1 . Introduction
"You were completely aware of the power of your words, and you used the radio—the medium of communication with the widest reach—to disseminate hatred and violence. Without a firearm, a machete, or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians." Such was the statement delivered by Judge Navi Pillay of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Ferdinand Nahimana, founder and ideologue of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the Rwandan radio station responsible for incitement to the 1994 genocide.
Drawing on the so-called "Media Case," in which Ferdinand Nahimana was tried, this article seeks to understand the public's interaction with genocide by examining the impacts of the massmedia, which broadcast the same information across vast territorial expanses. The reach of television, radio, newspapers, and now social networks grew over the past century due to a larger literate population with access to transmission technology. Also in the twentieth century, issues of global and national relevance underwent profound transformations that intensified them, such as the World Wars and decolonization.
Consequently, with the outbreak of more complex armed conflicts, public support became essential to an unprecedented degree, and communication media were instrumentalized to meet that need. In many of these contexts, wars were not launched due to a perceived threat to national security, but rather to pursue the objectives of ruling regimes—totalitarian and expansionist in the case of Germany, or vengeful and repressive in the case of the Hutu parties.
In this light, it is understood that control of the media is undertaken to ensure the effectiveness of strategies aimed at manipulating public opinion, which, in genocidal cases, shared the common feature of defining groups as enemies of the State or the people. The state persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and the massive engagement of members of the Hutu ethnic group in the murder of Tutsis in Rwanda are examples of genocides that relied on the participation of the media apparatus in their extermination plan, exploiting and exacerbating preexisting social tensions. This article dissects public behavior in these scenarios and, by identifying the social phenomena that caused it, describes how they foster compliance with incitement to genocide, criminalized under Article 25 of the Rome Statute.
The objective is to render more tangible the analysis of media influence on public perception of armed conflicts in general. It sought to answer the question, "how does the media perpetuate justifications for armed conflict and influence the population to validate and even engage in violence?", by establishing a sequence of behavioral phenomena common to both the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, thereby facilitating comparison with characteristic trends in contemporary coverage. The methodology adopted, which consists of detailing psychological and sociological concepts with historical examples and identifying cause-and-effect relationships among them, represents an analysis that must be conducted in any situation where the villainization of a group or nation for purposes of persecution or ethnic cleansing is suspected, in view of the increasing informality and volatility of the national and international press.
2 . Theoretical Framework
2.1 Conceptualizing dehumanization and desensitization
Among the processes related to mass crimes, more specifically those driven by ethnic motivations, Gregory Stanton (2012) defines 10 stages of genocide, the first being the classification of social divisions—that is, the establishment of the idea that there are immiscible groups within a society, something achieved with greater ease when it exhibits low ethnic diversity. However, "all cultures have categories to distinguish people into 'us and them' by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality" (Stanton, 2012).
The symbolization stage consists of assigning names and symbols to these classifications and is also maintained by Stanton to be inherent to the human perception of society. Discrimination, the third stage, is the consolidation of an ideology of exclusion through law, custom, and political power. If the target group has not yet had its rights revoked, it is in this phase that they are denied. Such action paves the way for the creation of arbitrary, humiliating, and segregationist laws.
Next, Stanton asserts that dehumanization "overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder," representing the evolution in the treatment of groups that are legally inferior by equating them to vermin, insects, or pests. For Bandura (1999), dehumanization is determined by the way members of the target group are represented, with the psychological process being induced and internalized through descriptions, given that people are more easily brutalized when viewed as debased animals (Gibson; Haritos-Fatouros, 1986, apud Bandura, 1999). Continuing with Stanton's postulates, the sixth stage conceptualizes polarization, whose characteristics are the broadcasting of extremist propaganda by hate groups and the use of political violence.
It is worth noting that the timeline established by Stanton has limitations regarding the gap between symbolization and discrimination. The causes behind the villainization of the group are not defined, nor is the reason why symbolization contributes to violence—both symbolic and armed.
Once the stages traversed by genocidal societies have been conceptualized, it is important to direct focus toward the media, which can shape perception naturally, through the interpretation of impartial information, or in an induced manner, when specific lines of reasoning are instilled in the popular imagination through the selective, repetitive, and strategic dissemination of information—both regarding target groups, so as to foster dehumanization, and during the preparation and execution of violence. With this in mind, the concept of desensitization is examined. In psychological literature, particularly in articles concerning the treatment of phobias, "systematic desensitization" was introduced by Joseph Wolpe (1958) and defined as an anxiety-inhibiting procedure through gradual exposure to progressively more difficult stimuli to tolerate, initiated in relaxation states (Coelho, 2015).
In applying this concept to the emotional realm, Carvalho (2009) conducted experiments exposing two groups to violent images, among other types. The results showed that the group most exposed to the graphic consequences of violence (mutilations) demonstrated greater ease in ignoring critical distractors over the course of the experiment, whereas the group exposed only to images of weapons and depictions of attacks experienced greater emotional agitation upon viewing mutilations. In other words, participants exposed to the most intense images more frequently reported lower emotional agitation across all categories of images and displayed a reduction in emotional sensitivity regarding all images. Emotional desensitization was generalized to stimuli of diverse contents.
2.2 The mass effect
A behavioral concept relevant to the analysis of mass media in the collective reaction to atrocities is the "bystander effect," which corresponds to the fact that the willingness to help or intervene in a shocking event, generally considered dangerous, is inhibited when individuals are aware that others are also cognizant of such an occurrence or action (Garcia et al., 2002).
Albert Bandura (1999) analyzed moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumane acts, stating that this constitutes an increasing human problem at both individual and collective levels. The author investigated phenomena leading to the absolution of guilt that a collective feels for the atrocities it commits directly or indirectly. Relevant mechanisms include dehumanization, displacement of responsibility, euphemistic framing, and gradual exposure.
Displacement of responsibility consists of the following fact presented by the author: acts that an individual does not habitually commit, once endorsed by authorities, are not viewed as stemming from one's own will. Thus, the actors do not feel responsible for their actions and spare themselves feelings of guilt.
Regarding desensitization, gradual and repeated exposure to discriminatory violence and its incitement consists of the “routinization” of inhumane acts, accompanied by increases in the level of harm of the committed act as the discomfort people feel when tolerating the acts in question decreases (Bandura, 1999). The softening of related terms (euphemistic language) is a way to portray harmful conduct as respectable and to reduce personal responsibilities (Bandura, 1999).
Concluding the concepts concerning collective impact, the role of social communication itself is analyzed, given that “wars do not only entail violence, but also persuasion, counter-information, conviction, and ideological combat” (Subtil, 2015, p. 1). Bringing the population closer (in the sense of greater relevance) to the wars in which their armed forces were engaged had its origins in World War I as follows:
It was crucial to foster feelings and loyalties, recruit soldiers, induce hatred of the enemy, love for the homeland, maintain the morale of the populations, and, in short, mobilize society for a joint effort capable of supporting the State's warfare (Subtil, 2015, p. 21).
Regarding the interwar period, Subtil (2015) comments on the rise of consumption, advertising, the entertainment sphere, and the use of information techniques for the conviction and mobilization of individuals in favor of the objectives of political power, accompanied by the institutionalization of the field of communication. In World War II, strategies for consulting the population and significant efforts by nations to understand their audiences, achieve persuasive efficacy in advertising, and secure active adherence to political messages became more common.
Mass media, increasingly accessible to a large part of the population, assumed the role of the primary inductor and large-scale diffuser of emotions, messages, and fervors appealing to feelings of communion. Thus, propaganda can be defined as a strategy of opinion manipulation aimed at inducing agreement with it and an inability to choose another option.
2.3 Incitement in the context of International Law
Article 25 of the Rome Statute, entitled “individual criminal responsibility”, criminalizes, under its paragraph (e), “in respect of the crime of genocide, directly and publicly incites others to commit genocide”. Based on this, individuals associated with major media and cultural outlets have been tried in cases since then (with a focus on those of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, especially the ‘Media Case’). In texts clarifying international law, the differences between the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity or war crimes are considered to be the “intent for the underlying act and the dolus specialis that distinguishes the offense, that is, the intent to destroy, in whole or in part” (Palazzo, 2026). Thus, genocide is “the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings,” according to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96.
3 . Methodology
This article was produced from a literature review regarding strategies through which the media permeates the popular imagination and provokes reactions of conformity with what is being disseminated. In order to present historical examples of the results of the analyzed behavioral processes, aspects of the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust were combined with the conceptual foundations established in the theoretical framework, which relate to the classification of social divisions, symbolization, polarization, discrimination, dehumanization, the euphemization of extermination plans, desensitization, the bystander effect, displacement of responsibility, gradual exposure, and incitement to violence.
Therefore, in order to answer the question “in what way does the media perpetuate justifications for armed conflicts and influence the population to validate and even engage with violence?”, Stanton's (2012) stages of genocide were reorganized and related to broadcasts from the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), publications of the Kangura newspaper, and those of the newspaper Der Stürmer, among other forms of Hutu Power and Nazi propaganda, especially from the perspective of polarization as a precursor to dehumanization.
Next, the complementarity of dehumanization and desensitization in intensifying these stages was analyzed. Permeating the examples, the effects conceptualized by Garcia et al. (2002) and Bandura (1999) were identified, alongside the general overview defined by Subtil (2015) concerning the need for the media as a tool for the emotional control of the population to inspire popular support for military actions.
4 . Results and Discussion
4.1 The media as support for polarization strategies
For Stanton (2012), classification and symbolization are described as phenomena natural to societies, but which, nevertheless, should be cited as precursors to genocide. Due to the lack of explanation as to why these stages are relevant and harmful if they are natural to all societies, it is argued that polarization (stage 6 in Stanton's theory) is the distinguishing factor, as it precedes dehumanization (stage 4) and is a factor in the organization of violence (stage 5).
Reorganizing the theory, it is understood that the use of cultural and informational perception processes as tools of polarization results in support for state persecution of target groups, since the strategy adopted in political discourse of making certain matters relating to politics and public welfare inseparable from cultural and identity issues is employed, with scapegoating propaganda being the main example.
In the context of the media's definition of social divisions, one of its major functions is to shape the perception of society's composition. Without classification and symbolization taking place, it is impossible to clearly define an enemy group that threatens the well-being of others.
Symbolization is carried out using any physical or abstract element. In Germany, the identification of Jews through Stars of David—something that the source Holocaust Encyclopedia states was done in some regions of Europe throughout the 18th century, and was therefore merely reintroduced by the Nazi party (initially in the press and later in the form of mandatory elements on clothing)—served to reinforce the objective of this stage, which is to generate familiarity and unconscious reasoning.
The narrative also emphasized the existence of physical differences that set Jews apart and differentiated them from other Europeans, just as, in Rwanda, traits such as the tall stature of the Tutsis, their noses, and the colors and shapes of their eyes were a criterion for differentiating ethnic groups. An example of how symbolization was combined with the use of operational language directly inciting violence is the following excerpt from an RTLM radio broadcast:
Look at the person's height and his physical appearance. Just look at his small nose and then break it. Then we will go to Kibungo, Rusumo, Ruhengeri, Byumba, everywhere. We will rest after we have liberated our country” (Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha, 2014).
This symbolization was a revival of the distinction adopted by the Belgians—who were abhorred by the vengeful ethnic group due to their role in establishing the Tutsi government in the pre-revolutionary years. The Hutus' adoption of criteria established during Belgian colonial rule was an ideological subversion to intensify the process of popular domination and the reproduction of the segregationist narrative. Furthermore, during the Belgian colonial phase, the analysis of Rwandans' physical characteristics served as the basis for another form of reinforcing and identifying the division between ethnic groups: the use of ethnic identity cards (Longman, 2001).
In short, such a method strengthens the radicalization of the population by acting as a clear trigger for the lines of reasoning to which the population is exposed through the mass media. This conclusion resembles what Gilbert, Flora et al. (2007) summarize as “cognitive scripts”: a type of reasoning established through conditioning and observation, frequently associated with aggression. The media plays the role of conditioning scripts by providing stereotypes and associations that evoke intense feelings of dissatisfaction and anger.
One way of establishing scripts is scapegoating propaganda. This concept is added to classification and symbolization to explain the climate of hatred brought about and intensified by polarization, which ultimately leads to discrimination. Common to both Germany and a polarized Rwanda was the blaming of a social group as the cause of shared frustration (social and economic problems, crises, uncertainties, and social ills), turning that group into what corresponds to the expression “scapegoat.” In the initial shaping of the popular mindset, the exploitation of the fragile state in which the population finds itself convinces it that the struggle against the target group will yield tangible benefits. It is common to combine this strategy with stereotyping. Kabanda (2007) summarizes the stereotypes concerning the Tutsi ethnic group, stating:
The Tutsis became those who had “taken everything,” who were “everywhere,” who controlled business, who ruled despite appearances, who constituted the majority in education, both in terms of teachers and students, in the church, and in all spheres symbolizing progress (Kabanda, 2007, p. 63).
Such a stereotype stems from a historical context of Tutsi governance associated with Belgian colonization, during which Hutus claimed to have suffered socioeconomic marginalization. By reviving feelings of oppression, the stereotype of the “greedy Tutsi” inspired hatred among the population. In promoting the 1994 genocide, even though the order favoring the Tutsi ethnic group was no longer in place, these lines of reasoning were revived.
Similarly, in the context of German hyperinflation and the crisis originating with the Treaty of Versailles—intensified by successive economic collapses—both in widely disseminated propaganda and in political speeches, the figure of the Jew was also tied to greed and financial advantage, while the rest of the population suffered the impacts of the postwar recession. The accumulation of wealth by this group was portrayed as a cause of the crisis, popularizing the phrase “the Jews are our misfortune” (Holocaust Encyclopedia).
In short, just as on the battlefields, in the media it was also necessary for one side to be pitted against the other. To that end, the struggle to improve social conditions was rendered inseparable from ethnic issues. An example of political polarization was the persecution of moderate Hutus, who were deemed traitors. In the popular music of Simon Bikindi, the song “Njyewe nanga Abahutu” (‘I hate these Hutus’) summoned “comrades” to unite against the enemy and traitor to the ethnic group, in an anti-coexistence tone, referring to “de-Hutuized Hutus” as a less-than-human species (Gowan, 2012).
4.2 How Dehumanization Leads to Desensitization
The propensity for extermination is inherently inhuman, requiring a planned, strategic, and enduring media apparatus to convince the population that such extermination is justifiable. Therefore, dehumanization occurs as a consequence of the trust placed in the media and in authorities, whose ideological discourses are characterized by scapegoating propaganda. The dismantling of empathy for the villainized group is achieved through the repetition of the aforementioned associations and the manipulation of language to liken the target group to animals, creatures that provoke disgust, or even objects—something that facilitates brutalization and the channeling of hatred. Examples include the comparison of Jews to animals, the recurring use of the term “cockroaches” (‘Inyenzi’) as a replacement for “Tutsis,” and the phrase “it is time to cut down the tall trees,” used to signal the beginning of the genocide (Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha, 2014).
In the analyzed social context, desensitization can be defined as the loss of sensitivity, which means the occurrence of an emotional reaction of concern, frustration, fear, or anger in response to a distressing stimulus—in this case corresponding to discriminatory, humiliating, or violent treatment that causes suffering or injustice: discriminatory laws and practices, in addition to discourses that enable violence. It was emphasized by Wolpe (1958, cited in Coelho, 2015) that desensitization to phobias occurs when it is gradual and takes place in contexts not associated with pain, such as muscle relaxation. Similarly, in daily life, the lack of estrangement from violence occurs when genocidal ideas are embedded in contexts of routine information assimilation with gradual exposure, according to the definitions of Bandura (1999). Sustained by dehumanization, the most direct and initial way to desensitize the population is to euphemize language when approaching discriminatory laws or extermination plans.
Desensitization also explains the difference in the perception of violence between opponents and supporters of the agents perpetuating violence. Both share the common feature of being unable to prevent the genocidal plan, whether due to the repression exerted by political power or to ruthlessness, the latter being a direct consequence of dehumanization.
Among citizens who recognize that there is evil in ethnic violence, it is natural for the bystander effect to emerge, previously conceptualized as a sense of exemption from responsibility based on the belief that someone else is better able to bring about change. This is the answer to the question “why didn’t the Germans stop Hitler?”. Conversely, among supporters and sympathizers of the villainizing ideology, the perceived effect is radicalization, fanaticism, and displacement of responsibility. The relationship between commands from authorities and aggression committed by ordinary people, illustrated in Graph 1, combines with the belief in scapegoating propaganda, thus serving as the bridge between acceptance of and engagement with incited violence.
Likening both cases to the examples of Carvalho (2009), it is noticeable that, regarding violence specifically, emotional arousal is reduced as allusions, representations, and ultimately violence itself are trivialized. The use of euphemistic language and the displacement of responsibility are strategies for such trivialization.
4.3 From Desensitization to Incitement
In the radicalized mind, shaped above all by scapegoating propaganda and nationalism, desensitization does not correspond to indifference toward violence, but rather to the perception that it is a viable solution to the problem faced by the collectivity. In this case, it signifies the penetration of the imperative language of violence into the popular imagination. Such a phenomenon was observed in the milestone event that marked the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, in which the unleashing of violence was a response to a perceived threat—a situation that could lead to the return of a state in which the Hutu ethnic group did not exercise leadership—catalyzed by a shocking event: the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana in a plane crash.
Despite episodes of coordinated popular violence facilitated by the media and mass communication, such as Kristallnacht in 1938, the primary form of extermination in the Holocaust was violence carried out mainly by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in ghettos, labor camps, concentration camps, and extermination camps; whereas in Rwanda, killings took place in the streets, committed by ordinary citizens belonging to the Interahamwe militias, using everyday tools of manual labor such as machetes, a process facilitated by broadcasting the names and locations of Tutsis considered most dangerous (Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha, 2014). In interpreting these facts, the findings of Carvalho (2009) are relevant regarding the absence of emotional reaction upon seeing weapons and objects associated with violence—something that dismantles ethical conceptions of revulsion toward it—which allows for the assertion that desensitization and subsequent incitement were more effective in Rwanda.
The results of applying the methodology were schematized as follows:
5 . Final Considerations
Based on the literature review, a relationship of conditionality and of cause and effect was found among polarization, dehumanization, desensitization, and incitement, with desensitization being the main phenomenon responsible for the validation of and engagement with violence itself, not merely with hatred and ethnic tensions.
The process of applying this methodology offers numerous opportunities for expansion, both by analyzing genocide through the lens of this article—elucidating the final stages of genocide and differentiating the impacts of various media outlets through the dissection of publications—and by incorporating new perspectives, such as emotional phenomena associated with desensitization, like “compassion fatigue,” and with violence, such as the impact of instilling fear in the population, a tactic exploited in numerous RTLM broadcasts.
For more specific analyses, one can proceed from a principle established by the findings of this study: the susceptibility of the popular imagination to the type of propaganda in question is heightened during moments of socioeconomic and value crises, accompanied by political and social polarization. Thus, the established sequence may be relevant for analyzing contemporary trends of dehumanization and desensitization in countries accused before the International Court of Justice of committing genocide, such as Israel, as well as in others that may not harbor extermination plans, but rather seek population control through the aforementioned strategies.
It is possible to test the second possibility through a case study of the United States, addressed by Palazzo (2026), given the current state of political polarization, allegations of the dehumanization of immigrants, and the population's desensitization to crimes against minors committed by Jeffrey Epstein and the elite. Furthermore, the nation has its own laws regarding incitement to genocide, has not acceded to the Rome Statute, and has not faced any criminal prosecution for potential human rights violations and war crimes (Palazzo, 2026). The internet phenomenon also introduces new points of discussion regarding desensitization, as it intensifies information flows and the deployment of the strategies analyzed in this article.