An op-ed in the NYT:
After Genocide, Stifled Dissent
By TIMOTHY P. LONGMAN
WHEN Paul Kagame led Rwandan rebel forces to victory in 1994, he was praised not only for halting a genocide that had killed half a million people, but also for advocating reconciliation rather than revenge. After he became president in 2000, he was acclaimed as a democratic visionary. ...
Kagame, a Tutsi, also indirectly caused the genocide by invading Rwanda with his army of Tutsis in exile, with the assistance of Uganda. The genocide was rather like guillotine terror in Revolutionary Paris in 1793 as France was invaded by monarchical powers: Hutu hysteria caused by the imminence of Kagame's conquest of Rwanda. Kagame also successfully opposed foreign intervention to stop the genocide because he feared it would lead to the West putting a moderate member of the Hutu majority in power. After all, the point of all those years of war was not democracy but to put the Tutsi aristocrats back in their rightful place on top of the Hutu masses in Rwanda, just as they've always been in neighboring Burundi.
But a shadow hangs over Mr. Kagame’s Rwanda, in the form of persistent concern about intimidation of the political opposition....
This week, a court in the capital, Kigali, postponed — for the third time — a verdict in the trial of the opposition leader Victoire Ingabire. ...
Ms. Ingabire, who had lived outside the country since before the genocide and is a member of the Hutu majority, stirred immediate controversy when she returned in 2010 and spoke openly about ethnic politics — a taboo subject since the genocide. She was blocked from running for president. Several weeks after the election, which Mr. Kagame won with 93 percent of the vote, she was arrested for violating a 2008 law that prohibits “genocide ideology.” Ms. Ingabire had suggested that innocent majority Hutus who died during the genocide deserved to be mourned alongside the minority Tutsis who were massacred by Hutu militias. She has said her goal was reconciliation, not historical revisionism. ...
Mr. Kagame’s resounding victory did not lessen his government’s distaste for criticism. Early last year, two journalists were sentenced to prison for insulting the president and violating the law against “genocide ideology.” ...
Many outsiders find it hard to understand why Mr. Kagame would allow such human rights abuses, when Rwanda needs international support to meet the challenges of overpopulation and a paucity of natural resources. Mr. Kagame has advocated high-tech investment and promoted education in English instead of French. International investment has risen, and transparency has improved. Visitors to Kigali are invariably impressed by the government officials and businessmen they encounter. Most of these Rwandans, like Mr. Kagame, are repatriated refugees from the ethnic Tutsi minority who returned after the genocide.
Some outsiders, mindful of the intense trauma Rwandans suffered 18 years ago, are willing to tolerate the crackdown on dissent as long as economic growth and the appearance of social calm continue.
Well, yeah, it's only been 18 years. After all, the Tutsi exiles from Rwanda in Uganda plotted their return to power for a third of a century, and they succeeded. President Kagame went into exile as a two year old in 1960 when Rwanda decolonized, and he started his invasion of his homeland in 1990.
But that is a mistake. It is time to worry instead that Mr. Kagame is rebuilding the country with authoritarian practices that could ultimately undermine Rwanda’s economic achievements.
His intolerance of dissent stifles the debate and free thought Rwanda needs if it is to become a modern, technologically advanced economy. The coercive nature of his government’s national unity program could someday drag it back into ethnic conflict.
The government says it wants to create a new identity in which all would see themselves as Rwandans, neither Hutu nor Tutsi. But this strikes many Rwandans as an effort to impose a false unity on them while cynically using the threat of renewed violence to strengthen the government’s position.
An inability to speak openly about ethnic feelings allows ethnic resentments to fester as whispers. Many Hutus privately complain not only that Tutsis monopolize the government but that Tutsis are the sole beneficiaries of Rwanda’s growth.
In contrast, in the U.S., where to-encourage-the-others events like the firing of ESPN football pundit Gregg Easterbrook and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez for saying that Jews are not an oppressed minority in the media business, are carried out without any need for law, nor even any public controversy. Ultimately, this censorship and stifling are justified on the grounds of a genocide not 18 years ago, but 67 years ago, and one not in the U.S. at all, but in a country the U.S. was attempting to bomb flat. So, you've got to say, at least relative to what happens in the U.S., that Kagame has a case.
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51 comments:
Keep the good work Steve, you have the best blog out there.
To be sure, Sancho and Easter were fired by private sector...
But then, US government bans certain creeds and blacklists certain voices.
1/ Pat Buchanan said a lot more, a lot more times, in a lot more media, and even after that got about 10 years at CNN and then another 10 at MSNBC.
That's quite a few years for someone who's 'dissents' have been 'stifled'.
And yes he was recently fired but (see 2)
2/ Fortunately this is the 21st not the 20th century, and if you're forced off the air for whatever reason there are now alternatives, that is if you can get an audience (See Beck, Glenn).
If you can't...
"Mr. Kagame has advocated high-tech investment and promoted education in English instead of French."
How about we start a charity to give free French language textbooks to schools in Rwanda?
Several weeks after the election, which Mr. Kagame won with 93 percent of the vote
Doesn't it seem odd that a member of the Tutsi minority would win such a large percentage of the vote? Are Hutus allowed to vote in Rwanda? Or it this just another African nation with a corrupt electoral system?
Kagame does seem to be perhaps the best leader in sub-Saharan Africa. Rwanda really lucked out with him coming out on top. Acemoglu & Robinson's "Why Nations Fail" blog has a cool picture of the stark border between Rwanda & the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with an historical explanation of why Rwanda has a competent state. I was unaware that Rwanda was thought to be particularly well run until relatively recently, so I'm more willing to credit Kagame rather than the circa 1700 Rwandan state.
Wait, Gregg Easterbrook was purged?
OK, this just got real.
Political pundits sort of have it coming, because of the line of work they're in. When they get purged for ripping The Community, it's sort of like a vegetarian waiter getting fired for wearing a "meat is murder" pin with their uniform. Right or wrong, pissing off one's customers is risky.
But Football's customer is me. And Gregg "Dr. Saturday" Easterbrook was it's most talented explicator. If he's not safe, then who is?
This is a nice pendant to the article posted right before it. Difference in empire or sameness in nationalism. Except for a few people such as Alain de Benoist, most on the far right ignore nationalism's drive to crush true cultural diversity and to obliterate traditional cultures within the "nation." A typical case is white nationalists who want White People to find their roots in Norse legends. And we can guess whose ethnie this unified "Rwandan" identity is going to reflect.
Perfect post. My poor self is finally sending you a few bucks. You deserve it.
Kagame is the best leader in sub-Saharan Africa by far, and what he's done with Rwanda post-genocide is nothing short of miraculous. His role model isn't Mandela but Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew, so don't expect him to listen to the usual chorus of Western do-gooders.
OT: check out Rupert Murdoch twitter comments on Romney being too hard on immigrants. This vicious globalist media tycoon is very upset that his adopted country's borders aren't open wide enough.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will062112.php3
will on beach boys
"His role model isn't Mandela but Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew"
Interesting, because Lee and Singapore came to mind when reading Steve's second excerpt of Longman's op/ed. Lee discouraged "speak[ing] openly about ethnic [and religious] feelings" from the beginning in Singapore, and that didn't prevent Singapore from becoming "a modern, technologically advanced economy".
Let's be honest Steve, this is beneath you and pandering to anti-Jewish hate. Rick Sanchez was fired for calling Jon Stewart a bigot and claiming that CNN and all the other networks are run by Jewish people. Funny, I don't recall Rupert Murdoch being Jewish. Nor Bob Iger. Nor Jeffrey Immelt.
"The conversation began with Sanchez decrying "elite, Northeast establishment liberals" who "deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.
"I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart's a bigot," he said. "I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I'm so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine."
When asked who Stewart is bigoted against, Sanchez said "everybody else who's not like him."
Source: Huffington Post.
He also made, anti White remarks playing the Latino Card:
It's not just the right that does this. 'Cause I've known a lot of elite, Northeast establishment liberals that may not use this as a business model, but deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they look at a ... they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier ... White folks usually don't see it, but we do, those of us who are minorities ... Here, I'll give you my example, it's this, 'You know what, I don't want you anchoring anymore. I really don't see you as an anchor, I see you more as a reporter. I see you more as a John Quiñones.' You know, the guy on ABC. That's what he told me, he told me he saw me as John Quiñones. Now, did he not realize that he was telling me, 'when I see you I think of Hispanic reporters?' 'Cause in his mind, I can't be an anchor, an anchor's what you give the high profile white guys.
The guy also called Obama "a cotton picking President" and attributed that falsely to Rush Limbaugh for which he was forced to apologized. The guy grew up in Hileah and went to U Minn on a football and then CBS scholarship. Ironically he's as middle class as Stewart. He was also in a drunk driving accident in 1990, and there was speculation that when Klein who was a backer of his (ironically) was forced out he was already a goner.
Sanchez had been picking a fight with Stewart who had been mocking him as clueless for weeks. He was also angry Olberman style over being replaced by the Parker-Spitzer show, aka Client #9.
Al Sharpton has said far worse things about Jews (well every day). He did not get fired -- he's got his own MSNBC show, and is a frequent guest on Fox.
That's also a bad take on Paul Kagame and the RPF. They did not "cause" the genocide, which was awful, in three months about the same body count as Auschwitz over 3.5 years. But mostly with rocks and machetes. About 800k to 1 million total.
Periodic mini-genocides had been done for decades, whipped up by the French who egged on existing hatred by the Hutu of the more successful Tutsi. The Tutsi like Kagame fled, because they did not want to get killed. Any White fleeing Detroit, or Birmingham, or Baltimore, can understand. As can Serbs from Kosovo, Afrikaaners from South Africa, Armenians from Turkey, Chaldeans from Iraq, Baluchis from Iran and Pakistan, or Hazaras from Afghanistan.
The 1994 Genocide was senseless, half Hutu/Tutsis, infants, old people, women, children, "moderate" Hutu, all killed in a frenzy egged on by the Interamhamwe on the radio supplied by the French who sought to erase Anglophone Central Africa and feared Tutsi control and alliance with Anglophone Uganda. Instead of fighting the RPF coming from Uganda, the Interamhamwe spent their entire time massacring old women, children, and infants.
Nor did Kagame dissaude Western involvement (despite what lies Clinton is peddling to rehab his image). No one after Mogadishu wanted to pay the political price which was dead US soldiers and dead Africans. The fiasco did expose the utter futility of "soft power" when it comes to stopping violence. About as useful as a butter knife on D-Day. France actively supported the Interamhamwe and relations between Kigali and Paris are still tense, with Rwanda charging that France is harboring war criminals and engaged in systematic corruption (likely true) with the prior Hutu regime.
Long before Kagame and the RPF ever existed, Hutus were killing Tutsis. As such defacto Tutsi dominance and a great pretending is probably the best solution to be found. The government is competent by African standards, reasonably efficient and not paralyzed by total corruption like the Congo, or Nigeria. If not the RPF and Kagame, who? A return to what was before?
Are you saying that the Tutsi are like Zionists?
Good for them.
"like guillotine terror in Revolutionary Paris in 1793 as France was invaded by monarchical powers": before he became something of a pantomime dame on the telly, Simon Schama was a fine historian. You should read his "Citizens", Mr iSteve, in which he recounts what happened in the French Revolution. One thing you'll learn was that the Ancien Regime powers were reacting to French aggression, not t'other way round.
whiskey said:
Long before Kagame and the RPF ever existed, Hutus were killing Tutsis. As such defacto Tutsi dominance and a great pretending is probably the best solution to be found...
ogunsiron :
While Hutus had been ruling Rwanda since the 1960s, Burundi was firmly in the hands of the Tutsis and while Hutus were killing Tutsis in Rwanda, Tutsis were butchering Hutus en masse in Burundi. Hutus had some pretty good historical reasons to hate the Tutsis, who had ruled with an iron fist over them for a few centuries. Moreover, the Hutus were there before the Tutsis, who only showed up around 600 or 700 years while the Hutus might have been there for 1000 years before. Their mutual hatred is understandable.
If Rwanda has any chance of moving forward though, it's with someone like Kagame at the helm.
If Kagame is truly inspired by the likes of Yew, he might even attempt to implement eugenics.
When people say that Rwanda has historically had a very strong state, they mean that even before colonization, the authorities had the population of the country under very tight control. Some say that the 1994 genocide could not have happened in any other black african country in such efficient manner.
Africa wins again!
Letting the former colonial powers deal with Africa makes as much sense as anything else; it certainly isn't in the US taxpayers interest to muck about there. As long as the mineral wealth keeps flowing, and it will totally independant of native drama, we should not get involved.
This is the best blog out there, Steve. The Jewish thing is a significant part of the landscape, and I'm glad you acknowledge it in a way that VDare and AmRen do not. But if you find yourself making a fetish out of it, seeing it everywhere, please step back and consider whether you've begun giving it more explanatory power than it actually has. It's an area where many incisive minds have lost their sense of proportion.
Let's be honest Steve, this is beneath you and pandering to anti-Jewish hate. Rick Sanchez was fired for calling Jon Stewart a bigot and claiming that CNN and all the other networks are run by Jewish people. Funny, I don't recall Rupert Murdoch being Jewish. Nor Bob Iger. Nor Jeffrey Immelt.
Right you are, Whisky. Bob Iger's father is Scottish and his mother is Irish. You forgot to mention him, but I'm pretty sure CNN president Ken Jautz too is "Scots-Irish", Jautz being one of the more prominent border septs, right up there with clans Moonves, Redstone, Zucker, and so on. And even the most extreme bigots would have a hard time claiming Jautz's predecessor at CNN, Jonathan MacKlein, is Jewish.
It is a fascinating subject: the psychology of political taboo. Nothing matters until there is AN EVENT, and then everything changes; and thither swings the pendulum until a counter event in the morality tale of History, and so it goes on.
Gilbert Pinfold.
Whiskey wrote:
"Funny, I don't recall Rupert Murdoch being Jewish. Nor Bob Iger."
The Wikipedia lists Robert Iger under the category "American Jews".
NYT Wedding announcement:
"Kristine Carlin Bay, a television correspondent known as Willow Bay, and Robert Allen Iger, the president and chief operating officer of Capital Cities/ABC, were married yesterday at a house rented for the occasion in Bridgehampton, L.I. Cantor William Walton officiated, with the Rev. Roland Ghirlando, a Roman Catholic priest."
One has to assume that the cantor was there because Iger is Jewish and that the priest was there because Willow Bay is Catholic.
Hah, lookit Whiskey reduced to pointing and sputtering that Steve dared name the ScotsIrish. Whats a matter? Cant find a way to spin this into another HBD/white wimmen did it post?
Kagame gets good press simply because he's a client of ours, irregardless of the fact of his being involved in massacres himself. That all gets glossed over. The press treatment of Rwanda is usually a two dimensional one of good guys vs bad guys type. Most people prefer a simplified moral narrative that's easy to digest and avoid thinking about the sorts of governments we are in bed with.
There is definitely an HBD aspect to the whole Rwanda mess that I've always found interesting. For years westerners commented on how the Tutsis were much taller than the Hutu. Indeed, the two groups appear to be genetically distinct. The Tutsis originated in the Southern Nile region, while the Hutu are of Central African/Congolese-type stock. And it's interesting that the Tutsis, while greatly outnumbered by the Hutus and having a good portion of their civilian population genocided, still managed to kick the crap out of the Hutus militarily. I'd be interested to see a comparison of Tutsi and Hutu IQ scores.
To be sure, Sancho and Easter were fired by private sector...
Best joke I'm likely to hear all day.
This is a nice pendant to the article posted right before it. Difference in empire or sameness in nationalism. Except for a few people such as Alain de Benoist, most on the far right ignore nationalism's drive to crush true cultural diversity and to obliterate traditional cultures within the "nation." A typical case is white nationalists who want White People to find their roots in Norse legends.
Yeah, wiseass. Of course you know that Benoist himself is a self-declared pagan. He even wrote a book about it-with Odin on the cover!
Racial or Ethnic diversity is NEVER a strength, and is almost always dangerous.
In the least, each group is suspicious of the other, which can quickly turn to jealousy, envy, and anger, as the two groups compete -- one group will have more than the other. Evetually it turns to fighting and sometimes genocide.
The best example is the 1930s in Germany. Jews and Germans (very different people) lived together during a severe economic depression. Many Jews were doing quite well as bankers, international traders, merchants, physicians, university professors, etc. Meanwhile common germans suffered. To make matters worse, Jewish culture and politics (leftist, modernists/progressive, intellectual,shun physical labor)were opposite that of Germans (conservative, traditional, physical, work with hands). Traditional aspects of Jewish culture (Hasidic dress, religion)were also opposite German volk.
We all know the result of that "multicultural experiment"
Forcing very different people to compete in the same country can only result in conflict -- much better homogenous societies.
Yet another example of an African problem requiring African solutions.
It's an area where many incisive minds have lost their sense of proportion.
Of course Murdoch is in favor of open borders, why wouldn't he be? He's a wealthy internationalist with no real country. More people means more FOX customers, cheaper labor, weaker unions, and the destruction of whatever is left of American nationalism and 'christian' civilization. Its a win-win for him. Plus it helps countries like Mexico.
I may just be wildly speculating here but it seems to me that democracy in the sense of non-oppressive representative government may be a function of IQ.
Lynn and Vanhanen report a correlation of about .70 between the population's IQ and the nation's wealth. Wealth itself is a function economic peace and participation. This suggest the wealth/IQ connection is through the ability of the nation to maintain peaceable and productive internal relations.
In Syria today they are resurrecting the governing style of the Assyrians - kill a portion of the population so as to gain control over the others. This works well enough if you are only interested in maintaining power. It is a poor basis for a thriving economy.
If this is the correct view it is unwise to send money in the form of foreign aid to low IQ nations. It is also a mistake to try to initiate Western type democracy in those same countries.
The Founding Fathers were unsure if any nation could be smart enough, peaceful enough, and stable enough to make a democratic republic work. We were able to govern ourselves but it's been close. I don't think it's possible for Rwanda or Burundi or maybe even Iraq.
For most of human history government has been extremely oppressive. Rather recently in the last few centuries the peoples of north western Europe have learned how to have less oppressive forms of government. Liberal democracy broke out in the European IQ "hot spot". There's not a lot of evidence that lower IQ groups can follow their lead.
Albertosaurus
"His intolerance of dissent stifles the debate and free thought Rwanda needs if it is to become a modern, technologically advanced economy."
Yeah, don't hold your breath on that happening, with or without "debate and free thought."
I'm almost done reading Martin Meredith's Fate of Africa. Although I'm sure this was not his purpose, he does a terrific job of demonstrating that no set of institutions can make up for deficiencies in human capital. In other words, the main thing you need in order to turn Zimbabwe into Ohio is a population of Ohioans.
- A Solid Citizen
Bob Iger is Jewish. Murdoch ... as publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Post, had a large Jewish constituency, as he did to a lesser degree with New York magazine and The Village Voice. Not only had the pre-Murdoch Post readership been heavily Jewish, so, too, were the present Post advertisers. Most of Murdoch's closest friends and business advisers were wealthy, influential New York Jews intensely active in pro-Israel causes. And he himself still retained a strong independent sympathy for Israel, a personal identification with the Jewish state that went back to his Oxford days. (Kiernan 1986, 261)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx330bGmxIk
Whiskey: Bob Iger is Jewish.
Risto
" Wait, Gregg Easterbrook was purged?"
About 6 years ago. They eventually took him back.
I have met some Rwandan refugees whose lives are not safe in their own country because they would not testify as the government wanted them to in the genocide trials, and who insisted on being allowed to testify to all the crimes they had witnessed, not just the ones they were asked to testify about by the ruling group (which is not only Tutsis but also Hutus working with them, a good thing for keeping the lid on ethnic hatred but a bad thing for the lies it leads to).
The picture of Kagame with the Obama's on the wikipedia page is really striking. Michelle is on the left with her sturdy build, broad nose and other west African Bantu features, while Kagame and Obama look very similar with their slender builds, thin faces, and jug ears. It's like seeing the Bantu/Nilotic split within the same photo.
Dead people have a way of not dissenting. Although some of them do still vote.
"Why Nations Fail" blog has a cool picture of the stark border between Rwanda & the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
If you go to that area in Google Maps and zoom out a bit, you'll see that they absolutely chose the smallest part of the border to illustrate the contrast. Just sayin'
Anonymous:"The best example is the 1930s in Germany. Jews and Germans (very different people) lived together during a severe economic depression."
This is simply untrue. Read up on the German-Jewish synthesis. Heck, Steve explored the whole topic of how well German Jews were integrated into Christian German society.
Syon
Albertosaurus: I may just be wildly speculating here but it seems to me that democracy in the sense of non-oppressive representative government may be a function of IQ.
I'd say it's closer to a certainty than most other social-scientific explanatory models.
- A Solid Citizen
Michelle's "broad nose and other west African Bantu features" have been mitigated by a nose job and other procedures.
http://thewe.cc/thewei/_/images11/us_rich_scandal/barack_michelle_obama.jpe
Obama is apparently having tremendous problems raising cash. I wonder if this has anything to do with Jewish donors being unhappy with his policies towards Israel.
fnn, I didn't know about the Odin book, and I wasn't being a wise-ass (this time). I thought that de Benoist's paganism was imperial, multicultural, and non-nationalist, kind of like the Roman empire.
Comments on Isteve (probably the best blog though it doesn't cover economics much) are extremly impressive and witty. I like to think despite being a penniless 21 year old that I among a very smart set when I visit this blog. I would love to know what isteve readers do. They seem smart and-I like to think-wealthy. Would love powerful people to read this blog (goldman sachs, Romney staffers, etc.). anyone know how wrong I might be?
you know Sailer, it's not that this post is incoherent or anything, but the fact that you stretch this much to make a (snarky) point is kind of baffling.
then again i guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do to keep up the hits from 20-something misanthrope commenters who view Israel (and Israel-like individuals) as The Root of Our Problems.
"Anonymous said...
Comments on Isteve (probably the best blog though it doesn't cover economics much) are extremly impressive and witty. I like to think despite being a penniless 21 year old that I among a very smart set when I visit this blog. I would love to know what isteve readers do. They seem smart and-I like to think-wealthy. Would love powerful people to read this blog (goldman sachs, Romney staffers, etc.). anyone know how wrong I might be?"
Agree that the commentors on this site are among the most interesting (and often funny)on the web.
Fairly obvious that many are smart and well educated and from different walks of life.
Doubt many are Romney staffers or work for Goldmann Sachs though.
Steve's posting are too skeptical of the benefits of globalism and diversity for their tastes I suspect.
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