useful comparison; it is the reason that the three examples I want to highlight
are that of modern day Myanmar, Rwanda in the 1990s, and, albeit more briefly,
Nazi Germany. Despite the huge temporal gaps between these regimes, and
their differences in direct operation and state interference, they use their
different communicative technologies in eerily similar ways. Firstly, and most
crucially, all three used widespread communicative technology as a form of
overall consensus building , using various forms of language, sometimes in more
subtle ways than others, to build a general feeling of dismay and danger against
the target group. Reports from the modern Rohingya genocide in Myanmar
provide direct examples—propaganda operations head by Myanmar's military
utilised both social media and traditional print media, to build up false
narratives, both contemporary and historical (Mozur, 2018, Yangon, 2018). The
method of transmission differs greatly from that used during the Rwandan
Genocide—in the latter, new and explicitly anti-Tutsi radio stations and print
outlets were formed (Thompson, 2007:44,62)—but the content here has some
deep similarities. In one particularly telling example, the propagandist arm of the
Myanmar military utilised the fear of imminent attack to stir up distress and a
sense of vulnerability (Mozur, 2018), mirroring one of the very first examples of
an openly hostile broadcast from Radio Rwanda, a message that, in coming days,
Hutus would be under direct violent attack from Tutsis. (Thompson, 2007:42).
In both cases, another similarity can be unveiled; the source of communication
was plausibly falsified. Radio Rwanda didn't simply state that an attack was
imminent, but rather framed the warning as coming from a third party human
rights group working out of Nairobi (Thompson, 2007:42). In Myanmar,
developments in communicative technology allow this form of falsification to be
considerably more widespread—the entire propaganda operation was kept
secret, with the aforementioned 'warning' (and others) appearing from
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