Reflection paper on the documentary Worse than war by Mike DeWitt with Essay

Reflection paper on the documentary Worse than war by Mike DeWitt with Daniel Goldhagen as a main star in it - Essay Example Despite the beautiful landscapes that the documentary dots the chilling events with, Goldhagen offers a concise narration of the events behind these genocides and helps in bringing out the serious atrocities. Besides this narration, the documentary brings out deeper implications of these wars with much deeper effects on victims than just the actual act of war, a view that is in most cases not brought to the international focus. As the title illustrates, most of these genocides were not just usual wars but were strategically planned and orchestrated towards weakening a certain side politically, socially, or economically, to offer the perpetrators a leeway to dominate their victims for many years into the future. For instance, the documentary takes viewers to the harrowing stories of Burundi and Rwanda survivors, revealing the real motive of the genocide. The genocide targeted the Hutu to seriously weaken their power in ensuring the Tutsis have unmatched powers to dominate the countryà ¢â‚¬â„¢s politics. The slaughter was not motivated by anything else other than to lessen the powers of Hutus, in addition to eliminating the political elites who were a threat to the prevailing political dynamics. The Hutu survivors narrated how the Tutsis killed or forced their elite tribesmen into exile. One of the respondents noted that the Tutsis wanted to kill their clan because his clan was more educated and thus perceived as a threat to the power hungry Tutsi cliques. This explains the arrest of most victims in government offices or other powerful offices, killed or incapacitated to weaken the voice of the Hutu. In other words, the documentary brings out the point that when the elite in the society is eliminated, the poor have no powers, leaving the perpetrators with an easy way to pursue their agendas with little or no criticism. In Germany, as the documentary narrates, Hitler alongside with the Nazis killed or incarcerated most of the German elites inclined to the communist s or socialist movements, which offered an excellent opportunity for the Nazis to have a total grasp of the country in 1933. After conquering Poland, similar to the Rwandese case, most of the elites in Poland were massively slaughtered, which reduced the resistance of the people towards the German policies to occupy and execute their power in Poland. Genocide is a perfect tool to consolidate power and silence any possible critiques in a regime, offering them the right environment to propagate their ideologies unopposed. Another powerful tool used in these genocides is to socially destabilize the perceived enemies by annihilating the masses from their homes and ancestral lands, which later offers some political expediency as the victims would not have the time to vote or be involved in the political affairs of the country. This was achieved in Indonesia where the mass followers of a communist party were forced into camps. Despite such annihilation, such genocides as happened in Indon esia have religious implications, which permanently alter the life of the victims long after the war. In Indonesia, as the documentary illustrates, the Muslim majority who perpetrated the genocide forced most of the non-muslins to convert into Muslim religion, which changed the victims’