Imagine for a moment if Hermann Wilhelm Göring were alive and publishing under a major imprint, his books comfortably nestled among bestsellers, his narratives repackaged as “alternative viewpoints.” Absurd? Unthinkable? Not if you’re Source du Nil or its publisher Dr. Eugene Shimamungu. Through a disturbing feat of revisionism, Shimamungu brings us Les Interahamwe du FPR: Au Coeur de la Planification du Génocide Au Rwanda or The Interahamwe of the RPF: At the Heart of the Planning of the Genocide in Rwanda in English; by Jean Kambanda. This isn’t your ordinary book; it’s a full-blown inversion of history, where genocidaires are the heroes, and the liberators, the villains. With a turn of phrase, Kambanda morphs from the mastermind of mass murder into the tragic figure unjustly persecuted by international forces, who, in his telling, were determined to smear “misunderstood” patriots like him. Let's not overlook Kambanda’s qualifications. This is no bystander chronicling history from the fringes. Kambanda was Prime Minister of Rwanda’s interim government from April to July 1994 — the regime that unleashed les vrais Interahamwe on a murderous spree that left over a million Tutsi dead. In a historical twist worthy of dystopian fiction, Kambanda’s new book claims that it wasn’t his government, but the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), who engineered the genocide. All those years spent planning, arming, and cheering on genocidal militias? Kambanda would now have us believe those were mere misunderstandings. The cover title Les Interahamwe du FPR is a calculated double entendre: to a French-speaking reader, it hints that the RPF were akin to the Interahamwe militias who spread bloodshed across Rwanda. Or, it should be understood — the Interahamwe was a creation of the RPF as recently explained by a Brussels’ based genocide ideologue Gaspar Musabyimana on a YouTube channel of genocidaires — FDU-Inkingi. The English version of Kambanda’s book in the same print, is titled: RPF Killers: The Masterminds of Genocide in Rwanda, delivers the message even more bluntly. It’s a masterclass in propaganda design — one that relies on insinuation, misdirection, and a disorienting reversal of roles. Kambanda doesn’t just rewrite history; he assaults, to kill it. One thing is clear: genocide is not an alternative narrative. It’s a fact of horrific proportions. The ICTR convicted Kambanda on the grounds of overwhelming evidence: The crimes he orchestrated carried intrinsic gravity, their systematic nature particularly shocking to the human conscience. He was found to have acted knowingly and with premeditation during a genocide that ravaged an entire population. As Prime Minister, the judgement stipulated, Kambanda abused the sacred trust placed in him to protect his citizens. In its verdict, the ICTR made an important observation: Kambanda had ample opportunity to express remorse, to account for his actions. Instead, he offered neither regret nor explanation. Now he offers us revisionism, channeled through Shimamungu’s Source du Nil. But no revision can cleanse the realities of his life sentence or the atrocities he oversaw. The lost paradise and the death of a Republic But Kambanda’s book is only the beginning. Rwanda: Le Paradis Perdu: Les Derniers Secrets de l'Ex-Commandant de la Garde Présidentielle de Juvénal Habyarimana is another dystopian entry in this hall of revisionist literature, this time by Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of Habyarimana's Presidential Guard. Wanted by the ICTR until his death in Harare, Zimbabwe — Major Mpiranya oversaw a guard responsible for high-profile murders and attacks on Tutsi and those Hutu who resisted genocide. Here the fugitive describes his vision of Rwanda as a lost paradise, painting himself not as a commander in one of the most cold-blooded operations of the genocide, but as a wistful patriot who laments what could have been. “What could have been” in Mpiranya’s paradise would, of course, have been a Rwanda devoid of Tutsi. Major Emmanuel Neretse’s book, They Killed the Rwandan Republic: History of a Return to Tutsi Feudalism, reads like an ideological throwback, designed to spark nauseating patriotic tears among a certain nostalgic demographic — the kind of people who still believe Rwanda’s greatest tragedy was not the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, but the downfall of Hutu dominance. With a foreword by Charles Onana, master of the genocide-denial genre, and a postscript by Joan Carrero, the Catalonian founder of Inshuti (which ironically means friends in Kinyarwanda, though Carrero’s list of friends is quite questionable), Neretse’s book practically begs for a friends of evil in print designation. Neretse's choice of a black cover, adorned with the old Rwandan coat of arms in the flag colors of red, yellow, and green, perfectly encapsulates the book’s mission: to resurrect a past drenched in ethnic supremacy and frame it as a lost dream land. But don’t let the pseudo-academic packaging fool you. What Neretse offers here is less of a history lesson and more of a revisionist fairy tale. Imagine a disgruntled Nazi officer penning a heartfelt memoir about the collapse of the Third Reich, with glowing endorsements from Holocaust deniers like David Irving. That’s exactly the tone and intention behind “They Killed the Rwandan Republic.” A lament for Hutu power by the revisionist dream team The crux of Neretse’s argument centers around a supposed revolutionary “project” that began in 1959 when Hutu power overthrew the Tutsi monarchy, supposedly ending centuries of Tutsi domination. He casts this event as the heroic moment when the oppressed Hutu majority finally rose up, ignoring the reality that the aftermath was a series of massacres and entrenched ethnic divisions. Neretse bemoans the loss of this “great” revolution and asks the rather leading question: Why did the Hutu-led republic fall in 1994? The answer, in his view, is not genocide or the failure of an ethnically discriminatory regime, but rather the military defeat at the hands of Tutsi “rebels” (also known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF). He frames this defeat as the ultimate tragedy — completely avoiding the fact that it was a genocide against the Tutsi that precipitated the RPF's intervention. Neretse’s “self-critique” is, unsurprisingly, a lamentation for the lost Hutu hegemony. His book yearns for the days when Rwanda was a republic in name but an apartheid state in practice. One almost expects him to argue that the problem with Hutu power wasn’t the ethnic cleansing — it was just that they weren’t militarily prepared enough to succeed. Charles Onana, who needs no introduction in genocide denial circles, opens the book with a foreword that perfectly sets the tone. Onana, famous for his creative reinterpretation of Rwandan history, paints the RPF as the ultimate villains of 1994, while the genocidal Hutu regime is portrayed as noble defenders of a republic. He throws in the usual conspiracy theories about international meddling, casting doubt on whether genocide even occurred, let alone who was responsible for it. It’s exactly the sort of mental gymnastics one would expect from someone who has built a career on blaming the victims. Then there’s Joan Carrero, Neretse’s Catalonian Inshuti (friend), who closes the book with a postscript that reads like a manifesto for revisionist activism. Carrero, who seems to have made a second career out of defending genocidaires, frames the current Rwandan government as a quasi-feudal regime of Tutsi overlords, enslaving the Hutu majority. In his world, the Genocide Against the Tutsi never happened — it was just a return to Tutsi dominance. Carrero's attempts to downplay the genocide while simultaneously calling for democratic reform under a Hutu majority could have you wondering: what exactly does he think a just future for Rwanda looks like? Given his track record, it probably involves a regime change that conveniently absolves genocidaires of their crimes. In his supposed self-reflection, Neretse does what all revisionists do: he casts the genocidal Hutu regime as purely misjudged. He blames the criminal regime’s failure not on its genocidal policies but on weak leadership and external interference. He muses that, had they been more prepared militarily, the Hutu leadership could have preserved their achievements— achievements, in his view, that included systemic discrimination and the eventual genocide of the Tutsi minority. His critique of the political and military failings of the Hutu regime comes off as a bizarre exercise in historical absolution. According to Neretse, the Hutu republics could have continued thriving had it not been for external forces and the troublesome RPF. It’s a narrative that conveniently overlooks the fact that the Hutu Power ideology was one of exclusion and violence from the very start. Revisionism in a shiny new package and appalling double standards They Killed the Rwandan Republic is not a history book — it's a dangerous exercise in rewriting history to suit the agenda of genocidaires and their apologists. With endorsements from Charles Onana and Joan Carrero, the book is given a thin covering of believability within revisionist circles, but outside of those, it reads like an unhinged attempt to rewrite one of the darkest chapters in modern history. The real tragedy, according to Neretse, Onana, and Carrero, isn't the genocide itself—it's that the genocidal regime failed. This book, along with its notorious contributors, offers nothing more than a lament for a brutal past. It serves as a cautionary reminder that denialism and revisionism continue to thrive, often under the guise of intellectual critique, and are still peddled to audiences willing to excuse genocide in the name of preserving the republic. If you're wondering why these books sound more like dystopian satire than history, it’s because in most rational societies, they would be classified as hate propaganda. Imagine titles like ‘The SS: Defenders of Germany's Integrity’ by Himmler or ‘The Great Betrayal: How the Allies Orchestrated the Holocaust’ by Joseph Goebbels. These would be universally condemned as monstrous fabrications, instantly recognized as the work of unrepentant criminals trying to excuse the inexcusable. Yet somehow, when the topic is the Genocide Against the Tutsi, there’s an inexplicable silence. Why? There’s an alarming double standard. Holocaust denial has rightly been cast out to the fringes, rejected by all reputable publishers. But denial of the Tutsi genocide? Apparently, it’s fair game. Just as Kambanda’s fantasy narrative and Mpiranya’s so-called “paradise” find platforms, so do other books filled with similarly vile propaganda on Amazon and other global distributors. What’s more, these publications aren’t just relegated to dark, obscure corners of the internet; they’re polished, well-published works that sit on respectable bookshelves, described as “alternative narratives” rather than outright toxic lies. This genre of revisionist literature doesn’t stop with the books of genocidaires. Known genocide ideologues like Victoire Ingabire, for instance, write op-eds that are treated not as venomous rants but as “dissenting” political views. Organizations like Jambo Asbl, which is a platform to notorious deniers, operate unimpeded. Even hate songs by convicted criminals like Bikindi Simon find their way onto platforms like YouTube, where the infamous Abanyuramatwi still floats through the digital ether as if it weren’t a call to arms for ethnic cleansing. To be fair, some of these denialist authors dress up their lies in “academic” citations, hoping to pass their propaganda off as scholarly critique. The likes of Charles Onana, a self-styled “researcher,” concoct tales that demonize the RPF while painting convicted genocidaires as martyrs. Onana’s “scholarship” is, of course, filled with the same twisted accusations — that the genocide was a mere “conquest of power,” and that the Tutsi-led RPF somehow orchestrated their own people’s massacre. In any other context, his books would be laughed out of academia. But in the case of Rwanda, the deniers have found a loophole, exploiting historical ignorance and latent prejudices to peddle their lies as “critical perspectives.” The final irony here is that some of these texts are hailed by certain circles as courageous “counter-narratives.” But let’s not mince words: when criminals convicted of one of the most heinous crimes in modern history are given platforms to “tell their story,” we’ve crossed a dangerous threshold. Every sale of Kambanda’s or Mpiranya’s books, every view of a denialist’s YouTube video, every op-ed by a genocide ideologue that goes unchallenged, sends a message to genocide survivors: your suffering is negotiable. Your history is up for debate. In reality, this literary denialism does nothing new. It simply repackages the age-old hatred of genocide in glossy book covers, quietly sanctioned by publishers, distributors, and the platforms that profit off these falsehoods. As consumers, as global citizens, we owe it to ourselves — and to the memory of every innocent life lost — to recognize this for what it is: the monetisation of denial, an industry of deception wrapped up in the legitimacy of print. So, the next time you see one of these books on Amazon, remember what they represent. They aren’t historical critiques. They’re the memoirs of murderers, voices from the dark side of history trying to rewrite themselves as heroes. The fact that anyone would sell, much less read them, is perhaps the greatest betrayal of truth and justice and humanity. Because in the end, revisionism may change the words on a page, but it can never undo the atrocities written in blood.
