Darwinism and the Rwandan Genocide
Imagine if you will that you had a good relationship with a neighboring group of people, and things were fine for many years. Some people from your group even married people from their group. Things changed. They are now considered inferior and should be killed. Folks in your group accepted those racist views and the reasoning behind them. Obviously, this describes Nazi Germany. It also describes other places. A common factor is evolutionary thinking, which influences many areas in societies, such as law . It may be surprising to learn that Darwinism was instrumental in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Ntrama church altar, site of one massacre, Flickr / Scott Chacon ( CC BY 2.0 ) German colonists, and then later the Dutch, brought their Darwinist views and imposed them on Rwandan tribes. This Victorian myth of origins elevates white people to the pinnacle of evolution. By presupposing evolution and racism, colonists infected the people with the view that one tribe (race) was superior bec