We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

by Philip Gourevitch

Even mobs and riots have a design, and great and sustained destruction requires great ambition.

These victims of genocide had been psychologically prepared to expect death just for being Tutsi. They were being killed for so long that they were already dead.”

Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy. —RALPH ELLISON Invisible Man

He was one of those creatures of destruction who turn everything hurled at them into their own weapon.

Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.

Killing Tutsis was a political tradition in postcolonia Rwanda; it brought people together.

in order to move a huge number of weak people to do wrong, it is necessary to appeal to their desire for strength—and

Amnesty International: “Whatever the scale of atrocities committed by one side, they can never justify similar atrocities by the other.”