Ethnopopulism and genocidal eliminationism: a discourse analysis of hate speech in the 1994 Rwandan genocide

Scholars have written extensively on the link between ethnonationalism and genocide, but, so far, little has been written about how populism factors into genocidal violence. In this article, we theorise the link between ethnopopulist discourse and genocide. We begin by arguing that ethnopopulism is a tripartite sovereigntist discourse that elevates the ethnic nation as the ‘true’; or ‘authentic’ sovereign, rejects ‘penetrated’ sovereignties such as liberalism, and calls for excluding both ‘national others’ and elites from the authentic sovereign community. We use the 1994 Rwandan genocide as an exemplar case to show how populism can be combined with ethnonationalism to construct the Tutsi minority not just as a ‘national other’, but as a ‘super-threat′ to the Hutu nation. This discourse functioned in a context of radical de-institutionalism to make the extermination of the Tutsis not only thinkable, but seemingly necessary. Using transcripts from media broadcasts in the months leading up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we demonstrate that the genocidal ideology conveyed by Hutu supremacists against Tutsis and Hutu moderates is merely an extreme extension of the more mainstream ‘enemy within’ ethnopopulist discourse. Although ethnopopulist rhetoric rarely leads to genocidal violence, the case of Rwanda shows that it may do so in severely de-institutionalised settings.