitions.
|
| Are you suggesting that men's competitions are protected?
| dTal wrote:
| I see what you're saying but the issues matter, as well
| as the delivery.
|
| None of the slogans in that sign should be remotely
| controversial. Where exactly is the "complex issue"?
| "Water is life"? "Science is real"? This sign is
| statement that some issues warrant absolutism - a line in
| the sand regarding fundamental values. Such a line is an
| unavoidable feature of any moral framework. The specific
| values in question are what count.
|
| The real moral fight is "you should care about others" vs
| "fuck you I got mine", and this is what distinguishes
| left from right, rather than propensity to nuance.
|
| I upvoted you because I think your comment, while wrong,
| contributes to the discussion.
| gsf_emergency wrote:
| How about 2 5-word signs?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%
| 2F7...
|
| In "reality", the tradeoffs aren't so stark.. (e.g.
| procrastination & distractions whilst on the path of
| "wisdom" are worth ~50 miles)
|
| (Got that meme from other upforum sophists)
|
| (Plus a sizable cohort of the lawnowners have an
| unshakeable faith in the dominance of their sense of
| humor over "reality" )
|
| The political situation in the Americas, is imho, "just"
| the Monroe Doctrine reaping it's mimetic oats: US WASPs
| making their ancestral values the fount of honor in W
| Hemi => LatAm its political arrangements viable in the US
| via guerilla psyops (pop culture, Catholicism, etc etc).
|
| Caricature: Bezos vs Thiel (note the swap of cultural
| affiliations)
| owlninja wrote:
| I think you mean 2021 by the way.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Good catch! I fixed it.
| dhosek wrote:
| He may not have advocated for genocide, but he did a lot to
| create a polarized political environment where anyone to his
| left was at best ridiculed and more often demonized. His
| general rhetorical strategy was to find some extreme example
| of something on the left, exaggerate it and then attribute
| his distorted version to everyone to his left. It made him a
| lot of money and led the way to Fox News which took it to
| even greater extremes.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > I tuned in deliberately on Jan 7, 2021, just a few days
| before Rush passed away, and found he was shocked and aghast
| at what had happened to the day before... but did not draw
| the connection to how the culture he created contributed to
| it.
|
| That's kind of his thing. He's complained about drug addicts
| and perverts, but yet he was a prescription junkie, and also
| got caught flying to the Dominican Republic with a bunch of
| Viagra and condoms in his suitcase.
|
| Even if he was acutely aware of the connection between his
| rhetoric and Jan. 6 events, it would probably bother him not
| at all and he'd refuse to acknowledge it unless forced to
| face it (like with his drug woes).
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > I'd never accuse him of advocating genocide
|
| I heard he celebrated AIDS deaths on air, which is disgusting
| behavior
| evan_ wrote:
| Yes he had a recurring segment where he read obituaries of
| gay men who'd died of AIDS in a mock-sappy voice set to
| disco music.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I don't understand how anyone can listen to that and come
| out with clear conscience. "Yes, this is someone I want
| to listen to."
| cogman10 wrote:
| Oh, I can explain it pretty easily.
|
| I listened to rush a fair bit. It started because he was
| my father's favorite broadcaster when I was a child and
| it continued on into my early 20s.
|
| One thing that rush did in an excellent way was making
| you feel like you were smart, special, and inherently in
| the right by listening to him and supporting him. It was
| much like listening to a preacher if you have any sort of
| religious upbringing (which I did).
|
| And while rush did primarily work at demonizing people,
| he often demonized "the right people". Primarily
| democrats. He also knew his audience well and did a great
| job of hyping the "us v them" notions. He knew a lot of
| his audience was rural, for example, so he'd spend a good
| amount of time talking about how much more wise country
| folk and truck drivers were vs people that live and work
| in the cities. He had an answer for why things were bad,
| it's the unions, feminists, democrats, muslims, big
| government, clinton, obama, socialists, communists, etc.
| He could always give a reason why something was bad and
| would expressly tell his audience "You don't need to look
| into this, because listening to me will make you smarter
| than any college professor". He trained his audience to
| explicitly trust him.
|
| And, frankly, he could be both funny and entertaining to
| listen to. He'd take in calls and had a good delay that
| allowed him to only air the dumbest liberals on the
| planet. He was further not afraid of simply hanging up on
| them and calling them morons if they ever started to get
| the upper hand in a conversation.
|
| It also helped that in terms of broadcasting, he was
| infinitely accessible. I, in rural idaho, had really easy
| access to him because radio stations carried him. AFAIK,
| the most left wing broadcast in idaho in my youth was
| NPR. Which, today I find laughable that I thought of it
| as "leftist".
| keybored wrote:
| > No, being against universal healthcare isn't the same thing
| as genocide and if you're interested in winning elections
| you'd be better off spraying random voters with pepper spray
| than talking this way.
|
| How popular is universal healthcare in America?
| krapp wrote:
| According to the latest poll data I was able to find on
| Google (from 2024), about 2/3rds of Americans support
| universal healthcare[0]. At the very least, one can
| confidently say a majority of Americans per capita support
| it.
|
| That said, the American political apparatus is designed
| such that the votes of rural conservatives (who tend to
| oppose it) count more than elsewhere, so that doesn't
| actually matter.
|
| [0]https://news.gallup.com/poll/654101/health-coverage-
| governme...
| CalChris wrote:
| > speedrun to civil war
|
| Well there was the OKC Federal Building bombing. Timothy
| McVeigh was a dedicated dittohead.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Indeed! Okie here, Rush, Newt and Rove absolutely destroyed
| the Republican party. With their lies and hatred of anyone
| not like them, they duped an entire generation.
| energy123 wrote:
| What many in the US don't have conceptual familiarity with is
| pre-genocidal speech. Historically and empirically, the actual
| call to violence only happens at the end of a long period of
| collectivizing dehumanization via media, when people are
| already pliable for it. In my view, those causal antecedents to
| genocide should be illegal due to their historically proven
| connection to genocide. This speech is more dangerous and leads
| to more dead bodies than other types of speech which are
| already illegal, like isolated calls to individual violence or
| libel.
| tehjoker wrote:
| You make some good points but the problem is these efforts
| are usually bankrolled by well connected right wingers, so
| the state will not enforce the law unless there has
| effectively been a socialist revolution that deprives the
| right of power and money almost completely.
| api wrote:
| ... because nominally socialist movements have never
| committed genocide? Go read Gulag Archipelago or listen to
| the recent Behind the Bastards podcast on Pol Pot.
|
| It seems to be something humans do, a kind of tribal
| warfare or "raiding" program deep in the brain stem that
| can be activated. Nobody has a monopoly on it. It seems
| possible to activate these behaviors with any pattern of
| rhetoric that dehumanizes a group of people and creates a
| powerful in group out group schism. That can be framed in
| any way -- right wing, left wing, anything.
| lazide wrote:
| When a group is worried the 'music is going to stop' and
| is trying to make sure they have a chair reserved, is
| when this typically happens.
|
| And frankly - it's deeply embedded in human nature
| because in a resource constrained environment, it's what
| works.
| api wrote:
| I used the term _raiding_ because this is what it's
| called in chimps, our closest genetic relatives. This is
| primate behavior.
|
| The proto-genocidal rhetoric you are hearing in the US
| right now is probably linked to fear that in the near
| future nobody below, say, the top 10% of the ability
| curve, will have a job. So close the borders and kick out
| "outsiders" and go after minorities. Chimp behavior.
|
| By that I don't mean to say these people are uniquely
| dumb. My point is that this is brain stem encoded
| behavior that can be triggered in all humans.
| lazide wrote:
| Well, and encoded that way because it works by many
| definitions of the word.
|
| And can you say they are for sure wrong?
| energy123 wrote:
| You could argue it's a maladaptation in a modern setting,
| now that many non-zero-sum games are available, and now
| that existential risks are a thing. It worked by many
| definitions of the word in ancestral environment which
| was very different to the modern environment. Our brains
| are now trying to apply those chimp heuristics in an
| environment that they're not designed for.
| api wrote:
| That's exactly what I would argue, and in addition to the
| X-risks (global thermonuclear war etc.) it's also a giant
| source of unnecessary human misery and massive waste of
| resources.
|
| In many cases the resources we spend hoarding and raiding
| and doing other chimp things could make us all 2X or more
| wealthier if we did not fight.
|
| Right now the US is spending billions of debt financed
| dollars to rid itself of people who want to become tax
| paying citizens because they have brown skin. A beyond
| human intelligence would look at this the way we look at
| ant mills.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill
|
| "Just quit circling." But I'm sure circling forever feels
| right and proper in the belly, or whatever the ant's
| equivalent of deep feelings of rightness feel like.
| lazide wrote:
| The issue is that once you're fighting someone with a
| zero-sum mindset, it's easy for the non-zero sum mindset
| to screw you.
| keybored wrote:
| Look over the comment you replied to and you'll see that
| they didn't say that socialist movements have never been
| violent. Is a socialist revolution not violent?
|
| Of course when people are confronted with the fact that
| the right-wing foment violence in order to protect their
| interests we're right back to quasi-psychology about
| original sin a la some Canadian called Bernt. "It's all
| the same man"
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I think socialist revolutions have killed more "out group"
| members than any political/religious movement in human
| history
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Debatable. Capitalism has a kill count of 100 million and
| shows no signs of slowing down. Death counts linked to
| capitalism and neoliberalism are cumulative, indirect,
| and often undercounted because they manifest as "normal"
| outcomes of policy: poverty, malnutrition, or ecological
| collapse. Capitalism and neoliberalism externalize death
| ie: they make it appear as an individual or national
| failure, not a systemic one.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Source? Liberalization since the 1970s (so called
| "neoliberalism") has lifted more people out of poverty
| than any economic system in human history. ~60% of all
| humans lived in extreme poverty in 1970, and less than
| 10% do today. This period coincided with the expansion of
| free trade, deregulation of markets, modernization of
| monetary policy, and, perhaps most notably, the downfall
| of communism. I'd say capitalism is a net positive
| compared to what we had before, and especially compared
| to the alternative
| tehjoker wrote:
| Most of the recent improvements have come from china
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You're shifting the frame. The original question was
| about cumulative deaths, direct or indirect, linked to
| systems like socialism or capitalism, not about which one
| produced more GDP growth. Pointing to poverty reduction
| doesn't erase the structural harms capitalism has caused
| or the millions who've died from preventable conditions
| under regimes that prioritized market logic over human
| need.
|
| You can't ethically "net out" human deaths with economic
| gains. That treats lives as statistical noise in a
| profit-loss spreadsheet. It's not just bad morality, it's
| bad history too.
| keybored wrote:
| The like-for-like comparison would be other political
| movements.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Historically, socialist governments such as the Soviet
| union or peoples Republic of China have behaved more
| similarly to religious movements than political
| movements. The cultural revolution has more in common
| with the Spanish inquisition than it does with the US
| labor movement.
| ryeats wrote:
| This is a good example of hate speech. You are dehumanizing
| people of the US saying they don't conceptual understand
| morality and can't decide for themselves what is morally
| wrong or right.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Oh my, do explain further!
| cjfd wrote:
| They can understand morality but have chosen not to. They
| can decide what is morally wrong and right and then have
| chosen wrong and have decided not to care about it.
| ryeats wrote:
| I was being ironic, because their is an actual honest
| disagreement about morality but not being able to talk
| about it because it's considered by a some to be hate
| speech doesn't make it go away.
|
| If flat earthers can't talk about a flat earth then no
| one will dissuade them of the notion.
| breppp wrote:
| good thing the good old belgians know how to spot a
| genocide in africa
| prosody wrote:
| When I read about the leak of the new Meta internal guidance
| for content moderation[1], my first thought was that the only
| things they banned were likely things that they understood to
| be pre-genocidal speech (eg comparisons of a group to
| vermin). Rules that seem kind of arbitrary to a modern
| western audience but which click in place if you look at
| propaganda that was issued during historical genocides.
|
| [1] https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-
| meta-...
| wat10000 wrote:
| I wouldn't even say it went differently, yet. So far it has
| only gone slower. A big chunk of the population now believes
| that "liberals" are Satan-worshipping baby killers thanks to
| decades of this propaganda.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > especially in the US on the AM bands.
|
| That sort of show is still alive and well in the US, it's just
| moved from AM to podcasts.
| Yeul wrote:
| What saved America for a very long time is the existence of
| blue states and red states. Neither side actually had to really
| live with eachother.
|
| This is the difference with Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The people
| you hate lived next door.
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| I'm not sure that's really the case. Most states have a
| pretty good mix of Democrats and Republicans.
| brewdad wrote:
| Yes. Even the solidly Blue or Red states tend to be 55-45
| in elections. A few extreme states might be 60-40. It
| really is more of an urban-rural divide with the suburbs
| deciding which way the state leans overall.
| rendall wrote:
| All States are various shades of purple.
| mindcandy wrote:
| I still remember from over 20 years ago I was sitting in the
| kitchen talking to my grandmother. She was smoking and had some
| Fox News talking head on in the background. Maybe Hannity?
|
| What I noticed what that there was a main story for the hour
| long program. But, it was pretty dull. Meanwhile, the host kept
| randomly going off into short non-sequitur diatribes. All of
| the non-sequiturs were depressing. They were about random stuff
| that made you feel just awful. Then he'd pop back to dull main
| story like nothing happened.
|
| I realized the non-sequiturs were all designed to make you feel
| hate, fear and disgust towards liberals. The main story was
| just filler. The real product was a steady stream of emotional
| hits of hate, fear and disgust. Over and over forever. Just
| like puffing on her cigarettes.
|
| That was decades ago. The hate, fear and disgust pipeline has
| refined a lot since then.
|
| Decades later, the news got my father so deeply filled with
| hate, fear and disgust that he would randomly launch into
| hateful diatribes about the libs unprompted. It got bad enough
| that the kids had to tell Mom we weren't visiting until he got
| it under control. He wasn't like that at all until he retired
| and had more time to watch TV.
| beloch wrote:
| It's moved beyond radio now too.
|
| e.g. The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar was fuelled by Facebook's
| engagement algorithms[1].
|
| In Rwanda, they had to create radio stations. Today, all you
| have to do is generate clicks for Meta.
|
| [1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| Ah yes, the evil facebook, not at all caused by their
| terrorist activity.
| dash2 wrote:
| I think it's a shame, but revealing, that the most responded-to
| post about this topic brings everything back to US domestic
| politics.
| rendall wrote:
| Why shame? Most readers of HN are from the US. It's good that
| everyone discuss these lessons in relation to their own
| nations.
| keybored wrote:
| In a predictable turn of events American website makes topic
| about America.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I do not believe for a second that the fact it went different
| in the US wasn't for lack of trying. The trying hasn't even
| stopped.
|
| What statements did Rush Limbaugh make that could be construed
| as instigating a genocide?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| One thing that seems underdiscussed to me is that oral culture
| compared to literary culture seems to have a strong impact on
| dissemination of hate or mass messaging. My pet theory is that
| the resurgence of the medium, that so much content is now again
| visual and audio dominated compared to textual, is responsible
| for a good amount of the increase in hate in recent years.
|
| There's a one-to-many and sort of fuzzy, conspiratorial and
| hearsay nature to radio, podcasting, preaching, that you don't
| have in a literary context. It's the ease of transmission and
| ephemerality of it that enables so much uncritical engagement.
| analog31 wrote:
| One thing about the radio is that it can be on while you're
| doing other things, if those things don't require much
| concentration.
| bloak wrote:
| That's an interesting theory, but isn't it a different set of
| people consuming the audiovisual material? So, roughly
| speaking, in the past, an educated minority read The Times,
| while most of the population took no interest in politics and
| foreign affairs. Nowadays public opinion matters so various
| powers (often foreign powers not controlled by the local
| establishment) generate material designed to influence the
| general population, which isn't exactly literate, as you'll
| know if you've ever had to do jury service. Meanwhile, the
| educated minority continues to read The Economist or whatever
| (The Times is rubbish nowadays).
| cogman10 wrote:
| > while most of the population took no interest in politics
| and foreign affairs
|
| Perhaps not foreign affairs so much, but I'd argue in the
| past politics was keenly important to a large percentage of
| the population in the past. Particularly local politics.
|
| The reason for that was simple, politics was a form of
| entertainment and local politics was both fun to talk and
| gossip about, more so than national politics.
|
| What I believe has changed is the internet and broadcasting
| in general has changed what's entertaining. People care less
| about the issues and more about the presenter. National
| broadcasting selected for the most entertaining presenters
| which have the opportunity to bend political opinions to
| their own. The internet has opened up access to presenters
| which has done the same thing as national broadcasting but
| allows for even more extreme positions. Interest in local
| politics died for pretty much the same reason why local
| theater is dead. It's simply not as entertaining as a large
| budget production (generally). Sure, someone could probably
| make local politics interesting, but that's inherently going
| to have a smaller audience draw. That's why national politics
| is easier to talk about.
|
| One other thing that's changed, though, is the options for
| presenters is now humongous. It's simply unlikely that you or
| your coworkers will have similar enough media diets to
| discuss at the water cooler. That's made everything a lot
| more private and isolated.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Marshall McLuhan thought that Adolf Hitler played really well
| on the radio but would not have played well on television,
| people would have seen his face turn red.
|
| It's hard to tease apart the differences between modalities. On
| Youtube today there are many "videos" that are good to play in
| the background, be it _Technology Connections_ , _Pod Save
| America_ , or Asmongold's show. Part of the experience of
| reading is that an individual can find things that are rare,
| obscure, that it doesn't have to be massy at all [1] -- in the
| past economics required television and radio to be massy but
| podcasts, in principle, are really cheap and could service
| obscure tastes. Another fraction is that reading itself is a
| filter: even in the core a lot of people like Asmongold are
| functionally illiterate, in a place like Rwanda you just can't
| reach most people through writing.
|
| [1] read https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Their-
| Impact-Med..., read https://www.amazon.com/Dispersing-
| Population-America-Learn-E...
| themgt wrote:
| Some related topics I find interesting to ponder in relation to
| the Rwandan genocide and more broadly:
|
| Accusation in a mirror:
|
| _Accusation in a mirror is a false claim that accuses the target
| of something that the perpetrator is doing or intends to do. The
| name was used by an anonymous Rwandan propagandist in Note
| Relative a la Propagande d 'Expansion et de Recrutement ... he
| instructed colleagues to "impute to enemies exactly what they and
| their own party are planning to do". By invoking collective self-
| defense, propaganda is used to justify genocide, just as self-
| defense is a defense for individual homicide. Susan Benesch
| remarked that while dehumanization "makes genocide seem
| acceptable", accusation in a mirror makes it seem necessary._
|
| Double-genocide or at least mass war crimes against Hutu by the
| RPF:
|
| _Estimates of Hutu deaths from mass violence in the 1990s are
| much less precise than Tutsi death figures from the Rwandan
| genocide due to the greater timescale and geographic spread of
| the killings. Researcher Alison Des Forges estimated that the RPF
| killed 60,000 people in war crimes in 1994 and 1995. Historian
| Gerard Prunier estimated that 100,000 Hutu were killed by the RPF
| in 1994-1995. Historian Roland Tissot argued that there were
| around 400,000 Hutus killed by the RPF between 1994 and 1998
| (excluding disease and excess mortality), while Omar Shahabudin
| McDoom estimated several hundred thousand Hutu victims during the
| 1990s. Demographer Marijke Verpoorten guesstimates 542,000 deaths
| of Rwandan Hutus (about 7.5 percent of the population), with "a
| very large uncertainty interval", from war-related causes in the
| 1990s, including battle deaths and excess mortality from poor
| conditions in refugee camps._
|
| Kagame, the leader of the RPF, has also had an ... interesting
| tenure as president, in power 25 years and most recently winning
| 99% of the vote:
|
| _The highest-profile opposition figure for the 2017 election was
| local businesswoman Diane Rwigara. Although she acknowledged that
| "much has improved under Kagame", Rwigara was also critical of
| Kagame's government, saying that "people disappear, others get
| killed in unexplained circumstances and nobody speaks about this
| because of fear". Like Ingabire in 2010, Rwigara was barred from
| running in the election._
|
| _Throughout Kagame 's tenure as vice president and president, he
| has been linked with murders and disappearances of political
| opponents, both in Rwanda and abroad. In a 2014 report titled
| "Repression Across Borders", Human Rights Watch documents at
| least 10 cases involving attacks or threats against critics
| outside Rwanda since the late 1990s, citing their criticism of
| the Rwandan government, the RPF or Kagame_
|
| My general impression is that Rwanda has been compressed down to
| a simplistic morality play when the reality seems a lot more
| complex and in many ways more unsettling.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory_(Rwanda...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Blood#Death_toll
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame#Assassinations
| msgodel wrote:
| I think the reality is groups of people that different just
| can't peacefully share a state.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Finally an opinion about emacs users I can get behind! /s
| brazzy wrote:
| What exactly do you mean with "that different"?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Did you read what the difference are?
|
| There aren't any.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I find the whole premise for the situation mind-boggling. Tutsi
| and Hutu were basically just categories for "someone who has
| cattle" and "someone who does not have cattle". One could
| become the other quite readily.
|
| Then the Belgians came along, measured skulls, pronounced the
| Tutsis a separate (and superior) race, and the rest is...
| absolutely idiotic history.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Tutsi and Hutu were basically just categories for "someone
| who has cattle" and "someone who does not have cattle". One
| could become the other quite readily.
|
| But none of that is true.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-
| genocides/r...
|
| https://www.rwandanstories.org/origins/hutu_and_tutsi.html
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Maybe you should use sources that are more concerned with
| facts?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20111223184823/https://blogs.
| dis...
|
| https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/hutus-and-tutsis-and-
| geneti...
| lostlogin wrote:
| It sounds like that became true, but wasn't until quite
| recently.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It was never true, not in the distant past, not recently,
| not now.
| volleyball wrote:
| Major, minor or imagined differences between populations
| being exacerbated causing them to turn against each other
| wasn't a byproduct of some poorly conceived policy. It was
| the whole point and was (and continues to be) a keystone to
| colonial power over faraway lands.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| https://vimeo.com/107867605
| gopher_space wrote:
| > My general impression is that Rwanda has been compressed down
| to a simplistic morality play when the reality seems a lot more
| complex and in many ways more unsettling.
|
| Visiting the Genocide Memorial in Rwanda compresses the event
| into a simple morality play by displaying a wall of personal
| pictures of the dead. Snapshots of random people at a happy
| moment in time, but they're all violently dead now for
| absolutely no reason.
| childintime wrote:
| > Accusation in a mirror
|
| Really nice description of the Trump era, where accusations fly
| at the strawman in the mirror, prioritizing psychological
| reality over facts, (let's continue the tangent here) accepting
| to speak in a woke echo chamber, as a victim, while secretly
| being an ultradem in need of love, and having found a way of
| just taking it, like a man standing in the tradition where he
| culturally submits the woman because he can. Not love, just
| satisfaction of self-assertion, at the expense of the woman.
| She exists to make a man feel good. The Taco Man creates the
| banana republic in his own image. Muscle brain, a dick. A
| reversal of civilization.
|
| But the accusations in the mirror also happen to precede
| violence. The fire only needs oxygen. The Taco Wars. F*ck.
| lazyeye wrote:
| What?
| ge96 wrote:
| Son Reebok o son Nike Ah serai serai!
|
| (Rhythm of the night plays)
| zahlman wrote:
| > David Rawson, the US ambassador, said that its euphemisms were
| open to interpretation. The US, he said, believed in freedom of
| speech.
|
| This is tossed in as if to imply that shutting down the radio
| station would have saved lives and that the US was therefore
| complicit in those deaths.
|
| I am never swayed by arguments like this. A culture that produces
| that kind of hatred will not be stopped by losing a channel to
| express it. Word of mouth spreads quickly, and actions speak even
| louder.
|
| Not to mention, per the sidebar, the radio hosts were already
| disguising their meaning in places despite not experiencing a
| threat of censorship. "Talking in code" for something that has
| already become socially acceptable, has its own social purposes -
| it allows for the hateful to bond over their hatred more strongly
| than if they were explicit, because the "shared language" is a
| strong signal of in-group belonging.
| exceptione wrote:
| > A culture that produces that kind of hatred will not be
| stopped by losing > a channel to express it. Word of
| mouth spreads quickly, > and actions speak even louder.
|
| Culture... is the thing that prevents the enacting of our
| bestial urges. This channel normalizes the bestiality, and so
| it becomes culture.
|
| Every society have some people without a mic that are blatantly
| inhuman. A society becomes it when you give them a mic.
| skrebbel wrote:
| What does it mean to "give them the mic"? I feel like your
| comment makes sense in the abstract but when it gets more
| concrete it gets a lot fussy. Do you mean disallowing people
| who make nasty radio broadcasts? Jailing people who send
| nasty tweets to all their 10 followers?
|
| Most people aren't "given the mic" by some benevolent all-
| powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Prior to the eighties, if you put out something
| sufficiently noxious or unbalanced on broadcast media, you
| could have the FCC come visit you and threaten to revoke
| your broadcast license. The broadcast license was required
| to be used in the public interest.
|
| Then the 80s came and you had cable TV which didn't require
| a broadcast license, you had video tape, and you had the
| repeal of the fairness doctrine.
|
| Prior to all that the only way you'd get your weird message
| out was through print, which reqires someone to pay for the
| printing and distribution, so it's slower and more limited,
| and print doesn't have the same emotional punch of TV or
| radio.
|
| Obviously the Internet has turbocharged this transition. If
| it were the 80s someone like Andrew Tate would have a very
| hard time getting an audience. He'd have to use print, and
| probably a lot of his material would be age restricted. The
| closest analogue I can think of is Hugh Hefner, and to read
| his stuff you had to be over 18, although obviously a lot
| of boys got their hands on a Playboy or two.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| enforcing this would require building a panopticon world
| of brains in jars. no thank you. ill hold individuals
| responsible for their own actions and keep my freedom of
| speech thanks
| cameldrv wrote:
| Enforcing what? I'm describing what has changed.
| exceptione wrote:
| > by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a
| mic and use it.
|
| You are a bit optimistic. It is way worse. What happens is:
| your media mogul more often than not lives in an
| environment where people's belief systems and preferences
| vary from oligarchy, tech-fascism, corporatism, cultism,
| gilded-age etc. I.e. the cult of wealth problem. Then that
| media mogul buys a platform, and installs a certain kind of
| people. Double profit: more engagement, belief systems of
| regular people getting anti-social. The fear, hate and
| disgust for their compatriots make way for sado-populism.
| Regular, normal people are getting so mindfucked that
| instead of seeking the common good they they give autocracy
| consent to purify society from their imaginative enemies.
| > Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio
| broadcasts?
|
| Yes, the paradox of tolerance is a _paradox_. The only way
| to keep a tolerant society is to not tolerate the
| intolerants.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| no it doesnt. you could blast "kill your own baby" on radio
| but 99% of people wouldnt do it. and if they did its their
| own fault.
|
| you either respect the sovereignty of an individual and they
| are responsible for their actions, or not and if you dont
| then follow that to its logical conclusion. which would be
| that all people are not responsible for anything ever,
| because even the broadcaster was told to by his own life and
| culture, and so on and so forth until your litigating the
| first living goo on the planet.
| exceptione wrote:
| > "kill your own baby"
|
| We are talking about instigating intolerance, with material
| consequences. Think genocides, like in the OP and Germany
| in the 30's. > you either respect the
| sovereignty of an individual and > they are
| responsible for their actions,
|
| Paradox of Tolerance. [0]
|
| An individual lives in a society. Waiting for some other
| country to sacrifice their 18 years old to clean up your
| mess because you insisted that you couldn't possibly know
| what happens when you normalize intolerance is not so nice.
| And maybe there is no country who could possibly help your
| compatriots to get rid of their autocrats, so be careful if
| you try.
|
| ____
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I agree that simply stopping one propaganda outlet would have
| been insufficient to stem the tide of violence.
|
| I disagree with blaming the genocide on "culture". It seems
| clear that this event like many others came from a nexus of
| interests, money, ideology and, sure, culture.
|
| And btw, if you blame massacres on culture, you have a whole
| lot of cultures you can blame, given the history of mass murder
| and genocide around the world.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| My experience is that it is _always_ important to criticize
| free speech absolutism, especially when people behave as if it
| were an atemporal concept. In reality, most of the world for
| most of the time has had various compromises between protecting
| individuals and society on one hand and free speech on the
| other.
|
| That said, I think your take is also empirically supported.
| There is this [1] very interesting study which comes to the
| same conclusion. It uses broadcast range of radio towers to do
| a quantitative analysis on the potential effects and finds few.
| Interestingly enough, I have seen other studies with similar
| designs that _do_ show persistent effects of exposure to
| broadcasts, so I'm favorable to the idea that this one really
| is a valid null finding.
|
| [1] https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20100423-atrauss-rtlm-radio-
| hat...
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| most of the world for most of time had slavery. that doesnt
| mean we should have slavery now. your whole first paragraph
| is bunk.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > A culture that produces that kind of hatred
|
| According to other pages on this same site, the primary
| motivation for the people behind RTLM (rich powerful people,
| incl the presidential family) to spread said hate, was fears
| that Tutsis would sabotage their own country in support of the
| invading RPF.
|
| This is the _exact_ same fear that made Americans put their
| Japanese-American countrymen into concentration camps during
| WWII. So to me, either you 're saying that Rwandan culture in
| the early 90s was pretty much the same as US culture in the
| 1940s, or something else than culture is to blame.
|
| Obviously the Japanese-Americans weren't mass-murdered, so it's
| not a fair comparison, but I'm not immediately convinced things
| would've been super mega different if the Japanese army had
| already conquered the entire US west coast and was quickly
| moving eastward. People would be very afraid.
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