A New Model for Studying Mass Murder: The Order of Genocide by Scott Straus

A New Model for Studying Mass Murder: The Order of Genocide by Scott Straus Lee Ann Fujii Department of Political Science, George Washington University Scott Straus’s The Order of Genocide stands as a groundbreaking work. It asks and answers some of the most troubling questions about the genocide—how and why it occurred and how and why so many ordinary men and women participated in it. Straus brings extraordinary assets to this ambitious project, including his background as a journalist working in the region (before obtaining his PhD), scholarly expertise in genocide and African politics, and an acute sensitivity to method and evidence. The result is a book that adds a great deal of knowledge to our understanding of the Rwandan case and of genocide in general. The Order of Genocide boasts multiple strengths, not the least of which is Straus’s ability to hone in on the most important questions. Straus asks, for example, ‘‘Why did the hardliners choose genocide as their strategy and why were they so successful?’’ (63). Hardliners do not always seize on genocide as their preferred strategy for staying in power, and it is not clear from the evidence, argues Straus, that the hardliners in Kigali had done so before the assassination of the Rwandan president on 6 April 1994, the date most observers mark as the start of the genocide. Straus argues convincingly that the genocide was not ‘‘meticulously planned,’’ as many have maintained, but was the hardliners’ response to an increasingly threatening and dynamic situation. Genocide was not the first strategy they took; rather, it was the one they took when they felt the most threatened, that is, when the RPF had (allegedly) killed the president and had begun a swift advance through the country. This argument is novel and extremely convincing; it also illustrates the author’s sophisticated and thorough treatment of new and existing evidence. What guides Straus throughout the book is a keen awareness that methods matter. He remains skeptical of any single source of data, be it the words of confessed killers, the decisions of an international judicial body, or any other text. This skepticism drives him to look for multiple ways to triangulate the data. For example, he compares different periods in Rwandan political history to look for common dynamics driving episodes of past violence targeted at Tutsi; he situates the testimony of confessed killers within that of other witnesses and survivors to probe the veracity of the killers’ words; he tests his own argument as he goes along to see if each subsequent step is consistent with previous ones. All of these methods show a great deal of exacting logic and creativity in pursuing answers to extremely difficult questions. Straus is also transparent about the choices and assumptions he makes. A person might disagree with any of his decisions, but no one can fault Straus for hiding how he arrived at either his data or conclusions. It is Straus’s methodological conscientiousness that makes the findings from the interviews he conducted with confessed and sentenced perpetrators a seminal contribution to the study of genocide and mass killing. These findings are critical because they put to rest many of the tropes surrounding the genocide. Indeed, what Lee Ann Fujii, ‘‘A New Model for Studying Mass Murder: The Order of Genocide by Scott Straus,’’ Genocide Studies and Prevention 2, 3 (November 2007): 265–266. ß 2007 Genocide Studies and Prevention. doi: 10.3138/gsp.2.3.265 is striking about these data is what Straus does not find. He does not find evidence that extremist radio or ideologies compelled these men to murder; instead, he finds that their reasons were much more immediate—they feared being killed by other Hutu perpetrators or by the equally fearsome RPF if they did not join in the carnage. Straus also finds no evidence to support the common argument that ethnic hatred drove people to kill. He does find that among the most aggressive killers, ties to Tutsis were less extensive and expressions of antipathy toward Tutsi more common. The vast majority of confessed killers, however, report that they had no problems with their Tutsi neighbors before the genocide. What ruptured relations were...