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Chapter 22: Radio Mille Collines II: Dehumanization as Policy

Grégoire’s world was the rich, red earth of his hillside plot. His days were governed by the slow, metronomic rhythm of his hoe rising and falling, and by the patient, predictable cycles of the sun. His constant companion in this work was a small, tinny-sounding radio that hung from a frayed cord around his neck, the volume turned just loud enough to cut through the whisper of the wind in the banana trees. It was mostly for the music, the hypnotic Congolese rhythms that made the back-breaking work feel a little lighter, the day a little shorter. The talk in between was a familiar, comforting presence—the voices of RTLM.

This afternoon, the sun was hot on his back. He paused his work to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of a calloused hand. Across the small, misty valley, he could see his neighbor, Simon, also working his plot. Simon was a tall man, and his hoe rose and fell with the same steady rhythm as Grégoire’s. Grégoire remembered the previous planting season, when his own hoe had broken. Without a word, Simon had stopped his work, fetched his spare, and tossed it across the small gully that separated their lands. They had shared a Primus beer in the shade of a eucalyptus tree when the work was done. A good neighbor.

Grégoire bent back to his work as Valérie Bemeriki’s voice came on the radio. The music stopped. Her tone was warm and conspiratorial, like a trusted grandmother sharing a secret wisdom by the fire. She wasn't shouting like the men sometimes did; she was teaching. "A good farmer knows this," she said, her voice a folksy caress, "and we are all farmers of Rwanda. Before you can have a strong, clean harvest, you must do the hard work. It is our patriotic duty. First, you must clear the fields of the tall trees that steal the sun and block the view. You cannot let them stand." Grégoire nodded slowly. This was the wisdom of the land. He knew the way the shadow of a tall tree could stunt the growth of the beans beneath it.

"Then," Bemeriki continued, her voice growing a little firmer, "you must go into the undergrowth and you must clear it of the snakes, the inzoka. They are clever and they hide. You must kill them so they cannot bite your children in the night." An image flashed in Grégoire’s mind: his youngest daughter, running through the tall grass near the river just last week. He had shouted at her to be careful, a familiar fear clutching at his heart. He felt a primal hatred for the puff adders that nested there.

"And finally," Valérie’s voice dropped to an intense, intimate whisper, "the most important work of all. You must be vigilant against the cockroaches, the inyenzi. They are a filth. They get everywhere. They hide in the darkness and spoil the harvest for everyone. If you see even one, you cannot let it go, because soon there will be thousands. You must crush them all underfoot. You must not hesitate. It is your duty to Rwanda to make the fields clean for the coming harvest."

The broadcast shifted back to music, but Grégoire did not hear it. He stood up straight, his hoe resting on the rich soil, his heart pounding with a new and terrible clarity. The world suddenly felt simpler, the problems clearer. It was the wisdom of his ancestors, the wisdom of the earth, now spoken through the radio. It all made perfect sense.

He looked up and across the valley at Simon again. But this time, he saw something different. He noticed, first, how tall Simon was. He cast a long, dark shadow over his own land. A tall tree, stealing the sun. Then he remembered Simon's quiet, watchful nature, the way he rarely spoke unless spoken to. A snake, hiding in the undergrowth. Finally, Bemeriki's whispered word, inyenzi, crawled into his mind and latched onto the image of his neighbor. The label began to dissolve the man. The memory of the shared beer, the kindness of the spare hoe, the years of quiet neighborliness—they all became thin and translucent, like smoke. Bemeriki’s voice was louder in his head than his own memories. What he felt was not anger, or hatred. It was a cold, righteous sense of agricultural duty. A flicker of a new and monstrous thought entered his mind. He gripped the smooth, worn wood of his hoe, and for the first time in his life, it did not feel like a tool for farming. It felt like a weapon. The field, he thought, the whole field, needed to be cleansed.

The Discourse 22: A Lexicon for Extermination

22.1 The Psychology of Extermination
The path to genocide requires the systematic dismantling of the moral and psychological prohibitions that prevent humans from murdering their neighbors. The propagandists of RTLM, whether by instinct or design, proved to be masters of this dark process. Their core strategy was dehumanization, a practice identified by scholars like Gregory Stanton as a critical and indispensable stage on the path to mass violence. See [citation 1]. This was not simply a campaign of insults or slurs; it was a deliberate policy to reclassify an entire group of people, to excise them from the category of "human" and place them firmly in the category of "vermin" or "pestilence." By relentlessly broadcasting a carefully constructed lexicon of hate, RTLM sought to achieve a specific psychological goal: to reframe extermination not as a crime, but as a necessary and even virtuous act of purification, thereby making the unthinkable killable.

22.2 The Master Metaphor: Inyenzi (The Cockroach)
The most infamous and devastatingly effective term in RTLM’s arsenal was inyenzi, the Kinyarwanda word for cockroach. The propagandists brilliantly co-opted this term, which a small group of Tutsi rebels in the 1960s had used to describe themselves (implying they were a resilient, infiltrating force). RTLM stripped the word of this context and applied it to every single Tutsi man, woman, and child. See [citation 2]. The metaphor worked on multiple, insidious levels. It invoked a deep, primal sense of disgust and contamination, casting Tutsis not as political opponents, but as a filthy, disease-carrying infestation. Insects are things to be crushed without pity or remorse; one does not feel guilt for stepping on a cockroach. This linguistic transformation was central to the ICTR's "Media Case," where the constant use of inyenzi was deemed to be unambiguous, direct and public incitement to commit genocide. See [citation 3]. The command to "crush the cockroaches," heard day after day, was not a figure of speech; it was a literal, visceral instruction understood by all who heard it.

22.3 Agrarian Metaphors for an Agrarian Society
To connect with the vast majority of the population—the rural farmers—RTLM’s most powerful metaphors were rooted in the familiar language of agriculture. In a nation of farmers, casting the act of murder as a form of agricultural "work" (gukora) was a stroke of evil genius. Tutsis, particularly influential community leaders, were relentlessly referred to as "tall trees" that stole the sun and choked the growth of the Hutu "harvest." Broadcasters would openly call on listeners to "cut the tall trees," a command that framed assassination as a communal duty, a necessary clearing of the land for the benefit of the "true" Rwandan people. See [citation 4]. Another common term for Tutsis was inzoka, or snakes, a universal symbol for a hidden, treacherous, and deadly enemy living secretly among the population. This powerfully reinforced the idea that even a friendly Tutsi neighbor was a duplicitous spy for the RPF, waiting for the right moment to strike. These metaphors made genocide feel like a familiar and righteous task, transforming the horror of mass murder into a necessary chore.

22.4 Genocide as a Public Health Measure
The ultimate psychological aim of this dehumanization campaign, as analyzed by scholars like Mahmood Mamdani, was to present the genocide as an urgent public health crisis. See [citation 5]. By framing the Tutsi population as an infestation of vermin, a dangerous pathogen, or a cancerous growth on the Rwandan "social body," RTLM provided the killers with a powerful pseudo-scientific and moral justification for their actions. They were not murdering their neighbors, their friends, or even their family members; they were participating in a vital "sanitation" project to purify their nation and protect the Hutu people from a deadly threat. This biological framing created a potent moral anesthetic, allowing hundreds of thousands of ordinary people—farmers, teachers, even priests—to pick up machetes and participate in the intimate, brutal, and relentless work of slaughter with a clear conscience, believing they were not criminals, but patriots and healers.