This is What Hate Radio Can Do

[Joanne98]

Mon Jul 28, 2008 at 10:00:30 AM PDT
The details are still coming in about the shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, but it's becoming clear that the gunman holds a grudge against "liberals" and "gays". We have no idea whether or not the gunman listened to right wing hate radio, but the daily barrage of hate based on a person's race, sexual orientation or political affiliation, can and HAS resulted in mass murder on an unimaginable scale. I'm talking about the Rwandan Genocide.

DJShay's diary :: ::
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's minority Tutsis and the moderates of its Hutu majority. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from April 6 through to mid July, at least 500,000 people were killed.<1> Most estimates are of a death toll nearer the 800,000 and 1,000,000 marks.<2>

The fuel that fed the fire of the genocide was Hate Radio".

RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre de Mille Collines)is the most widely reported symbol of "hate radio" throughout the world. Its broadcasts, disseminating hate propaganda and inciting to murder Tutsis and opponents to the regime, began on 8 July 1993, and greatly contributed to the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands.

RTLM, aided by the staff and facilities of Radio Rwanda, the government-owned station, called on the Hutu majority to destroy the Tutsi minority. The programmes were relayed to all parts of the country via a network of transmitters owned and operated by Radio Rwanda. After Rwandan Patriotic Front troops drove the government forces out of Kigali in July 1994, RTLM used mobile FM transmitters to broadcast disinformation from inside the French-controlled zone on the border between Rwanda and Zaire, causing millions of Hutus to flee toward refugee camps where they could be regrouped and recruited as future fighters.

Here are some quotes from some of the broadcasts

"These Tutsi killers who invaded our country continue to prepare themselves to plant their flags on both sides of the border ... you know the cunning of those people ... They come with guns, they come to kill us."

"In truth, all Tutsis will perish. They will vanish from this country ... They are disappearing little by little thanks to the weapons hitting them, but also because they are being killed like rats."

"You cockroaches must know you are made of flesh. We won't let you kill. We will kill you,"

Now, compare the quotes above from Rwandan Radio, to quotes from Right Wing Talk Radio.

From a January 2007 Mike Stark Diary about a San Francisco radio station that hosted a slime ball of a human being named Lee Rodgers:

Speaking about a black man in Nebraska:

"Now you start with the Sear's Diehard the battery cables connected to his testi*les and you entertain him with that for awhile and then you blow his bleeping head off. "



Lee Rogers: I say they catch the person, tie 'em to a post and burn 'em. Set 'em on fire.

Officer Vic: Yeah.

Lee Rogers: Let 'em know what it feels like.

Melanie Morgan: Hog tie 'em first. That would be good.

Next, Lee Rogers talks about a protester at a Cindy Sheehan event:



"Whoever did that should have been stomped to death right there. Just stomp their bleeping guts out."

The Rwandan Genocide is one very extreme result of the influence of hate radio and the people involved with the broadcasts have been sent to trial and convicted of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide". But if you compare the quotes from Rwandan Radio with the ones from American Right Wing Talk Radio, I don't think it's such a stretch that someone here in America couldn't be driven to these extreme acts of violence. The country is starting a period of unrest because of high gas prices, foreclosures and job losses. It's in times of unrest like these that provide a fertile ground for extreme behavior and the ideas that right wing hate promote, could possibly push someone over the edge.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/28/105410/163