Abstract
Research on genocide has provided a rich background of common structural, ideological and psychological antecedents that culminate in the attempted annihilation of a specific ethnic or religious group. Integrating the literature on framing, genocide, emotions and social psychology, this article first presents the concept of a master ‘genocidal frame’ and preliminary evidence from two modern-day genocides, Rwanda and Nazi Germany, where it located common themes in genocidal communication. Secondly, it suggests that the genocidal frame’s five themes together are used as an effort to persuade the countries’ ‘own’ people that annihilating ‘the others’ is necessary for the ‘greater good’. Finally, the author embeds this framing into three bodies of literature to preliminarily theorize how a genocidal frame, whether communicated interpersonally or institutionally, may interact with other conditions to help shape the psychological antecedents of genocide – negative emotions, cognitions and group psychology.
Introduction
On 17 May, 1994, the broadcasters of the Rwandan Hutu Power-controlled radio station made another call for unity among the Hutu people in their quest to find and kill the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its ‘accomplices’, the Tutsi people: ‘Time has now come for people living in the same area to search for anybody who [inaudible] would be hiding amidst them’, said Karamira Froduald over the airwaves.
That is our wish for the Rwandans these days that they work together. Especially in the evening, they should look in the water conduits, gutters, banana plantations, bushes and search … There might be a moment when they need to go in houses and look for food. So they must be searched for. (Froduald, 1994, RTLM tape 0008).
This research seeks to integrate three different literatures and the language used in two modern genocides to better understand the distinct political communication of genocide. Drawing from international relations, psychology and political communication, it examines media messages from two modern genocides in the search for a Genocidal Frame. Secondly, integrating these three literatures, the article theorizes about why such a frame – when dominant, hegemonic – may be a missing piece in our understanding related to the annihilation of a people. It is a constructionist argument, suggesting that the antecedent conditions noted in previous research (discussed below) lay the foundation for genocide. It then theorizes about how the framing of these conditions might help evoke the psychological elements that can make genocide seem acceptable, necessary, or desirable among persuadable members of the ‘in-group’. The next section discusses the genocide studies literature, followed by the scholarship on frame theory, social psychology and emotions.
Background
Past scholarship has identified important conditions of genocide. Barbara Harff (2003) suggested six antecedents: (1) ‘political upheaval’; (2) habituation to mass killings; (3) exclusionary ideology with authoritarian rule; (4) discriminatory ethnic or religious cleavages; (5) stressed economic or political conditions; and (6) low international interdependencies (Harff 2003).
Some of Harff’s antecedents are subject to debate. For example, the necessity of authoritarian rule was rejected by other scholars, who argued that genocide can emerge from democracies or transitions to democracy. Some argued that genocides are products of modernity (Horowitz, 1980; Levene, 2005; Mann, 2005; Valentino, 2004).
Less debated is the role of prejudicial cleavages (Fein, 1979; Kuper, 1981). While these cleavages are consistent conditions, they are insufficient on their own to produce genocide as they exist in multicultural societies that do not turn genocidal (Valentino, 2004). Further, in parts of Armenia, Rwanda and Bosnia, ethnic and religious groups were integrated before the genocides (Armoudian, 2011; Valentino, 2004). But cleavages can be reinforced, created, recreated, or intensified through communication, as psychology experiments and media scholars have suggested (Janis, 1983; Seaton, 1999; Sherif, 2010; Sherif and Hovland, 1961; Sidanius, 1993; Smith, 1993; Tajfel, 1982). This is one aspect of what I propose a genocidal frame may do, by shaping cognitions, emotions and subconscious group dynamics. But as discussed later in this article, genocidal frames do more than merely deliver racist ideologies, which have been found to be insufficient on their own to produce annihilation of a people.
Crisis conditions, such as wars, economic collapses and political losses, garner more agreement as genocide’s common antecedents (Straus, 2006). Again, however, their mere presence does not necessarily lead to genocide. (Afterall, people may cooperate to resolve such problems). Rather, genocide occurs when the genocidal leaders use these events to transform the targeted group into the hated enemy (Charny, 1982; Levene, 2005; Midlarsky, 2005; Semelin and Hoffman 2007; Staub, 1989; Straus, 2006).
Scapegoating and the drive to punish or recapture lost power or land (Midlarsky, 2005: Staub, 1989) are joined by racist ideologies (Levene, 2005; Mann, 2005). But in cases like Bosnia, ideology may have been a front for opportunism (Weitz, 2003). Whether driven by ideology or opportunism, genocidal leaders must enlist in-group members to accept and, in some cases, carry out the mass killing. In Rwanda, Hutu killers were ostensibly motivated in part through intra-group pressure and negative emotions, such as fear, anger, resentment and negative cognitions or beliefs (Straus, 2007), which raises a question: what factor or factors evoke these psychological elements?
This research first integrates the literature from genocide studies, political communication and psychology as a step toward answering this question. It then examines the mass communication in two modern-day genocides to locate a master ‘genocidal frame’ and its common themes. Finally, by integrating the three literatures – genocide studies, political communication and psychology – it theorizes about how a ‘genocidal frame’ – whether communicated interpersonally, through social networks, institutions, mass media or a combination of these – may help shape these cognitions, social psychology and negative emotions that scholars see as antecedents for lethal violence. What are the themes of this frame, and how do they fit within the literature? The next two sections examine frame theory integrated with psychology literature.
Frame theory
Frames are constructs that organize otherwise disorganized information into simpler, meaningful stories and themes. Political actors, media professionals and audiences all use frames to help construct understandings about political developments, groups, individuals, institutions and identities (Edelman, 1971; Entman, 1993, 2007; Gamson, 1988; Goffman, 1974). Through language, symbols, historic references and the inclusion or omission of information, they convey meanings, narratives, values and appraisals (Entman 1993, 2007; Gamson, 1988; Lakoff, 2014; Nelson et al., 1997a; Snow and Benford, 1992; Van Gorp, 2007). Simplistic frames often reduce events, political developments, people and groups to one-dimensional portrayals (Bennett, 2007; Entman, 1993, 2007; Iyengar, 1996).
Frames can be highly influential. Audiences who were exposed to two different frames about the same subject, a Ku Klux Klan rally, expressed different tolerance levels, depending on the frame. The ‘free speech’ frame evoked greater tolerance toward the rally than the ‘public safety’ frame (Nelson et al., 1997a). During conflict, frames such as ‘us-versus-them’ and ‘good-versus-evil’ suggest moral superiority for ‘us’ and lesser morality for ‘them’, (Armoudian, 2011; Wolfsfeld, 1997).
Groups, cultures and societies develop common ‘repertoires of frames’ (Van Gorp, 2007: 61), including broader, encompassing master frames. These ‘grand narratives’ contain explicit and implicit, internally-understood language that acts as societal glue, reinforcing meanings, identities, and other shared understandings (Lyotard, 1993). Master frames encompass ‘little stories’ that ‘order and explain knowledge and experience’ and become engrained in society’s cultural milieu, as if they are true reflections of reality. Subconscious and stealthy, they are difficult to dispel even when shown to be untrue (Lakoff, 2014; Snow and Benford, 1992; Stephens and McCallum, 2013: 6).
Frames can become so entrenched that simple words and phrases trigger subconscious, visceral responses, and counter-information can generate cognitive dissonance, particularly for the strong partisans (Lakoff, 2014; Westin, 2007). These meanings and assessments help shape political, psychological responses, as described below.
Frames and group psychology
Frames of ‘us-versus-them’ generate or reinforce the idea of separate groups and membership criteria. Media’s repetition of these frames and focus on differences rather than similarities heightens the idea of distinct groups, which can seem fixed or static though socially-constructed language, cognitions and behaviour (Allen and Seaton, 1999; Armoudian, 2011). These groups and their intra-group dynamics can have material consequences, as explained by the rich body of psychological research demonstrating how groups influence their members’ thoughts, emotions, attitudes, identity, ideology, morality and behaviour. Group membership can weaken personal autonomy, heighten stereotyping and blind individuals to aspects of reality. Classic studies such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Asch conformity experiments and the Robbers Cave experiment showed the groups’ subconscious pull towards conformity to perceived attitudes, roles, norms, in-group allegiances, intergroup emotions, conformity and groupthink. Group members often self-censor, stereotype outsiders and believe in their own group’s inherent morality (Asch, 1951, 1955; Janis, 1983; Mackie and Devos 2000; Sherif, 2010; Sherif and Hovland, 1961; Sidanius, 1993; Smith, 1993; Tajfel, 1982; Tayfel and Turner 1986).
In times of competition or conflict, group effects intensify, with members increasingly favouring ‘their own’, expressing negative attitudes towards outsiders, even when the groups are arbitrary creations, as demonstrated by the classic Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif, 2010). In this study, psychologists randomly assigned normal, middle-class, white Protestant boys into fabricated groups and created a competitive game. Despite no ethnic, religious, physical, or gender differences, the boys favoured their ‘own’ group members, believing that they were ‘brave’ and ‘friendly’, while stereotyping the ‘others’ as ‘no-good cheats’. The cognition of belonging to a group, despite arbitrary assignment, was enough to generate intergroup discrimination and preference for one’s own group (Tajfel and Turner, 1986). This force can dissolve inter-individual friendships when friends are assigned to opposing groups, a dynamic that was demonstrated experimentally (Sherif, 2015; Tajfel and Turner, 1986). Frames’ appraisals also elicit negative emotions, which evoke their counterpart action-tendencies. These dynamics are discussed below.
Frames and emotions
Although a variety of stimuli can serve as emotional triggers, emotions arise from appraisals (Lazarus, 1991). Frames can offer these meanings. Then, acting like ‘adaptive switches’, emotions trigger a compulsion to act as a means to address the situation, although the actions are not always carried out. These impulses can occur either automatically or slowly and deliberatively (Frijda, 2004; Izard and Ackerman, 2001; Lazarus, 1991; Petersen, 2002; Smith and Kirby, 2001). For example, a frame that suggests threat evokes fear, motivating self-protective behaviours, such as distancing or attack (Frijda, 2004; Izard, 1992; Scherer et al., 2001; Smith and Kirby, 2001; Zajonc, 1980). Fear heightens attention, generates tunnel vision and triggers a surveillance system for greater information absorption. Whether fear leads to ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ depends on interpretations about power in the situation (Lazarus, 1984; Marcus et al., 2000). Some scholars believe that fear and the drive for security are prime motivators for violent action, which can produce ‘near genocidal behavior’ (Posen, 1993: 30).
A second negative appraisal, other-blame, motivates ‘attack-related’ emotions – primarily anger, but sometimes also rage, contempt, resentment or hate (Fischer and Roseman, 2007; Frijda, 1986, 2004; Frijda et al., 1989; Kuppens et al., 2003; Ortony et al., 1988; Petersen, 2002; Roseman and Smith, 2001; Rozin et al., 1999). Blame distances people from victims, can dehumanize them, and defeats positive emotions such as compassion (Lazarus, 1991). As attribution of blame increases, levels of aggression follow. But aggression is mitigated if the acts are perceived as justified or legitimate, whereas unjustified, illegitimate acts peak aggression to its highest levels (Kulik and Brown, 1979).
Anger demands expression, mobilizes energy and disposes one towards aggression and fighting when not suppressed (Averill, 2001; Berkowitz, 2001; Cannon, 1929; Frijda. 1986; Izard and Ackerman, 2000; Lazarus, 2001). The likelihood of violence increases when coupled with other negative emotions like shame. Rage drives highly destructive behaviour, such as abuse and intolerance. And contempt, which often occurs with anger, includes a negative appraisal of the ‘other’ as unworthy, magnifying destructive potential (Fischer and Roseman, 2007; Izard and Ackerman, 2000).
Blame is also a key appraisal in hate, the most destructive emotion. This intense, complex and hostile emotion includes an appraisal that ‘the other’ is vile, evil, subhuman (Royzman et al., 2005; Sternberg, 2005). Hate is triggered by dehumanizing ‘good-versus-evil’ frames and stories that imply that the ‘others’ will enact ‘more evil’ (Keen, 1986; Rhodes, 1993; Sternberg, 2005). These narratives (1) characterize ‘the other’ as fundamentally and irredeemably evil, despicable or subhuman; 1 (2) argue that ‘they’ will continue to do harm to ‘us’ (Sternberg, 2005); and (3) propose solving problems by punishing, isolating, conquering or destroying ‘them’. In contrast, in-group members are portrayed as ‘good’, often as victims or saviours (Armoudian, 2011; Beck, 1999; Beck and Pretzer, 2005; Sternberg, 2005).
Hate’s action tendency is destruction, abuse, intolerance and distancing, usually with a desire to annihilate ‘them’ (Beck, 1999; Beck and Pretzer, 2005: 44; Blum, 1955: 20–22; Halperin, 2008; Lazarus, 1984, 1991, 2001; Royzman et al., 2005: 5; Staub, 2005: 59; Sternberg, 2005). The genocidal frame’s themes, discussed below, are collectively geared to stimulate intensely negative appraisals, evoking anger, fear, contempt, resentment and hate.
Intergroup emotions
Like individual emotions, intergroup and collective emotions arise from appraisals and stimulate an urge to act. But they are connected to affiliation with groups or societies, including political parties, ethnic groups, teams, or countries and evoked when one’s own group member experiences emotions on behalf of another member or the whole group – whether or not the members know each other personally. Meaningful symbols such as colours, flags, uniforms and words, can also stimulate them. These emotions integrate into what it means to belong to the group, and help guide behaviours (Frijda, 1986; Jarymowicz and Bar-Tal, 2006; Mackie and Davos, 2000, Mackie et al, 2009; Marcus and MacKuen, 1993). For example, blaming an out-group member for harming a member of one’s ‘own’ group stimulates anger towards the blamed group among in-group members (Mackie et al., 2009: 1874). In larger groups such as societies, emotional climates also develop, influencing conflict or resolution (Bar-Tal et al., 2007).
The combined literatures of social psychology, emotions theory and communications theory suggest that uncontested and hegemonic master frames evoke psychological responses in four steps: (1) they shape cognitions about ‘separate’ groups, prompting in-group/out-group behaviours, conformity or groupthink; (2) they offer appraisals that evoke destructive emotions, including intergroup emotions; (3) emotions – engines of action – motivate their counterpart responses, such as distancing and attacking. Frames do not persuade everyone. People’s experiences interact with the frames. But in times of crisis, frames may be more persuasive. And while the relationships are interactive and likely multi-directional, here is one way to see this relationship: Frames→meanings/appraisals→emotions & social psychological forces→actions/behaviours
Meanings, emotions, social psychology and behaviours give feedback, guiding the construction of similar, internalized frames that may reinforce beliefs and emotions. I suggest that crisis conditions and the mass disseminated genocidal frame interact to heighten in-group allegiances, evoke ‘attack’ emotions and behaviours towards ‘them’, and that genocide requires a frame that (a) demarcates groups and broadens divisions, (b) generates fear, anger, contempt, resentment and hate, and (c) rationalizes the acts in an ends–means argument, for self-defence and a grand cause. In the next sections, I describe the case selection, data, findings and discussion.
Case selection, data and methods
Two modern-day genocides – the Rwandan Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust – serve as the laboratory, chosen for five reasons: (1) both are unanimously accepted by scholars as distinctly genocides, targeting an ethno-religious group for annihilation, not politicides (targeting for political/economic factors) or a means to conquer or terrorize survivors into submission (Midlarsky, 2005); (2) both occurred in the 20th century; (3) the perpetrators used media to disseminate the messages widely; (4) archives and secondary literature made translations available and earlier literature argued that media were vital components of these genocides (see, for example, Armoudian, 2011; Bytwerk, 2004; Chretien, 2007; Dallaire, 2007; Dallaire with Beardsley, 2004; Des Forges, 2007; Hardy, 1967; Hatzfield, 2005; Herf, 2006; Herzstein, 1978; Hoffmann, 1996; Kallis, 2005; Kellow and Steeves, 1998; Kurspahic, 2003; Thompson, 2007); and (5) international tribunals convicted journalists from both (Harvard Law Review Association, 2004).
I qualitatively read and analysed media from both genocides, studying the language, themes and the overall master frame. From Rwanda, it included: (1) all available translated transcripts from Hutu Power dominant radio station, the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), during the genocide; (2) available translations of the Hutu Power publication Kangura; and (3) past literature and their sources. From Nazi Germany, it included: (1) available translated radio broadcasts (including broadcast speeches), newspaper articles, films, posters and books, primarily drawn from the German Propaganda Archive, and (2) past literature and their sources. The common themes were noted and categorized as follows:
Using five regularly repeated themes, the genocidal frame featured: (1) ‘us-versus-them’ demarcations; (2) stereotypes of ‘them’; (3) blame; (4) dehumanization or demonization; and (5) necessity of genocide for ‘noble’ ends and ‘self-defence’. The frame argues that if ‘they’ are not annihilated, ‘they’ will continue destroying ‘us’, but their elimination facilitates a ‘noble’ cause, such as utopia, a ‘great nation’ or democracy. The next section, findings, offers examples of these themes.
Findings
Stereotypes and blame:
In both Rwanda and Nazi Germany, proponents of the genocides used media to blame and stereotype the targeted populations for multiple problems. In Rwanda, Hutu Power, who controlled the radio station, RTLM, squarely blamed the Tutsi rebel group Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Tutsi people as accomplices for Rwanda’s problems before and during the genocide. For example, broadcasters said: These personalities and the other Ibyitso (accomplices) in the country are responsible for the prevailing disastrous situation. You can see clearly that Rwanda is unfortunate to have produced people like [names] … their accomplices and others like [name]. You can see what misfortune they have brought on us … These are the people responsible for the misfortune of this country. (Haaimana, 1994a: RTLM tape 0004)
Kantano Habimana acknowledged the country’s difficult times, through a war imposed by the RPF, ‘those stubborn, proud and contemptuous Inkotanyi’. They were damaging ‘the country, the government and all the soldiers you [Rwandans] support’, according to Habimana. ‘They throw bombs anywhere, they have destroyed houses no matter whom they belong to’ (Habimana, 1994c, RTLM tape 0011). Alongside ruination of the country, media messages also blamed their targets for individual acts, including the deaths of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, and for killing ‘anybody who tried to be outspoken and who had the support of the population’, remarked Hutu Power’s Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) Chairman Stanislas Simbizi.
They blamed the Tutsi people for ‘violations’ that harmed ‘our’ people. For example, one broadcast blamed Tutsi people for eating cassava that they did not plant. The cockroaches are running there in our cassava plantation, where they are digging out bananas, eat and make beer from bananas they didn’t plant … We shall fight relentlessly against those bandits who have eaten all our cassava, they have now taken all the cassava. (Habimana, 1994c, RTLM tape 0011)
In Nazi Germany, the Holocaust’s leaders blamed ‘international Jewry’ for German destruction. They were ‘to blame for everything’, according to Goebbels’ articles, which claimed Jews ‘caused’ Germany’s World War I defeat, its 1929 economic crisis and World War II: ‘The historic responsibility of world Jewry for the outbreak and widening of this war has been proven so clearly that it does not need to be talked about any further’, he wrote in Das Reich. ‘The Jews wanted war, and now they have it’ (Goebbels, 1941).
In the mass distributed pamphlets, Nazi leader Robert Ley (1941) argued, ‘the Jew destroyed peoples and nations with the help of his money, with the help of his Marxist ideology, with the help of Freemasonry, with the help of political universalism.’ Germany’s woes, including child death, malnourishment, disease and civil conflict, Ley argued, were incited by Jews while ‘the Jew grinned at it all. Civil war prevailed in Germany and the Jew incited everyone against everyone else. Everything Germans had once held holy was mocked, scorned’, he wrote. ‘Death raged ever more within the German people and the Jew’s jazz band played the death dance of the German people.’
Themes of hate: Dehumanization and demonization
Alongside blame, the genocidal frame dehumanizes and demonizes the targeted population as inherently evil, vile and subhuman within a good-versus-evil framework, which suggests their presence will continue to harm the ‘good’. Psychologists suggest that these portrayals – which both genocides featured – can trigger the most destructive emotion – hate. For example, Rwanda’s RTLM broadcasters warned of ‘evil’ or demonic forces, calling ‘them’ enemies of democracy, justice, the Hutu people, and Rwanda itself (RTLM transcripts). They ‘are wicked, and a wicked person always finds a way of performing evil arts’, declared Habimana (1994e, RTLM tape #0035). They used descriptors such as vermin, cockroaches, cannibals, snakes and hyenas. Habimana pronounced them ‘good for nothing’, asserting, ‘We must fight against these destroyers, dare-devils … These Tutsi brothers want to show us that they only know how to destroy’ (Habimana, 1994c, RTLM tape 0011). Broadcasters warned that the hated group would continue robbing the ‘true’ Rwandans of their rightful homes and ‘attack our country … usurp power … plunder and grab everything the Rwandans have amassed’ (Habimana, 1994a, tape 0004).
Radio hosts also broadcast ‘evidence’ about ‘their’ evil or demonic nature: ‘massacring innocent civilian populations’, cutting them ‘into pieces with a machete’. They had ‘terrorized the population and the authorities’ and burned Hutu people alive, ‘locked them up to die of hunger and thrown their dead bodies into Lake Muhazi’ (Gahigi, 1994, RTLM tape #0016).
‘They mutilate the body and remove certain organs, such as the heart, liver, and stomach; they eat human flesh’, added Valerie Bemeriki (Olojede, 2004). ‘They are heartless. It is obvious they were created to drink Rwandan blood and to kill, so there is no use continuing to beg them. Let them take up guns, and we will also take up guns’ (Habimana, 1994e, RTLM tape 0035). RTLM’s Gaspard Gahigi argued that the group ‘chases people from their homes’ and ‘butchers people and rips open their bellies’ (Habimana, 1994d, RTLM tape 0016).
Hutu Power publication, Kangura, added pictures and printed words to the dehumanized characterizations: ‘A cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly’ (Des Forges, 1999: 72, 73). Intermarriage with a Tutsi would create ‘beings with two heads’ … ‘Tutsis stay always exactly the same … The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country.’ A Kangura cartoon depicted RPF soldiers slicing up a Hutu baby in front of its horrified mother with the caption, ‘The RPF Democracy in full function: equal shares for all’ (Grunfeld and Huijboom, 2007: 25).
In Nazi Germany’s frame, the ‘good’ people were under threat by ‘evil’ or demonic forces. Goebbels’ Das Reich articles warned Germans, ‘Don’t be too good-natured, since our enemies are not noble enough to overlook our mistakes’, such as falling for ‘Jewish tricks’. It was a problem of Jews’ ‘birth and race’, he argued. There was ‘no distinction among Jews’, he argued. They were ‘part of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany’ and akin to ‘child rapists, thieves and pimps … Every Jew [is] our enemy in this historic struggle’ (Goebbels, 1941).
Writer Ernst Hiemer repeated the depiction in Der Sturmer: ‘Jewry is organized world criminality … a liar, a swindler, an exploiter, a troublemaker, a poisoner of the blood and a murderer from the beginning’, he wrote, adding that past efforts to ‘water down’ the ‘Jewish race’ through intermarriage and incorporation had been ‘catastrophic’ (Hiemer, 1942). The publication argued that: Racial science has incontrovertibly proven that the bastard, the half-breed, receives only the bad characteristics of the races, not the good, spiritual, or physical characteristics … Therefore, the Jew possesses the lust of the Negro, the craftiness of the Mongol and the criminal drives of all the races, which have combined to produce his blood. (Bytwerk, 2001: 56, 104)
Der Stürmer used subhuman slurs such as vampires, toads, vultures, monsters, insects, or bacteria and repeated the phrase, ‘The Jews are our misfortune.’ The publication’s special editions detailed alleged Jewish activities such as ‘ritual murder’, criminality, world conspiracies and sex crimes.
Headlines asserted a ‘good-versus-evil’ tale of conspiracy among Jews and Allied powers, who together planned to exterminate Germans and Germany itself. The Nazi publication Voelkischer Beobachter stated, ‘Churchill Promises Germany as Booty to Jews’ Herf, 2006: 282). Another argued that the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviets were in ‘Solidarity with the World Parasite’.
Mass-distributed pamphlets called the German people symbols of ‘truth and logic’ while stereotyping Jewish people as ‘our deadly enemy, since he, the Jew, is the master of distortion, the master of the lie and of betrayal, and also the master of hypocrisy, concealment, and masking’ (Ley, 1941). Like headlines, Ley repeated subhuman characterizations, including Jewish polyp … The parasite is the strongest expression of biological chaos. Even molecules and atoms, the building blocks of blood, have been ruined by constant mixing and through the inevitable incest of these bastards, now having only fragments of their original form and their original nature.
Adolf Hitler’s speeches and writings called Jews ‘poison’ to ‘our people’, a disease, and ‘fleas’ that needed eradication. In one speech, he declared that even if ‘alone in this world, they [Jews] would stifle in filth and offal; they would try to get ahead of one another in hate-filled struggle and exterminate one another’ (Naimark, 2001: 58, 63). He argued that his targets were biologically predisposed to be ‘a sham’, a ‘parasite’ and a ‘liar’.
Some 160 broadcasts specifically attacked Jews, alleging an ‘atrocity campaign of world Jewry’ that was filled with ‘lies and tales of atrocity’ (Bergmeier and Lotz, 1997). In one broadcast, Goebbels railed ‘against the atrocity campaign of world Jewry’, which he called a ‘campaign of lies and tales of atrocity’. Broadcaster Hans Fritzsche argued that ‘like medieval bigots, they [Jews] would like to see anyone they regard as politically heterodox dragged to the stake.’ In contrast, Germany was ‘a nation that wants nothing more than to be allowed to get on with our work and put our house in order the way we like it’ (Bergmeier and Lotz, 1997: 16).
Nazis reinforced the theme with propaganda posters in public places, ‘documentaries’ and ‘historical’ fictions. The Eternal Jew and Jud Süss portrayed Jews as barbaric and cruel, motivated by a ‘lust for money’. Jud Suss depicted Jewish financier, Joseph Süss-Oppenheimer, as a swindler and ‘race defiler’ whose death by hanging was the ‘just’ punishment (Baird, 1974; Holocaust Research Project, 2016).
This solution by death became a piece of the larger ‘final solution’ – the total elimination of the race, which was shared by both genocides. Rwandan broadcasters repeated the problem’s ‘solution’, killing the Tutsi, and included instructions about finding and destroying them. In the words of one broadcaster ‘If he is Inkotanyi, a known accomplice of RPF, don’t accept anything in exchange. He must be killed!’ (Habimana 1994c, tape 0011).
Justification with grand causes and ‘self-defence’
Themes of blame and dehumanization are joined by two additional themes in the genocidal frame: (1) a ‘grand cause’ for which eliminating the target group is necessary; and (2) a ‘kill-or-be-killed’ dichotomy, intensifying fear and making destruction necessary for ‘our’ survival. Both genocides repeated these themes. Broadcasters asserted that the Hutu must kill the Tutsi for four ‘noble’ causes: (i) purification and rescue of Rwanda, (ii) emancipation and justice (for Hutus); (iii) majoritarian democracy, and (iv) development – and for self-defence.
Rwanda was sacred: ‘Rwanda is here … where God located it’, and to rescue it, broadcasters called upon audiences to ‘fight for this Rwanda’, and to ‘take up clubs, cudgels, and axes and confront them head on, in order to prevent them from continuing to destroy our country’ (Habimana, 1994f, tape 0109). Broadcasters encouraged listeners to ‘take heart and continue struggling. Tighten your belt and become an Inkotanyi … fighting for Rwanda, your motherland, fighting for your life, your property and your country’ (Habimana, 1994a, RTLM tape 0004). They called for listeners ‘everywhere in the country, come to work with your army. Come to work with your government and defend your country. If you don’t do it, where will you go?’ (Ruggiu, 1994, RTLM tape 0131).
Broadcasters argued that fighting the Tutsis would liberate ‘us’ and advance justice for past Tutsi-committed wrongs, including a Tutsi-driven monarchy, slavery and Hutu exploitation in their ‘own’ land by the ‘invaders … There is no proof to convince us that [the Tutsis] are Rwandans’ (Habimana, 1994f, tape 0109). The fight should continue until ‘having liberated our country’, said Habimana.
One hundred thousand young men must be recruited and get up together and then we will kill and exterminate Inkotanyi. Especially the reason why we will exterminate them is that they belong to one ethnic group. It is to look at the stature and physical appearance of a person. It is to look at the small nose and destroy it. (Habimana, 1994g, RTLM tape 0131)
Their battle was also portrayed as democracy-versus-dictatorship, in which the RTLM broadcasters’ party were ‘democrats’ while Tutsi were ‘dictators of extremists’. Simbizi argued that the CDR ‘democrats … defend the interests of the people … the masses and not those of this or that minority group’ (Simbizi, 1994, tape 0004). The Tutsi were ‘dictators’ and ‘feudal-monarchists’ who ‘rejected democracy … cast [it] … out the window’ with hopes to ‘strangle it forever’ (Mbilizi, 1994, tape 0008). They ‘take and monopolize power … govern by force [and] oppress the Hutus’ (Ruggiu, 1994, tape 0004). As Tutsis were a minority, their ‘miniscule … clique should not decide the fate of Rwanda’, said broadcasters. ‘This Rwanda is mine. I am of the majority. It is I, first and foremost, who will decide’ (Chretien, 2007). By opposing the ‘contemptuous Inkotanyi’, the ‘Rwandans’ could ‘embark on a real democracy’ (Habimana, 1994a, RTLM tape 0004). That goal required killing their targeted group. ‘Let us go to the front first and win this war … provided we actually win the war, then we can say, “we have pushed back the Inkotanyi … we will no longer endure their dictatorship.”’
The RTLM’s frames also argued for racial purification and ‘cleansing’ the land. Broadcasters at the RTLM, for example, argued that Tutsis’ ‘heartlessness’ and ‘cruelty’ could ‘be cured only by their total extermination’ (Des Forges, 2007: 48).
Purification was also central in Nazi Germany’s media. Hitler, for example, warned that ‘lost purity of the blood … plunges man into the abyss for all time’ (Hitler, 1920: 327, cited in Naimark, 2001). By eliminating the racially impure ‘undesirables’, the Nazis promised utopia, in which good would permanently triumph over evil. The Holocaust would rescue the great-yet-victimized Germany, restore its superior place in the world, purify the human race, and rebuild the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’.
By defeating ‘the monster of decline’, the Nazi plan would ‘save Germany (which means you and me)’, wrote Ley (1941) in his mass distributed pamphlets, which argued for German people to defend and rebuild German greatness: ‘join the ranks, march towards a new and better future for your own happiness and Germany’s glory!’.
Goebbels emphasized the glory awaiting Germans. The win will open the door for us to the final freedom and independence of our people. Then we will be on the road to peace and free labour, the reconstruction of our homeland and a deep social happiness that rests in the community of us all. Truly that is a goal that is worth all the labour, sorrow and exertion of this war. Who would not want to accept them, no matter how difficult it might seem! They are the prerequisites for our coming freedom from all the chains, for the salvation of all of civilized humanity. (Goebbels, 1943)
These ‘grand’ causes were portrayed as part of the citizens’ duty, which required unity, sacrifice and transcendence of individualism.
Kill or be killed
Both Rwanda and Nazi Germany contained a ‘kill-or-be-killed’ theme. Failing to destroy ‘them’ would cause ‘our’ annihilation (Armoudian, 2011). In Rwanda, for example, one RTLM broadcaster warned that the RPF and its ‘accomplices’ were planning to ‘exterminate, exterminate, exterminate you until they are the only ones left in the country, so that they can keep for a thousand years the power that their fathers had kept for four hundred years’ (Des Forges, 1999: 48). The ‘bloodthirsty Inyenzi Inkotanyi who are exterminating the Rwandans [are] lying that they are fighting for democracy’, said Bemeriki who added, they were planning to establish ‘a killing and oppressive regime’ and a ‘dictatorship [by] genocide, the elimination of the Hutu majority’ (Bemeriki, 1994, tape 0008). Habimana warned, ‘We have … to fight tooth and nail to defend our lives and property’ (Habimana, 1994a, tape 0004). He later announced: We will look for guns and fight against the Inkotanyi here in Rwanda, and when we have exterminated them, we will cross into Burundi and fight against the Inkotanyi there, with the support from Burundians and Zairians, and the support from all those people who understand that a minority race cannot exterminate the majority race. (Habimana, 1994h, RTLM tape 0212)
The imperative was this: ‘There will be one alternative. Either the RPF will rule over a graveyard, or the people, dismantling the RPF, will rule’ (Mbilizi, 1994, RTLM tape 0008).
Kangura added to the fear by warning that the Tutsis, men and women alike, were hiding ‘among us’, waiting to ‘decimate us’. If they failed to destroy them all, broadcasters asked, ‘Where will you go?’
Similarly, articles in Der Sturmer purported that the ‘World Jewry’ was plotting to eradicate its enemies. For example, one headline stated, ‘Secret Plans Against Germany Revealed’. Another argued that Jews had been plotting to bring ‘Germany to its knees. They will stop at nothing’ (Bytwerk, 2001: 56, 104). And another warned about the ‘Jewish Murder Plan against Gentile Humanity’, which the article claimed had now been ‘EXPOSED’. In these stories, ‘murderous’ Jews were ‘torturing their victims, especially the children; and during this torture, they shout threats, [sic] curses and cast spells against the Gentiles (Bytwerk, 2001, 2004: 89, 121). The solution, again, required annihilation to eliminate the ‘Jewish danger’, according to Der Stürmer
Goebbels also warned of a murderous plot, claiming that Jews were ‘secretly … planning to strangle us’ as part of their plan to conquer the world and enslave humanity. One headline purported an ‘extermination programme’ by the US and Jews. Another warned that US president Roosevelt ‘demands sterilization of German People; German people to be Exterminated within two Generations’ (Herf, 2006, citing Der Volkische Beobachter). On radio, Nazi leaders warned that Germany faced ‘complete extermination’ and claimed that life on earth depended on defeating Jews (Bytwerk, 2005; Gassert, 2001; Welch, 2014).
Pamphlets distributed alongside ration cards claimed: As monstrous as a plan to cold-bloodedly exterminate a people of eighty million is, and as much as one may be inclined to consider it impossible and unbelievable, World Jewry is serious. We would not be the first people to be murdered by the Jews. (Bytwerk, 2005: 43–44)
Goebbels (1943) emphasized the trouble from additional enemies: We are defending our existence. It is good for us to know that. It does not make us weak, but hard. A defeat would destroy us all. The English and Americans would take our commerce, our ships, mines, factories and machines, the Bolshevists our men and children. What remained would no longer be a nation, only a heap of millions of starving and ragged slaves, defenceless and stupidly vegetating and, as the enemy wishes, posing no danger for its torturers and suppressors.
This ‘kill or be killed’ narrative stressed an imperative to destroy ‘them’ before they destroy ‘us’. Killing would ‘preserve you … the whole German people, from decline and ruin’, argued Ley (1941) in his pamphlet. If they failed to destroy the ‘pestilence’ at their ‘roots’ and ‘branches’, the Nazi genocidal frame warned that Europe would ‘die’ of the ‘Jewish Disease’.
In these cases, the solution amounted to one thing – annihilating the enemy, particularly the Tutsi in Rwanda and Jews in the Holocaust. Similar to the Nazis’ ‘final solution’ of destroying ‘the others’, in Rwanda, broadcasters repeated the solution of killing the Tutsis.
Discussion
Building upon previous scholarship across three fields, this work primarily sought to locate, introduce and understand a specific master ‘genocidal frame’ and its component themes. By analysing mass media messages in two modern-day genocides – Rwanda and the Holocaust – it located and analysed common themes across both genocides that comprise a master frame.
Past research has shown that frames, constructs that organize information into meaningful themes, can shape understandings and beliefs about politics, people and society. They can generate or reinforce sociopolitical beliefs, including about causation for political problems, in and out groups, and solutions for the problems. These cognitions have been found to influence political attitudes, emotions, allegiances and behaviours, although research also shows that people reject framing that does not comply with their cognitive schemata.
With the ‘genocidal frame’, this article posits that genocidal leaders attempt to build grand narratives that justify mass annihilation with five themes, which (1) divide and demarcate into ‘us’ against a (2) stereotyped ‘them’, who are (3) blamed for crises, (4) dehumanized and demonized, and that (5) justify genocide as a simultaneous means to a ‘noble’ end and a kill-or-be-killed ‘self-defence’ argument.
Evidence for these themes appeared in media content analyses from two 20th-century case studies – the Rwandan Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust. Both genocides contained all five themes, and made up a hegemonic ‘genocidal frame’ with no meaningful counter framing: The grand narrative required the ‘good’ to eliminate the ‘evil’ for self-defence and to build either a purified ‘utopia’, majoritarian democracy or another grand, proud cause. They stereotyped ‘the other’ as inherently vile, evil and subhuman, offering ‘evidence’ through stories. In both genocides, only annihilating ‘them’ would enable ‘our good people’ to survive and for the ‘grand’ cause to be established. Neither had substantive counter-framing.
Secondly, this work sought to embed the ‘genocidal frame’ into an integrated body of literature that spans genocide studies, psychology and political communication. As noted in the body of this article, the genocidal frame’s themes identified in both genocides correspond with those that psychologists associate with psychological antecedents for violence, such as intergroup psychology, and attack emotions such as fear, anger, resentment and hate. In this way, such a genocidal frame could be a nexus, connecting other conditions, such as crises/disasters, cleavages and ideologies to the genocidal end by helping shape the corresponding psychologies that make annihilating ‘them’ acceptable, necessary, or desirable. Theoretically, the collective blaming, stereotyping the dehumanized, demonized ‘them’ and arguing that annihilation solves the crises while building the ‘noble’ end connect the antecedents through meaning-making, whether this is communicated through interpersonal or institutional means. For example, in the case of socio-economic crises, another frame might promote the ideas of unity and cooperation instead of blaming, dividing, stereotyping, demonizing and proposing annihilation towards a grand cause.
Finally, this preliminary theory suggests that it is a five-theme composite that makes a ‘genocidal frame’. None of the themes, on their own, promote the idea of eliminating an entire group. For instance, ‘us-versus-them’ may divide, evoking intergroup-based psychological responses, such as groupthink, intergroup emotions and conformity, but without other-blame, dehumanization, demonization and ‘kill-or-be-killed’, the attack emotions of anger, contempt, fear and hate may not connect. The grand cause then provides glory, even pride, for otherwise heinous acts. Together, their meanings argue annihilation is necessary.
While this article offered evidence for a ‘genocidal frame’, testing the proposal of its nexus would require rigorous analysis. Natural experiments, combined with interviews, for example, can explore the before and after effects of framing. Contrasting this master frame to framing in other genocides and unsuccessful attempts of genocide would also prove fruitful. Finally, scholarship is needed to identify communication themes that might act to counter genocidal ones. For example, can frames that deconstructed ‘us-versus-them’, humanized the ‘others’ and deepened understandings about the nature of political crises evoke more positive emotions (such as compassion) and actions (such as cooperation)? The identification of these themes in mass communication may help genocide prevention in an age of identity-based conflict.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.