Rwandan genocide and the Zani score

I made up the "Zani score" as "... a measure of how concerned one should be about nascent entities or organizations. It tries to measure social structures that, 999/1000 times go nowhere, but 1/1000 times lead, given chance and circumstance, to very bad things..."

I imagined it in the context of an industrial society, but I asked a friend who's an expert on the Rwandan genocide to try to apply the metric to that setting:

1. A belief that the ends justify the means, or, in other words, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice". NOT SURE.
2. A sense of grievance and injustice. YES.
3. A charismatic leader. NOT REALLY. NO ONE WAS CHARISMATIC, BUT AUTHORITY WAS TOTAL.
4. Celebration and admiration of violence. WELL, SINCE 1990. IT WAS SPECTACLE FOR SOME.
5. Tribal or ethnic boundaries; a division into the "chosen" and the "other". YES.
6. Anti-intellectual, in particular anti-geek. YES, INTELLECTUALS WERE AMONG THE FIRST KILLED.
7. Denial of skepticism. Skeptics are outcast, dissent is forbidden. NOT SURE.
8. Welcoming and affirmation of the convert. NONCONFORMITY WAS NEVER ENCOURAGED GENERALLY.
9. Membership alone is proof of virtue. IN TERMS OF ETHNICITY.
10. Scorn for the weak; denial of pity or sympathy for the other. NOT SURE.

The only real conflict to the model was that the leader of the genocide was not particularly charismatic -- but since he had total authority that wasn't much of an obstacle. There are a number of unknowns, but not bad for something that was designed with a very different society in mind.

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