Primordialism In The Rwandan Genocide

Child Soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by a state or non-state armed group and used as fighters. In the last 15 years, the user of child soldiers has spread to almost every region of the world and every armed conflict. Deindividuation is thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups, you basically are losing yourself to some outside force. In one of our readings “Machete Season” Pio explained how he felt that he had let another individual take on his own living appearance, and the habits of my heart, without a single pang in his soul. He also explained how the most serious changes that happened to him with things you could not see, such as his soul and the feelings that go with it. Through the process of …show more content…
This is different than primordialism where it is based on ancient ethnic hatreds, a sort of “this was bound to happen eventually” mentality. Of the nine proximate influences on evilness and cruelty, I believe social dominance, us-them thinking, and moral disengagement played the most prominent role in the Rwandan genocide. In regards to social dominance, apparently 84% of Rwandans are Hutu so being such a dominant group made it easier to execute the Rwandan genocide. Of course not ever Hutu participated in the killings, but Hutu’s still had an overwhelming majority over Tutsis. My next influence, us-them thinking, can best be explained in the reading “Machete Season” where Pio said “we no longer saw a human being when we turned up a Tutsi in the swamps. I mean a person like us, sharing similar thoughts and feelings” (47). By doing this, the Hutus were distancing themselves from the Tutsis, as if the Tutsis were no longer human beings. Hutu leaders would call the Tutsis cockroaches to make them seem less human, vile, and a menace to make it easier to kill them. My last influence made it easier for the Hutus for kill as they did not think there were doing anything morally wrong. In the same reading Fulgence mentions “the municipal judge in Kibungo sent his messengers to gather the Hutus… the judge told everyone there that from then on we were to do nothing but kill Tutsis” (11). A video clip from “Ghosts of Rwanda” said an extremist hate radio station told Hutus to eliminate their Hutu neighbors, and on the radio they said that they will slowly kill them like rats. All these influences support the instrumental explanation and incremental view of genocide because through political mobilization they changed what it meant to be you for the Hutus and Tutsis. The situation and system in Rwanda brought up a new identity for Hutus and Tutsis. It made it easier for Hutus to absorb the