Atheism of force and Atheism of fear
On the Rwandan Genocide
I’m trying to write a longer post about the current civil war of sorts waging within the right in the US over the Trump administrations failures to be “disclosure” on a number of fronts. Epstein, 911, Jfk, and now the most recent hot topic is obviously the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
The point of contention surrounding all these issues is one that’s so obvious I’m not even going to name it. But the suggestion that to name a place is the same as naming a people is very dangerous.
In doing some research for the piece, a few days back Alex Jones told Tucker Carlson about a dimension of the Rwandan genocide that I have now heard Tucker bring up repeatedly, so instead of presenting this all in one finished piece, I just want to present you with an excerpt from the following in depth report, starting around page 149:
The re-writing and re-imagining project rests on two pillars; a presentation of a certain version of history which de-emphasises Rwandan social complexities and a narrative of post-Rwanda society which casts the RPF in the role of the single most reliable source in terms of morality in its every form. This revisionist narrative was persuasively but firmly ‘fed’ to the journalists and academics84 under the conditions of a sophisticated doctrine of information control and received through what Pottier calls ‘lenses of moral sympathy’.85 As he rightly points out, this moral sympathy itself was a result of the failure of Western media to report adequately on the Rwanda genocide.’86 Thus, the conviction that the RPF produced a more truthful account on society and history became the mainstream narrative, especially in Britain and the United States where a new intellectual climate emerged, inspired by moral righteousness but crippled by its blind trust in the absolute objectivity of the RPF/governmental perspective. Critics of the RPF were quickly branded irresponsible, immoral, and in the league with génocidaires. It was politically incorrect.87
Clearly, theological and epistemological problems are raised by this mainstream narrative. In terms of knowledge construction, influenced by the state-engineered ‘correct reading’, which did away with local complexities and set the beginning of relevant history at July 1994; most journalists and instant academics dismiss thirty years of academic literature and research (1960-1994). Keane refers to impressive research done by Catherine Newbury, David Newbury, Lemarchand, Reyntjens and many others as ‘fanciful nonsense, a carry over from the colonial era’.88 If these instant academics propose views and theories that ignore the findings of three decades of post-colonial research, 89 they obtain their information from the state.90
One area where this simplified view of history and engineered knowledge harms the study of religion in Rwanda is certainly the complex role played by the Church –especially the Roman Catholic Church, on the political scene between 1959 and 1994. Most of the journalists and academics who subscribe to the mainstream narrative offer an essentialist reading which portrays the Catholic Church as a static, perpetually cohesive, opportunistic unit. It is difficult not to agree with Pottier that such a reading is ‘dangerous’.91 It is dangerous because it undermines an institution which played a significant role in the conscientization of a significant portion of the Rwandan population. Furthermore it is dangerous because by consistently portraying the church negatively, there is a risk of depriving the country of an irreplaceable partner in reconciliation .
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Page 177:
6.4.1. Politics of Fear and Politics of Atrocity The brief personal experience of fear provided above was shared by many victims and more importantly, most perpetrators, especially those that Lemarchand calls ‘Grassroots killers’ who were motivated by the same feeling only seen from a different perspective.
***The argument that crisis situations generate irrational fears that are rationally exploited by perpetrators of mass violence is nowhere more dramatically illustrated than by the renewed outpouring of racist propaganda diffused through Kigali’s hateradio in the days following the crash. (…)Many Hutu were driven to kill their Tutsi neighbours because they knew they had no other option; refusal to comply meant that they themselves would be killed the next day.82***
As a political act, the genocide was triggered and accompanied by a ‘Politics of fear’. The Hutu extremists feared and instilled the fear that all the Tutsi had to be eliminated to prevent them from capturing the state.83 This politics of fear explains to a great extent the overwhelming receptivity and initiative that the organizers of the genocide found from the mass of Hutu populations. Not only were many terrorized into taking part, but also the Tutsi were presented as a formidable enemy, a bloodthirsty breed of vipers that would stop at nothing to conquer power and reduce Hutu back into slavery.84 Theories of ‘retributive genocide’, ‘genocide by provocation’ and ‘pre-emptive genocide’ echo this politics of fear which is another use of the Hamitic hypothesis.
The Rwandan genocide particularly embodied what Humphrey calls ‘politics of atrocity’; a concept that refers to acts of face-to-face violence intended to torture, rape, massacre and mutilate the victims as a political strategy. These acts of excessive violence identify and victimise categories of individuals in order to terrorise both potential victims and those who become its spectators. The excess is in the transgressive character of the acts against innocent non-combatants, in public places and in its bodily mutilations. The violence is transgressive because it is beyond any expectation of the victims and beyond their comprehension. The very horror of atrocity terrifies those who face it and causes disbelief in distant audiences. The efficacy of the politics of atrocity depends on its victims being witnesses as cruelty must be made visible to terrorise. 85
Two additional features of ‘Rwanda 94’ reflect this politics of atrocity. As a general rule, the victims did not pose any resistance even when the killer could have been physically weaker. With the exception of a few places like Bisesero, Mbare and Mibilizi where victims resisted or fought back, the majority died literally like the proverbial lambs taken to the slaughterhouse. The politics of atrocity set in motion by the genocidaire regime had done a thorough job and convinced the victims and spectators that the extermination of the Tutsi was inescapable; the issue being how and when they would die. Secondly, most killers repeatedly said that they were coerced to kill because otherwise they would have been killed or they would have lost their loved ones. Hatzfeld86 and Straus captured and gave voice to this fear in their interviews with killers and victims. Straus, more than most, captures the ‘pathetic’ aspect of this fear, both in its terror and its shame.87 If the politics of fear and atrocity caused a visceral fear in victims, there is no reason to deny that it did not have the same effects on the killers. In fact, whereas the ‘genocide’ aspect of the massacres targeted only Tutsi, everybody else was a target –and most fell victim- of the politics of fear and atrocity, including the engineers of this abhorrent strategy.88
6.4.2. Atheism of force and Atheism of fear
Like non-believers or believers from other faiths, Christians were also targeted and inevitably fell victims of the politics of fear and atrocity. These few excerpts from Straus’ interviews with Christians convicted of genocide provide a painful insight in their predicament during the genocide.
***Reply: I stayed at my house, I am a Christian … Question: Why were the children and women killed? R.There is an expression in Kinyarwanda: “if you kill a rat, you must also kill the rat in gestation. It will grow up to be a rat like others. (…) R.If the serpent wraps itself around a calabash, to kill the serpent you have to break the calabash. Q. What does that mean? R.If there were Hutu who hid Tutsi, they had to be killed along with the Tutsi. (….) Q. Did you Kill? R.Me. My maternal uncle hid in my house, and I had to kill him. The soldiers arrived at my house…and found my uncle. They said, ‘you must kill him or we will kill you.’ I killed him. Afterward, they still said they would kill me. They put me on the ground with five others. They asked for money, for 14,000 Frw. I gave it. (…) Q. Why did you confess? R. I felt first that I had sinned. I first asked for pardon from God, but I found that was insufficient, so I asked for it from the state. I was never instructed; I asked for paper [on which to write a confession] and I did it voluntarily. I hope these things never happen again.***
If a politics of fear and atrocity can serve as mitigation for Rwandans caught up in the whirlwind of ‘Rwanda 94’, it does not operate as an exemption of responsibility or an excuse. From a theological perspective, ‘Rwanda 94’ corresponds to the two ‘Atheisms’ that George Adam Smith finds in the story of Daniel: an ‘Atheism of Force’ represented by a politics of despotism and the call to idolatry and the ‘Atheism of Fear’ represented by the prostration before and worship of the statue-idol.89 According to Smith, ‘the wielding of apparently absolute power may persuade those against whom it is wielded that it really is absolute (Atheism of force) and that they have no resources to withstand it (Atheism of fear).’90 Stories like Daniel 391 have insisted that there is such a resource and according to Gowan, this accounts for the popularity of the book among communities of the oppressed throughout the centuries.92
Applied to ‘Rwanda 94’, atheism of force corresponds to the terrorizing killing frenzy –the denial of human life being equal to the denial of God, hence an atheism- unleashed by the genocidal mobs and the threat of death to anyone who would not join in that godless and bloody orgy. The three months of genocide reminds one of the furnace of Daniel 3, a whitehot crucible that would test Rwandan Christians in ways they had never imagined. The threat of death was real, the testing had started, the flames were lit; there was no bluff to call. There were only two options; a recanting apostasy triggered by fear at the entrance of the furnace (atheism of fear) or a bold trust in God that ‘gives Caesar what is his but reserves what is God’s for God.’93
Most Rwandan Christians seem to have chosen the first option. Passive bystanding and active participation, deliberate or coerced, by Christians has to be understood within the context of an atheism of fear, which was the almost inevitable response of a ‘disconnected’ Christianity. Christian bystanders and killers seem to have shared the belief that there was really no God capable of delivering them from evil or their victims from the killings. Rwandan Pentecostals coined three theological euphemisms that disguise this atheism poorly; ‘Imana yarabatanze’ (God has given them up), ‘Umugeni aratashye’ (the Bride [of Christ] is going home) and ‘Akayunguruzo kaje kuyungurura’ (the winnowing fan has come to winnow). Therefore, participation and passivity could be justified.94 Aguilar is right to talk about the ‘collapse of theology’ while pointing to the inability of Rwandan communities of faith to challenge the possibilities of oppression and injustice.95
The atheism of force and its fear-filled response affected both shepherds and flocks. First of all, Christian leaders of the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian (Anglican), Presbyterian, and Pentecostal churches were shocked and terrorized into silence. Of all the aspects of the Rwandan tragedy, the silence of Christian leadership stands out the most, especially from a theological perspective. Although this attitude becomes less surprising once one takes into account the progressive self-muzzling associated with the seduction of power, it is nonetheless shocking and Des Forges’ strong criticism is appropriate.96 When they issued a public joint statement, it was towards the end of the genocide and the uncalled for equanimity of this statement makes Eugenio Pacelli’s condemnation of Nazism sound almost prophetic.97
The first public and joint comment on the events from Christian leaders was made almost forty days into the genocide, on May, 13. It was signed by four Catholic bishops, four Anglican bishops, the President of the Presbyterian Church, the legal representatives of the Methodist, Pentecostal and Baptist churches. According to Mcallum, the “…conciliatory document (…) apportioned blame equally to the RPF and the Rwandese government and called on both to stop the massacres. (…) The document never mentioned genocide and refrained from naming the organizers of the evil. In essence, it expressed condolences to the victims, called for an end to massacres by both sides, offered to mediate between the two sides to set up a new transitional government; requested a neutral military force from the UN, called for help from friendly governments to look for a negotiated solution, disapproved of acts of apostolic workers, and requested all Christians to refuse participation in massacres and acts of pillaging and vandalism and instead to pray for peace.” 98
Drawing on significant earlier works realised by Des Forges, McCullum and Gourevitch, Longman attributes the attitude and (in)action of church leaders solely to the kind of seduction and cooption by power sketched above. He argues that they were not just bystanders who can only be charged with ‘leaving the way clear’ but willing and major players in the genocide.99 In dialogue with Longman, this research argues that in addition to historical compliance, the aspect that he ignored or failed to emphasise enough is that fear was the most overriding reason behind the failures of Christian leadership in 1994. Instances of politics of atrocity were so factual, so graphic, so public and so repetitive that it overrode many virtues including faith.
Rwandans have at least two concepts to express the feeling of fear, ‘ubwoba’. 100 The first is kugira ubwoba, (lit. having fear), which refers to a general feeling of varying intensity of fear. The second is Gukuka umutima (lit. to have one’s heart ripped out) and conveys a sense of overwhelming fear that one almost loses their mind. It is this kind of fear that the politics of atrocity created in the heart of most Christian leaders; an irrational fear which ultimately led to falling in line with what the government of terror wanted; either as active participants or stunned bystanders. Also, one has to remember that these leaders had families, wives and children (Protestants) or at least dependants. Like the rest, they had dreams and plans for the future.
6.4.3. Fear of Death and the Power of Words
Yet, as understandable as fear is, it becomes and remains inexcusable particularly for leaders. This is again the point where this work is critical of works and scholars who offer a critique of religion in genocide without attempting an alternative. Christian leaders are blamed for what they did not do without pointing to what they should have done; especially for the flocks terrorised by militia and armed forces.101 The metaphors of ‘shepherd’ and ‘flock’ or ‘Umushumba’ and ‘intama’ were very relevant and understandable in a society where cattle-herding was held in such high esteem. From a tender age, Rwandans knew that a herd could sometimes ‘be terrorised’ whether by an imminent danger or an instinctive panic. On such occasions, the animals would scatter in every direction; causing potential injuries to themselves and destruction to the crops in the fields. The role of ‘Umushumba’ was to keep the herd safe either by defending them or in the case of an irrational outburst, to proffer calming and soothing appropriate words or touches, ‘kwagaza’, so that they would calm down and resume walking or grazing.
These metaphors apply to ‘Rwanda 94’. Words and touch -or presence- were the initial support that was needed in most cases from Christian leaders but they did not speak to offer pastoral guidance to either the politicians or the mass held hostage by the politics of fear. At the outbreak of ‘Rwanda 94’, the pastoral task was to utter words of comfort and to speak ‘tenderly’ to the people, none of which means a watered down message. Muslim leaders’ words point to the importance of words in pre-genocide context. Quite apart from the living, how many Christians perished without actually having the comfort of a pastoral blessing, last rites of any kind or a viaticum to reassure them in what was literally a journey in the ‘Valley of the Shadow of death’? Conversely, staying with the theme of ‘fear of death’, it would have been important to reassure the potential perpetrators, threatened of death that the Greatest Shepherd was with them; walking with them in that Valley of death so that they might not ‘fear evil’?102 .
One is painfully aware that these are merely words and in the context of academic research they feel almost out of place yet they happen to be the ‘Word of God’, taken from the highest source of Christian doctrine and theology, namely the Holy Scriptures. That alone would have made them fit for purpose. However, they become vital when one realises that ‘Rwanda 94’ was also a ‘war of words’ or ‘a battle of discourses’ over the souls and minds of the population. Genocidaire politicians and media used every rhetorical trick to instil a sense of fear, define and portray the enemy ‘other’ so that it became very clear that the ‘imperative of security’ passed inevitably through the elimination of that Tutsi enemy.103 Radicalising discourses led to radical acts of evil.
In fact, all critics of Christian leadership, secular and religious, agree that what was needed most was a religious authority voicing these words. After all, the ‘Word’ is the ‘Sword’, the only real offensive weapon of a believing Christian. Words like ‘Thou shalt not kill, steal or loot, covet your neighbour’s wife, cows or land’ should have rang from every pulpit and position of leadership from the earliest days of the killings. As genocidaires’ voices called for hate, enmity and death, there should have been Christian voices answering back calling for love, friendship and life. Against threats of retaliation and death, there should have been messages of life eternal and the reality of punishment as separation from God’s love. Also, one fails to see why church leaders should not have issued the threat of ‘religious sanctions’ such as withholding sacraments; things that are important for any believer and actually contribute to the more tangible and legitimate authority of religious bodies.
In the end, fear of death muzzled many Christian leaders. It can be argued that ministering involves the possibility of ‘dying in the line of duty’. This is where Schelling’s ‘slicing’ and Žižek’s ‘uncoupling’ becomes a test of faith. It is no longer a case of ethnic ‘separation’ alone but also the possibility of tearing oneself away from everything one cares for, including one’s life for the sake of God. Could it be that the tradition of religious leadership had been associated with power and privileges and less emphasis put on obligations and responsibilities that when the time came to stand and be counted and accountable, they were found wanting?
It is absolutely vital for theology to understand genocide and call to genocide as idolatry and call to idolatry. The methodology and technology of the event called for not just political but also a quasi religious obedience. Not to comply with the killing decree became illegal.104 It was also an idolatrous event considering the manner in which God-given life was denied to the victims. Some acts went beyond criminality and took a sacrilegious and apostate form. This was evidenced by the assaults on human and material symbols of the divine, the rape of nuns, the killing of priests and the destruction of temples and religious monuments.105 In the case of Rwanda, genocide was sin and idolatry both metaphorically and literally.
In conclusion, it is important to recall that the generalisation with which Christianity has been treated in this chapter follows a deliberate methodological choice to cast it in the ‘persona’ of compliance and complicity. Therefore, this should not constitute another explicative ‘metanarrative’ on Rwandan Christians and genocide. There are many facts and evidence that would support such a narrative but there are also many exceptions; many marginal acts and dissenting voices who have forced the future to remain open. They made it possible for Tutsi lives to continue to exist, for Tutsi bodies to be spared and represented in the many families of humanity and as an integral part of the Rwandan peoples. These marginal groups and people stood in the stead of the institutional church and its leadership, acting as a bridge for institutional renewal and continuity. Finally, like their Muslim counterparts, they sowed the seed for possible reconciliation in the aftermath; having resisted the call to enmity during genocide.
Source
https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/54531915/FULL_TEXT.PDF