Daily Kos: Rush Limbaugh Encourages Mass Murder Like Radio Rwanda

March 2nd, 2011 4:35 PM

CORRECTION: Limbaugh's Kos-inflaming remarks came on Tuesday, not Monday. Thanks, tipsters.

Rush Limbaugh infuriated the Left on Tuesday by suggesting the Left never concedes defeat. "But the moment you win the battle, and you know you've won - the war continues. Because these people, they're like cockroaches, they just keep coming back." The blogger "Louise" at the Daily Kos accused Limbaugh of being like a genocidal maniac in Africa:

If you were alive and sentient in 1994, as Limbaugh was, there is one immediate association you think of when you hear a radio personality call the "other side" "cockroaches" - you think of the Rwandan massacre. that is the word that Hutu radio used for months before the massacres to dehumanize the Tutsis, who would become the victims of mass murder perpetrated by their fellow citizens.

The Kosmonaut claimed Limbaugh "believes that we have forgotten the Rwandan genocide, and the primary function of dehumanizing language in that horror. Perhaps he thinks that we won't recognize that his own language echoes the genocidal encouragements" of the Rwandan radio broadcasters." But then she's forced to admit Limbaugh isn't offering evidence that he's advocating mass murder:

Limbaugh speaks of a "war" against "the Leftists," who, like cockroaches, will simply not go away, even after you have beaten them.  "They just keep on coming back." El Rushbo offers no suggestions for ways in which these Leftist pests may be eradicated. But his diatribe today makes it clear that beating them at the ballot box is not sufficient to eliminate them. After all, like cockroaches, "they just keep coming back."

This is a period when the Plutocrats, and their GOP lackeys, are expending every last bit of capital to defeat Obama and the "Leftists" (which is anyone who stands in opposition to them). The stakes have never been higher. Now that they have revealed their true natures - and their real goal, which is the elimination of America's middle class - they are truly going for broke.

Is Limbaugh's exterminationist rhetoric designed to prepare his listeners for a final attack against the forces of Liberalism? If only one "Leftist cockroach" is "exterminated" because of Limbaugh's words, he may still be held accountable, even if it takes 16 years.

One might think that this is idea that Limbaugh preaches "exterminating" his opponents is too bizarre to be tried before. One would be wrong. This is only the latest. Here are a few others:

Jeffrey Feldman of Frameshop on "Operation Chaos," May 7, 2008 (forwarded days later by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars):

The right-wing pundit's 'orders' to his Republican listeners have been clear: vote in the Democratic primaries as a coordinated tactic for sowing division in the opposition party.  The goal of such 'chaos,' Limbaugh has stated explicitly, is to foment hatred between different parts of the Democratic Party leading, ultimately, to street riots during the Denver convention.

The ongoing incident raises a serious question: How does Limbaugh's bid to incite political violence with radio broadcasts differ from previous instances where radio has been used to that end (e.g., Rwanda)

Bill Moyers on PBS, July 24, 2009: Limbaugh "incites riots in the public mind," reruns segment from September 2008 from former NPR reporter Rick Karr telling the story of a murder inside a Unitarian church in Knoxville and suggested that right-wing talk was too hot. Karr led the minister of that Knoxville temple of liberalism to compare American talk radio to the kind of radio that urged Tutsis to mass-murder the Hutus in Rwanda.

REV. CHRIS BUICE: If you look at the history of like -- situations like in Rwanda in 1994, the talk radio was a big part of leading to the conditions that created a genocide. The Hutu radio disc jockeys would call the Tutsi cockroaches. There's the sense that these aren't human beings. You know, they're not human beings with children or grandchildren. These are cockroaches. And when you hear in talk radio that liberals are evil, that they are traitors, that they are godless, that they are on the side of the terrorist-- that's hate language. You don't negotiate with evil people. You don't live in community with people you consider to be traitors.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, August 26, 2010:

In fact if you follow Fox News and the Limbaugh/Hannity afternoon radio crew, this summer's blowout has almost seemed like an intentional echo of the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts "warning" Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by conspiring Tutsis, broadcasts that led to massacres of Tutsis by Hutus acting in "self-defense."

Liberal radio host Leslie Marshall for U.S. News, January 9, 2011:

Listening to FOX News and Rush Radio, I think people would do well to remember Rwanda. Where over a million children, women and men were chopped to pieces by their own countrymen.

Of course, the Daily Kos itself had bloggers comparing Fox News to Radio Rwanda just hours after the Tucson shootings in January.

Jack Coleman turned the question around in February when radical-left radio host Mike Malloy declared "The right wing needs to be crushed in the United States like a cockroach. It needs to be ground into the dirt."

[Hat tip: Go Blue Dukes]