Hyperbole much?
Former Alltell CEO Scott Ford gave a speech to the local Chamber of Commerce in Fort Smith, Arkansas during which he drew a comparison between the 99 percent Movement and the Rwandan genocide:
Ford was the featured speaker at the event held in downtown Fort Smith at the Holiday Inn City Center. He shared his journey from Alltel, a company he was president of from 1996 to 2001, to Westrock Coffee and the Rwanda Trading Company.
“There’s a common denominator (with the Occupy Wall Street movement) that I understand. But what they could learn from Rwanda is this: if instead of being angry, they could figure out how the system works and have an economic impact within that system rather than just a political one, they could actually form the world they want to form,” Ford said.
~snip~
Ford shared his journey at the event as well as similarities he sees in Rwanda of 1994 and the Occupy movement that has been the subject of national media attention.
“We’re really not working on solutions right now. We’re working on our political positions. Until we get sick and tired of being sick and tired with our lack of progress, and we get a set of leaders in that will fix it, nothing will be solved. I don’t think we’re sick and tired of ourselves enough yet, but I think we’ll get there in the next five years. I hope we do,” Ford said.
Ford compared the “We are the 99%” Occupy protest slogan to the turmoil that existed surrounding Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. There, he pointed out, was where 90% of the poorest looked upon the 10%, “who were wealthy enough to own cows,” and said “that we the 90% being the bravest people we know are so poor, and the 10% are so rich, they must be cheating. How can they be making more money than us? They’re less than us,” Ford said.
Ford continued: “And from there it went to ‘you (the 10%) are subhuman.’ Then, the political leadership and the wife of the (Rwandan) President embraced it. They gathered their children together and held seminars for how to use a machete. From that point, it went from, ‘you are subhuman’ to ‘you are cockroaches and need to be killed.’”
“In 90 days, they killed a million people by hand,” Ford said.
Bringing the comparison home, he noted the Occupy movement is “so dangerous economically that you should be putting money in other countries.” He clarified he didn’t see the Occupy movement turning to the violent extremes found in Rwanda, but that “when you start this kind of class warfare, it ends not with people doing better, but worse.”
This comparison is outright absurd. The sloganeering leading up to and during the genocide in Rwanda ultimately was about ethnic cleansing. Occupy Wall Street is about income inequality. The two have absolutely nothing to do with one another. This sort of rhetoric is desperate and irresponsible.
[via Columbia Journalism Review]
I’ll believe it when I see him being chased by a group of machete-waving protesters. Not that that’s an unpleasant mental image in its own right, though I still prefer the torches and pitchforks.
In addition to the outlandish comparison, Ford doesn’t understand that OWS is not angry at the wealthy for being wealthy, they’re angry at the powerful for rigging the game so only they can afford the entry fee.
Someone compared the problem to a poker game where it’s rigged so the wealthy always win but it’s really rigged so you’d have to be wealthy to afford the initial ante. Nobody else can even get in the game.
precisely.