Tags
genocide, language psychology, linguistic reflection, malignant narcissism, narcissism, propaganda, rhetoric
“One of the most astonishing discoveries in the history of genocide studies was the Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement (the “Note”), a mimeographed document found in Butare prefecture in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. The Note, which draws from Goebbels, Lenin, and others, is a manual of the rhetorical methods that could be used to inflame ordinary people to attack their countrymen.”
In practice, the technique has become visible and easy to spot in peace / hate-peace group chatyping.
As awful as the consequences intended by “Accusation in a Mirror” (AiM) may be, the technique fits well with other forms of disingenuous speech, hate speech, and sophistry. Put it one the same page as “blood libel” and common slander.
Motivation?
Somebody thinks they’re going to get something by way of the sheer beauty and force of their will.
Such lose their conscience, their humanity, their restraints, and while they and their people may pay for it, disingenuous speech, motivated, so I suspect, by the want of self-aggrandizement powered by hate, leads always to great suffering. When the practitioners are stopped in their tracks, related suffering abate, but it takes a while to understand this.
Related Reference
Truman Web Design. “Kangura magazine.” I believe I found this one the web at least as far back as 2006. The home page starts this way:
“Foreign invaders, plundering the rich earth of Rwanda. Bloodthirsty parasites, who prefer exploitation to honest labor. An elite minority, enjoying influence out of all proportion to their numbers—ferreting their way into the highest-paying jobs, monopolizing the banking system, the educational system, even the very government to ensure the soft life for themselves and their kin. Scheming, shrewd and crafty. Without scruples. Without conscience. Fearsome, loathsome, cunning as a cockroach. Intent on the destruction of every hard-working member of the native people to whom the country rightfully belongs. If they were in your country, wouldn’t you want to be warned? Wouldn’t you read the newspaper each morning,wouldn’t you keep all the radios on?”
The Truman Web Design-prefaced site (the subset is a “~” extended location) on the use of propaganda in the Rwandan Genocide also discusses, in addition to Kangura Magazine, RTLM Radio and media coverage of the event.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) maintains a similar report online: “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.” Similar sub-section: “Propaganda and Practice”.
Leets, Laura. “Experiencing Hate Speech: Perceptions and Responses to Anti-Semitism and Antigay Speech.” Journal of Social Issues, 58:2 (pp. 341-361), The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 2002. The abstract notes (this is a partial quotation), “A content analysis of the accounts produced the following patterns: (a) short- and long-term consequences mirrored a three-stage sequence found within other traumatic experiences; (b) respondents described motives as enduring, not situational, states; (c) the most common response strategies were passive; and (d) participants often sought support. The discussion focuses on implications for interventions that may mitigate negative consequences of hate speech.”
Tammy Swofford said:
When Immaculee Ilibagizi released her first book in 2006 she spoke in the Dallas area . I joined a group of friends for a first-person account of the tragedy. As a Tutsi, she shared that for months in advance of the massacre radio stations maintained a steady beat of calling the Tutsi “cockroaches” in need of eradication. The Tutsi were uneasy but could not imagine what awaited them when the programming blossomed to bring men with machetes into the streets.
Hatred is no less a discipline than other valid scientific endeavors, with the exception that this psychological discipline is to the detriment of mankind.
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commart said:
Psychology would be the discipline, Tammy, and hatred the the object of interest. In any case, educated + fragile, narcissistic, and cruel (the formula for tyrants, imho) bodes ill for everyone around them. Those swimming in illiteracy, dependent on their ears for knowledge about the world, and comparatively less sophisticated seem easily to become the instruments of better equipped men, usually, whose ambitions and interests in power serve their own aggrandizement. –Jim
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