4 ms·

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 th

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.

PaulHoule 1y ago
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-backfire.html 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
- brookst 1y ago
  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.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    How about https://www.etsy.com/listing/500290818/we-believe-yard-sign-2-sided-the 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.
    - pstuart 1y ago
      Edit: just waking up. > suggesting that the person with this lawn sign is superior in every way to people who disagree with her Da fuq? No, it's a statement of beliefs (which I share). None of it is meant to belittle those that disagree, it's simply stating a belief system. As opposed to calling Democrats DemonRats and implying that they're all evil and are destroying America?
      - PaulHoule 1y ago
        "No human is illegal" are four well-chosen words that would be a meaningless truism except in opposition to the construct of "illegal alien." If you thought "Science is Real" you might read something like https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/03/how-migration-really-works-by-hein-de-haas-review-home-truths https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/03/how-migration-... and understand that the discourse of politically oriented folks about immigration is not at all evidence based. Tacking one cause to another cause tends to work terribly for progressive causes The best critique of "Science is Real" is the Habermas classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book) which points out a failure mode of our civilization in terms of reconciling expert knowledge, popular participation, and reality which remains unanswered.
CalChris 1y ago
> speedrun to civil war Well there was the OKC Federal Building bombing. Timothy McVeigh was a dedicated dittohead.
- bloomingeek 1y ago
  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.
  - WisdomTreeDev 1y ago
    [dead]
energy123 1y ago
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.
- tehjoker 1y ago
  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.
  - api 1y ago
    … 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.
    - lazide 1y ago
      When a group is worried the ‘music is going to stop’ and is trying to make sure they have a chair reserved, is when this typically happens. And frankly - it’s deeply embedded in human nature because in a resource constrained environment, it’s what works.
      - api 1y ago
        I used the term raiding because this is what it’s called in chimps, our closest genetic relatives. This is primate behavior. The proto-genocidal rhetoric you are hearing in the US right now is probably linked to fear that in the near future nobody below, say, the top 10% of the ability curve, will have a job. So close the borders and kick out “outsiders” and go after minorities. Chimp behavior. By that I don’t mean to say these people are uniquely dumb. My point is that this is brain stem encoded behavior that can be triggered in all humans.
wat10000 1y ago
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.
seattle_spring 1y ago
> 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.
Yeul 1y ago
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.
- joshuanapoli 1y ago
  I'm not sure that's really the case. Most states have a pretty good mix of Democrats and Republicans.
  - brewdad 1y ago
    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.
- rendall 1y ago
  All States are various shades of purple.
mindcandy 1y ago
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.
beloch 1y ago
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-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
- ArthurStacks 1y ago
  Ah yes, the evil facebook, not at all caused by their terrorist activity.
dash2 1y ago
I think it's a shame, but revealing, that the most responded-to post about this topic brings everything back to US domestic politics.
- rendall 1y ago
  Why shame? Most readers of HN are from the US. It's good that everyone discuss these lessons in relation to their own nations.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- keybored 1y ago
  In a predictable turn of events American website makes topic about America.
lurk2 1y ago
> 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?

PaulHoule 1y ago

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-backfire.html 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

brookst 1y ago
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.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  How about https://www.etsy.com/listing/500290818/we-believe-yard-sign-2-sided-the 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.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    Edit: just waking up. > suggesting that the person with this lawn sign is superior in every way to people who disagree with her Da fuq? No, it's a statement of beliefs (which I share). None of it is meant to belittle those that disagree, it's simply stating a belief system. As opposed to calling Democrats DemonRats and implying that they're all evil and are destroying America?
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      "No human is illegal" are four well-chosen words that would be a meaningless truism except in opposition to the construct of "illegal alien." If you thought "Science is Real" you might read something like https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/03/how-migration-really-works-by-hein-de-haas-review-home-truths https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/03/how-migration-... and understand that the discourse of politically oriented folks about immigration is not at all evidence based. Tacking one cause to another cause tends to work terribly for progressive causes The best critique of "Science is Real" is the Habermas classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book) which points out a failure mode of our civilization in terms of reconciling expert knowledge, popular participation, and reality which remains unanswered.

CalChris 1y ago

> speedrun to civil war Well there was the OKC Federal Building bombing. Timothy McVeigh was a dedicated dittohead.

bloomingeek 1y ago
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.
- WisdomTreeDev 1y ago
  [dead]

energy123 1y ago

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.

tehjoker 1y ago
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.
- api 1y ago
  … 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.
  - lazide 1y ago
    When a group is worried the ‘music is going to stop’ and is trying to make sure they have a chair reserved, is when this typically happens. And frankly - it’s deeply embedded in human nature because in a resource constrained environment, it’s what works.
    - api 1y ago
      I used the term raiding because this is what it’s called in chimps, our closest genetic relatives. This is primate behavior. The proto-genocidal rhetoric you are hearing in the US right now is probably linked to fear that in the near future nobody below, say, the top 10% of the ability curve, will have a job. So close the borders and kick out “outsiders” and go after minorities. Chimp behavior. By that I don’t mean to say these people are uniquely dumb. My point is that this is brain stem encoded behavior that can be triggered in all humans.

wat10000 1y ago

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.

seattle_spring 1y ago

> 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.

Yeul 1y ago

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.

joshuanapoli 1y ago
I'm not sure that's really the case. Most states have a pretty good mix of Democrats and Republicans.
- brewdad 1y ago
  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.
rendall 1y ago
All States are various shades of purple.

mindcandy 1y ago

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.

beloch 1y ago

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-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

ArthurStacks 1y ago
Ah yes, the evil facebook, not at all caused by their terrorist activity.

dash2 1y ago

I think it's a shame, but revealing, that the most responded-to post about this topic brings everything back to US domestic politics.

rendall 1y ago
Why shame? Most readers of HN are from the US. It's good that everyone discuss these lessons in relation to their own nations.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
keybored 1y ago
In a predictable turn of events American website makes topic about America.

lurk2 1y ago

> 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?