Kangura stated that “a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly…a cockroach
gives birth to another cockroach” (p.88-89). Portraying this toxic rhetoric to
mobilise Hutus against Tutsis.
There is limited work that builds on this concept; however, Owen finds
that notions of toxification are also evident in anti-trans ideology. She highlights
the partial limitations of toxification in this sense whereby for anti-trans ideology
it does not have the same urgency of national security (2022, p.1-14). The
concept of toxification provides a stronger model for detecting early warning
signs that has not been built upon in much detail. This report will focus on it, it
will apply the concept to primary data in the analysis section and explore what
this means for genocide prevention and somewhat build on the concept in the
implications segment.
Analysis
My analysis will bring a new study to the debate on early warnings and genocide
prevention. It will focus on the effectiveness of toxification as a more appropriate
early identifier. Firstly, it will explore propaganda used by both RTLM and
Kangura predominately before the Rwandan Genocide, and whether this can be
seen as early warning under the toxification model. Firstly, the use of toxifying
language is evident in RTLM prior to the genocide. In a broadcast transcript from
July 1993, (after personal translation from French) the station refers to Tutsis
very casually as ‘inyenzi’ sixteen times in ten minutes, which as previously
highlighted has toxifying connotations. Furthermore, the broadcast states that
there is no difference between inyenzi Tutsis and the RPF (RTLM, 1993),
perpetuating the idea that not only Tutsis are toxic and need exterminating, but
that all Tutsis act in the same interest of the invading RPF. Similarly, Kangura
articles often use inyenzi interchangeably with Tutsi to refer to the group. For
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