Comment by throwanda
19 hours ago
Not constrained to Rwanda, the late '80s and early '90s saw the (re-)emergence of this flavor of broadcasting in many places around the world - especially in the US on the AM bands.
Fortunately, the conditions weren't present in the US to speedrun to civil war and genocide. Still, I grew up in Limbaugh-lovin' country during those years and was exposed to this... stuff... for more hours of the day than I care to think about. (In public school! Literally, teachers having Rush and assorted fellow-travellers on in the background while we did our classwork.)
I do not believe for a second that the fact it went different in the US wasn't for lack of trying. The trying hasn't even stopped.
What many in the US don't have conceptual familiarity with is pre-genocidal speech. Historically and empirically, the actual call to violence only happens at the end of a long period of collectivizing dehumanization via media, when people are already pliable for it. In my view, those causal antecedents to genocide should be illegal due to their historically proven connection to genocide. This speech is more dangerous and leads to more dead bodies than other types of speech which are already illegal, like isolated calls to individual violence or libel.
When I read about the leak of the new Meta internal guidance for content moderation[1], my first thought was that the only things they banned were likely things that they understood to be pre-genocidal speech (eg comparisons of a group to vermin). Rules that seem kind of arbitrary to a modern western audience but which click in place if you look at propaganda that was issued during historical genocides.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-...
You make some good points but the problem is these efforts are usually bankrolled by well connected right wingers, so the state will not enforce the law unless there has effectively been a socialist revolution that deprives the right of power and money almost completely.
I think socialist revolutions have killed more "out group" members than any political/religious movement in human history
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… because nominally socialist movements have never committed genocide? Go read Gulag Archipelago or listen to the recent Behind the Bastards podcast on Pol Pot.
It seems to be something humans do, a kind of tribal warfare or “raiding” program deep in the brain stem that can be activated. Nobody has a monopoly on it. It seems possible to activate these behaviors with any pattern of rhetoric that dehumanizes a group of people and creates a powerful in group out group schism. That can be framed in any way — right wing, left wing, anything.
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This is a good example of hate speech. You are dehumanizing people of the US saying they don't conceptual understand morality and can't decide for themselves what is morally wrong or right.
They can understand morality but have chosen not to. They can decide what is morally wrong and right and then have chosen wrong and have decided not to care about it.
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Oh my, do explain further!
good thing the good old belgians know how to spot a genocide in africa
> speedrun to civil war
Well there was the OKC Federal Building bombing. Timothy McVeigh was a dedicated dittohead.
Indeed! Okie here, Rush, Newt and Rove absolutely destroyed the Republican party. With their lies and hatred of anyone not like them, they duped an entire generation.
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It's moved beyond radio now too.
e.g. The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar was fuelled by Facebook's engagement algorithms[1].
In Rwanda, they had to create radio stations. Today, all you have to do is generate clicks for Meta.
[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
Ah yes, the evil facebook, not at all caused by their terrorist activity.
I still remember from over 20 years ago I was sitting in the kitchen talking to my grandmother. She was smoking and had some Fox News talking head on in the background. Maybe Hannity?
What I noticed what that there was a main story for the hour long program. But, it was pretty dull. Meanwhile, the host kept randomly going off into short non-sequitur diatribes. All of the non-sequiturs were depressing. They were about random stuff that made you feel just awful. Then he'd pop back to dull main story like nothing happened.
I realized the non-sequiturs were all designed to make you feel hate, fear and disgust towards liberals. The main story was just filler. The real product was a steady stream of emotional hits of hate, fear and disgust. Over and over forever. Just like puffing on her cigarettes.
That was decades ago. The hate, fear and disgust pipeline has refined a lot since then.
Decades later, the news got my father so deeply filled with hate, fear and disgust that he would randomly launch into hateful diatribes about the libs unprompted. It got bad enough that the kids had to tell Mom we weren't visiting until he got it under control. He wasn't like that at all until he retired and had more time to watch TV.
> especially in the US on the AM bands.
That sort of show is still alive and well in the US, it's just moved from AM to podcasts.
I think it's a shame, but revealing, that the most responded-to post about this topic brings everything back to US domestic politics.
Why shame? Most readers of HN are from the US. It's good that everyone discuss these lessons in relation to their own nations.
In a predictable turn of events American website makes topic about America.
What saved America for a very long time is the existence of blue states and red states. Neither side actually had to really live with eachother.
This is the difference with Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The people you hate lived next door.
I'm not sure that's really the case. Most states have a pretty good mix of Democrats and Republicans.
Yes. Even the solidly Blue or Red states tend to be 55-45 in elections. A few extreme states might be 60-40. It really is more of an urban-rural divide with the suburbs deciding which way the state leans overall.
All States are various shades of purple.
> I do not believe for a second that the fact it went different in the US wasn't for lack of trying. The trying hasn't even stopped.
What statements did Rush Limbaugh make that could be construed as instigating a genocide?
I never was a regular listener to Rush but if I were driving from Pt A to Pt B in rural America I might find the only thing Icould find reliably from noon to 2pm was an AM radio station that had The Rush Limbaugh Show. I tuned in deliberately on Jan 7, 2021, just a few days before Rush passed away, and found he was shocked and aghast at what had happened to the day before... but did not draw the connection to how the culture he created contributed to it.
Korzybski and Van Vogt warned us of "A=A" thinking but today I'm aghast at thinking that can best be described as ∀x,y: x=y. Back in the 1960s you'd expect an article in a Trotskyite newspaper to start with "The Red Sox beat the Yankees" and to end with "... therefore we need a socialist revolution." Today teen girls read Man's Search For Meaning because they think their school is like a concentration camp, politicians of all stripes [1] are accused of being fascists, and people delude themselves that adding a stripe to a flag will magically transform people into allies. Glomming together all social causes into one big ball has a devastating effect on popular support
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-social-issues-civil-rights-bac...
across all demographics.
I disagreed with Rush about most things and thought he had a harmful effect on the nation and the world but I'd never accuse him of advocating genocide. No, being against universal healthcare isn't the same thing as genocide and if you're interested in winning elections you'd be better off spraying random voters with pepper spray than talking this way.
[1] sci-fi writer Charlie Stross made the accusation against Keir Starmer
> I tuned in deliberately on Jan 7, 2021, just a few days before Rush passed away, and found he was shocked and aghast at what had happened to the day before... but did not draw the connection to how the culture he created contributed to it.
That's kind of his thing. He's complained about drug addicts and perverts, but yet he was a prescription junkie, and also got caught flying to the Dominican Republic with a bunch of Viagra and condoms in his suitcase.
Even if he was acutely aware of the connection between his rhetoric and Jan. 6 events, it would probably bother him not at all and he'd refuse to acknowledge it unless forced to face it (like with his drug woes).
I think you mean 2021 by the way.
Good catch! I fixed it.
He may not have advocated for genocide, but he did a lot to create a polarized political environment where anyone to his left was at best ridiculed and more often demonized. His general rhetorical strategy was to find some extreme example of something on the left, exaggerate it and then attribute his distorted version to everyone to his left. It made him a lot of money and led the way to Fox News which took it to even greater extremes.
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> No, being against universal healthcare isn't the same thing as genocide and if you're interested in winning elections you'd be better off spraying random voters with pepper spray than talking this way.
How popular is universal healthcare in America?
According to the latest poll data I was able to find on Google (from 2024), about 2/3rds of Americans support universal healthcare[0]. At the very least, one can confidently say a majority of Americans per capita support it.
That said, the American political apparatus is designed such that the votes of rural conservatives (who tend to oppose it) count more than elsewhere, so that doesn't actually matter.
[0]https://news.gallup.com/poll/654101/health-coverage-governme...
> I'd never accuse him of advocating genocide
I heard he celebrated AIDS deaths on air, which is disgusting behavior
Yes he had a recurring segment where he read obituaries of gay men who’d died of AIDS in a mock-sappy voice set to disco music.
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It’s going too far to say Rush advocated genocide, but he absolutely preached that all who opposed him were not just wrong but evil, that ends justify means, that people with different views are subhuman.
It’s the age-old populist / proto-fascist playbook. He didn’t attempt to convince on the merits, but on the argument that those who disagree aren’t real people.
How about
https://www.etsy.com/listing/500290818/we-believe-yard-sign-...
? Complex issues get distilled into 3 or 4 word slogans with the total effect of suggesting that the person with this lawn sign is superior in every way to people who disagree with her, that there's one exact right way to think about every issue, people who disagree are evil, deluded, subhuman, affected by perverse psychology, etc. You can find people on Mastodon and Bluesky say the most terrible things about the 70% of people who have concerns about transgender athletes in women's sports.
I don't have the numbers to prove it but my belief is that kind of thinking is basically right wing and that putting one of those yard signs in your yard shifts the vote +0.05 R or something just as 15 minutes listening to Rush does. Advocating that 99.4% percent of people should just shut up and give 0.6% of people everything the want all the time is what I expect out of Peter Thiel, not the left.
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I wouldn’t even say it went differently, yet. So far it has only gone slower. A big chunk of the population now believes that “liberals” are Satan-worshipping baby killers thanks to decades of this propaganda.