by EDWARD S. HERMAN and DAVID PETERSON
In his June 17 “review” of our book The Politics of Genocide, for Pambazuka News,1 Gerald Caplan, a Canadian writer who Kigali’s New Times described as a “leading authority on Genocide and its prevention,”2 focuses almost exclusively on the section we devote to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.3 Caplan says virtually nothing about the rest of the book: nothing about the analytic framework that we apply throughout, nothing about the wealth of data that we report about usage of the term ‘genocide’ for different theaters where atrocities have been committed, nothing about our criticisms of “responsibility to protect” doctrine and the International Criminal Court, and almost nothing about the many other conflicts that also serve to corroborate our thesis.4 Instead, Caplan uses his “review” to falsely identify the main locus of responsibility for the mass killings known as the “Rwanda genocide,” falsely deny the central and ongoing U.S. role in the catastrophic events in Rwanda and the DRC from 1990 to the present, and maliciously label anyone who disagrees with him a “genocide denier” and member of the “lunatic fringe.” Caplan even defends Paul Kagame’s dictatorship, including Kagame’s suppression of free elections and free speech. All of this, we believe, makes Caplan not only a genocide denier, but as he helps divert attention from Kagame’s mass killings and pillage in the DRC, a genocide facilitator as well.
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