Rwandan genocide invoked a mode of killing that was entirely different than that of the genocides we have read about, specifically in the way in which people were killed. The Armenian genocide brings to mind death marches across deserts, the Holocaust gas chambers and crematorium, but the unique element of the Rwandan genocide is the use of a more personal form of killing: the machete. The actions of the killers did not indirectly kill the person, as with a gun, or a button or lever in a gas chamber. The majority of the killers literally had to hack the bodies of their neighbors to death.
I have never killed a human, thank god, and thus I can't confirm this as truth, but I would imagine that when it is your own hands, your own force that goes into the killing of another human, it feels significantly different than when you simply pull the trigger on a gun. The killing in the Rwandan genocide is done on a personal level, even though the motives are those of others.
Getting in the zone is a term we use to describe a feeling of total concentration we feel when we are doing a certain activity. When we are reading we are in the story, when we play sports our whole mind is focused on the next shot. I'm sure it is the same with killing like this. When you get into it, all you think about is killing the next person. Could one kill so many people and really think hard about what they were doing? The thought gets pushed to the back of your mind and you think about the next kill.
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I think that one of the reasons for the difference in methods of killing is the lack of organization in Rwanda. In the Holocaust, and the Armenian genocide, the focus has been to get rid of a certain people. So, the methods of killing had to be organized to make sure they were all murdered. In Rwanda, however, the propaganda was much more to the effect of taking revenge. Revenge doesn't need organization; in fact it works better when there is chaos. When killing is organized, it usually turns more mechanical and impersonal, and ordinary citizens probably saw it as more of the government's job. When it is an act of revenge, however, that brings the act of murder to something you do for YOURSELF, so ordinary civilians were turning to the weapons handy (machetes) and taking their own revenge.
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