I am captivated by Philip Gourevitch's book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda -- to the point that it's difficult for me to pick up any other book in the meanwhile (unusual for me). It is at the point where I'll ramble on and on about the book, and I'm itching to read aloud to anyone who will listen. And so, dear reader, I am inclined to share the text with you too:
Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building. A vigorous totalitarian order requires that the people be invested in the leaders' scheme, and while genocide may be the most perverse and ambitious means to this end, it is also the most comprehensive. In 1994, Rwanda was regarded in much of the rest of the world as the exemplary instance of the chaos and anarchy associated with collapsed states. In fact, the genocide was the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and one of the most meticulously administered states in history. And strange as it may sound, the ideology--or what Rwandans call "the logic"--of genocide was promoted as a way not to create suffering but to alleviate it. The specter of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual -- always an annoyance to totality -- ceases to exist.
The mass of participants in the practice massacres of the early 1990s may have taken little pleasure in obediently murdering their neighbors. Still, few refused, and assertive resistance was extremely rare. Killing Tutsis was a political tradition in postcolonial Rwanda; it brought people together.
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