"Save Darfur" was nothing but a war movement. We called it out repeatedly in real time. Ann Garrison writes about it in "Who is Rwanda’s Real Hero? Paul Kagame or Paul Rusesabagina?" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) and it really is a must read. We'll excerpt this section:
I reacted negatively to the movie in part because I didn’t see it until 2008, four years after its release and 14 years after the Rwandan Genocide. The copy I rented at that time opened not on scenes in Rwanda’s capital, but on Don Cheadle, the actor who played Rusesabagina, proselytizing the movie audience. The tragic story we were about to see, he said, was being replayed now, north of Rwanda, in Darfur, where Arab militias commanded by then Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir were committing genocide against the native African peoples of Southern Sudan, who were neither Arab nor Muslim.
It would be hard to find a more perfect marriage of Hollywood and US foreign policy propaganda talking points. The Save Darfur movement was then in full swing, and China, the US’s competitor in Africa, was under attack for supporting the government of then Sudanese President al-Bashir.
A year earlier, “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond ” had been published with Cheadle and John Prendergast credited as co-authors. Prendergast is a career intelligence professional and humanitarian war propagandist often photographed with Cheadle and other movie stars whom he persuaded to join his campaigns, most notably George Clooney, Ben Affleck, and Mia Farrow. In the 2009 “Darfur Debate ” at Columbia University, Ugandan academic and author Mahmood Mamdani aptly identified him as “a Zionist who wants to recolonize Africa.”
Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) was formed at Georgetown University in 2004, the same year that “Hotel Rwanda” was released, and South Sudan was successfully separated from Sudan in 2011. Omar al-Bashir was finally taken down in a 2019 coup, and STAND at some point broadened its identity to become “the student-led movement to end genocide mass atrocities.” It eventually merged with Aegis Trust , the British-based NGO umbrella group that professes the same mission.
The copy of “Hotel Rwanda” that I rented this week no longer begins with Don Cheadle’s stumping for the Save Darfur movement. That’s over, and the speech has been mercifully cut. However, the Rwandan Genocide continues to be a touchstone of arguments for humanitarian intervention, aka the white man’s burden.
