Kigali — In the mind of an ordinary reader, genocide goes with a caricature of a brutal goose-stepping soldier wearing a uniform armed to the teeth, trained, not to defend a nation, people and property, but to kill.

Yet the genocide ideology is hatched and harboured by the intellectual echelons, with a deliberate identification of possible victims and sporadic execution. It begins with identifying 'goodness' and 'superiority' with 'us' and identifying 'evil' with 'them'.

It is rooted in fascism. Fascism, according to Roger Scruton in his 'A Dictionary of Political Thought' is 'an extreme racial or cultural nationalism combined with economic corporatism and authoritarian autocracy; masked during its rise to state power by pseudo-radical populist appeals to overthrow a constitutional elitist regime; spurred by a strong charismatic leader whose reactionary ideas are said to organically express the will of the masses who are urged to engage in a heroic collective effort to attain a metaphysical goal against the machinations of a scapegoated demonised adversary'.

The National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (NAZI) in the 1900s developed a grotesque biologically-determinant view of so called "Aryan" supremacy. The Jews and other races were placed against the background of scapegoating and dehumanisation.

In the process of developing a genocide ideology, it became easy and important for the NAZI to blame all societal problems on 'them', and presuppose a conspiracy of 'those evildoers' which had emasculated and humiliated the idealised and idolised core group of the nation. So when Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933 he contended to solve society's problems to unmask the conspirators (the Jews and other 'inferior races') and eliminate them. So the Jews were the first on the list of Hitler whom he scapegoated as 'them'.

Both fascism and the genocide ideology, have a flimsy and definitely misplaced yearn and search for nationalism and super-patriotism with a sense of historic distortions. The 'them' who are associated with 'evil' are subjugated. The 'us' therefore start advocating for aggressive militarism even to the extent of glorifying war as good for the national or individual spirit. In essence therefore, use of violence or threats of violence to impose views on others becomes not only necessary but desirable as well.

As the cult of personality around a charismatic leader becomes compounded and concretised, authoritarianism becomes an accepted and expected norm, characterised by a fierce reaction and condemnation against modernism, democracy and liberalism.

The homogeneous masses are then subjected to latent coercion to 'voluntarily' join a 'heroic mission' which is often romanticised in character.

With this coercion comes the continuous dehumanisation of the 'inferior race', the 'gospel' justifying their eradication intensified, spiced with threats to the 'us' group how bitter the consequences will be, if they fail to participate in eradicating the 'them' group.

Usually, the fascism/genocide phenomena are engendered by century long institutions; which may be cultural, industrial, religious and racial.

In the 1941 holocaust, the author of "The Vatican Holocaust demonstrates how the Catholic Church was at the forefront of exterminating the 'enemy' in Croatia.' Writes he; "The Catholic Church did not leave the execution of a religious war to the secular arm, as she had done in similar circumstances in bygone centuries. She came down into the fighting field, full tilt, shunning precautions and brandishing the sword against those whom she had decided to exterminate, which had not been seen for a long time. Many of the Ustashi formations were officered by Catholic priests, and often by friars who had taken an oath to fight with dagger and gun for the "triumph of Christ and Croatia." Many of them did not hesitate to carry out the most infamous tasks, glorifying in deeds that would have filled with shame any average "heathen or barbarian from the East." All in the name of religion.

"Thus, while some, as we have already seen, took charge of concentration camps, others led the armed Ustashi in the closing of Orthodox churches, in the confiscation of Orthodox records, in the persecution, arrest, and yes even in the murder of Orthodox people, including Orthodox priests. At Banjaluka, for instance, an official order directed that all the Orthodox Church records of marriages, baptisms, and burials be delivered forthwith to Catholic parishes, while at Pakrac Catholic priests took possession of the Serbian Bishop's residence following the locking and sealing of the Orthodox cathedral."

Thus fascism, as is known is a despotic and totalitarian discipline which eventually gives birth to the rending acts of genocide. A closer scrutiny of the recent genocides; Rwanda, Darfur, Serbia and Kosovo have got strong ties and are in tandem with fascism. If where conversion fails, coercion rejected and then genocide employed to ensconce certain fascists in power is not checked in future, with an aim of totally putting it seven feet under, then what next?