Comment by string | Hacker News Reader

Comment by string | Hacker News Reader

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You seem to be quite unaware of the facts of the genocide.

France directly aided the Hutu government because they were worried about Anglophone influence in the region. Both before, during and after the genocide, France helped the perpetrators. Even their "humanitarian" efforts were largely skewed towards helping Hutus. When the French and Belgians were busy evacuating their own expatriates, they refused to help any Tutsis, even spouses. They did help evacuate Hutus.

France supplied arms to the Interahamwe for Gods sake. The people that slaughtered women and babies, who skewered heads on spikes, threw grenades into churches full of innocent people and literally gang raped women to death.

I am strongly against historical revisionism and this recent obsession with holding current generations accountable for actions that occurred hundreds of years ago, but this is not either of those things.

The genocide was unimaginably horrific and France's complicity is well documented. It also happened less than three decades ago. This has nothing to do with patriotism, and France should feel immense shame for how it acted in Rwanda.

Help is a bit of an understatement. It was actual incitement, in planned Göbbels manner. Read about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Ruggiu

Nobody can convince me that Ruggiu was not a secret service agent. Look what happened to him after he was a convicted war criminal. Italy set him free immediately.

But I would not only blame France alone. Most western states were complicit in these ongoing war crimes. The Kongo world wars included everybody. Ruanda controls the Kongo mines (as well as the Kongo presidency). https://www.quora.com/Are-we-heading-towards-World-War-III/a... (there somebody edited out his name btw)

The title of the article is: France bears ‘overwhelming responsibilities’ over Rwanda genocide.

overwhelming is defined as [1]:

- 2a: to cover over completely : SUBMERGE

- 2b: to overcome by superior force or numbers

- 2c: to overpower in thought or feeling

So to claim that France bears "overwhelming responsibilities" begs the question: overwhelming of what? Overwhelming the responsibilities of the people who actually committed the genocide?! And if not that, then what the heck is the word "overwhelming" doing there?

Suggesting that anyone but the people who committed the atrocities bear "overwhelming responsibility" for them is sick, infantilizing, racist and revisionist.

The people who committed those atrocities were human beings with full agency, not infants, not subhumans, and they alone bear the overwhelming responsibility for their actions.

They don't even have the tired Nazi accomplice excuse that the French ordered them to commit it, because that would be a lie.

The title of the article is bullshit. Maybe it is quoted bullshit, but it is bullshit none the less. Aljazeera's job is not to be a stenographer for liars.

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overwhelm

> The people who committed those atrocities were human beings with full agency, not infants, not subhumans, and they alone bear the overwhelming responsibility for their actions.

I'm not sure if you intended to reply to my comment, but I can't say I disagree with that statement. I was responding to this comment by the parent poster, which surely deserves the same derision as that given to those you accuse of misapplication of blame:

> So, we speak about people who decided one day to kill their neighbours with machete. France and the French have nothing to do about it whatsoever.

>They don't even have the tired Nazi accomplice excuse that the French ordered them to commit it, because that would be a lie.

You're saying using orders from leadership to commit crimes is a tired excuse. Are you therefore claiming that executors of orders bear all of the responsibility? So then, in particular, all of those in Nazi leadership that never actually fired a gun bear no responsibility?

In reality there's universal* consensus that Hitler and Goebbels et al do bear overwhelming responsibility for the atrocities of the Holocaust.

*Excluding ideologically driven contrarians/deniers

> Are you therefore claiming that executors of orders bear all of the responsibility?

Not something I claimed.

> In reality there's universal* consensus that Hitler and Goebbels et al do bear overwhelming responsibility for the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Feel free to provide a citation.

>Not something I claimed.

No but it follows immediately from what you did claim (quoted in my previous reply).

>Feel free to provide a citation.

I need a citation for the fact that Hitler (and to a lesser extent Goebbels) are synonymous with the words Nazi and Holocaust? Really?

> I need a citation for the fact that Hitler (and to a lesser extent Goebbels) are synonymous with the words Nazi and Holocaust? Really?

That is not what you claimed. You need a citation for the claim you made, then we can talk about you citing other claims.

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