2041 -- NEUBERT, DIETER

Dynamics of escalating violence
Sociologus Beiheft/Supplement 1.1999:153-174

##Questions about causes and guilt dominate the analysis. This approach risks continuing the conflict in the scholarly discussion with other means. To avoid this, the analysis must be placed in a wider framework. One possibility is a political perspective that includes regional and international relations...
Another framework is more promising in the context of an analysis of dynamics of violence. I will question dynamics of escalation in an extremely violent conflict...
Now, we can present the factors that made the extreme escalation of violence in Rwanda possible. These are:

• a situation extremely burdened with conflicts including an economic crisis (land shortage, weak economy), a run-down political regime, and external pressure to repatriate Rwandan refugees,
  
• a history of pogroms and counter-pogroms in Rwanda and Burundi,
  
• the assertion of an interpretation of history with clear-cut divides combining ethnic and feudal social categories,
  
• a threat to the regime by violent rebel attacks and the success of the power holders to enforce their interpretation of the attack along this divided structure,
  
• the absence of a credible structure for political negotiation and reconciliation,
  
• a political development that created a culture of impunity leading to a perforated monopoly of violence and an integration of violence in everyday life.
  
• Even all these factors together are not sufficient to understand the final violent outburst. The fact that the conflict turned into a genocide was the racist ideology of the Hutu extremists. The ideology included the dehumanisation of the political opposition and the willingness combined with capability of organising a genocide using administrative and military structures.##

Keywords: violence, Hutu, Tutsi, pogroms, escalation of violence, Holocaust, war