I found his argument to be disturbingly convincing. I will provide some selected quotes - of course it will not do true justice to his argument.

But modern Rwanda illustrates a case where Malthus's worst-case scenario does seem to have been right.

They [Rwanda, Burundi] are the two most densely populated countries in Africa and among the most densely populated in the world: Rwanda's average population density is triple even that of Africa's third most densely populated country (Nigeria), and 10 times that of neighboring Tanzania. Genocide in Rwanda produced the third largest body count among the world's genocides since 1950. ... Because Rwanda's total population is 10 times smaller than that of Bangladesh, the scale of the Rwanda's genocide... far exceeds that of Bangladesh

Diamond notes the work Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda HRW

This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power. This small, privileged group first set the majority against the minority to counter a growing political opposition within Rwanda. Then faced with RPF success on the battlefield and at the negoating table, these few powerholders transformed the strategy of ethnic division into genocide.

But there is also evidence that other considerations contributed as well. Rwanda contained a third ethnic group, variously known as the Twa or pygmies, who numbered only 1% of the population, were at the bottom of the social scale and power structure, and did not constitute a threat to anybody - yet most of them, too, were massacred in the 1994 killings.

Especially puzzling, if one believes that there was nothing more to the genocide than Hutu-versus-Tutsi ethnic hatred fanned by politicians, are events in northwestern Rwanda. There, in a community were virtually everybody was Hutu and there was only a single Tutsi, mass killings still took place - of Hutu by other Hutu. While the proportional death toll there, estimated as "at least 5% of the population," may have been somewhat lower ... it still takes some explaining why a Hutu community would kill at least 5% of its members in the absence of ethnic motives.

Rwanda's average population density was 760 people per square mile, higher than that of the United Kingdom (610) and approaching that of Holland (950). But the United Kingdom and Holland have highly efficient mechanized agriculture.

By 1985, all arable land outside of national parks was being cultivated.

Kanama has very fertile volcanic soil, so that its population density is high even by the standards of densely populated Rwanda: ... rising to 2,040 [people per square mile] in 1993. ... those high population densities translated into very small farms: a median farm size of only 0.89 acre in 1988, declining to 0.72 acre in 1993. Each farm was divided into (on average) 10 separate parcels, so that farmers were tilling absurdly small parcels averaging only 0.09 acre in 1988 and 0.07 acre in 1993.

With more young people staying home, the average number of people per farm household increased (between 1988 and 1993) from 4.9 to 5.3, so that the land shortage was even tighter than indicated by the decrease in farm size... When one divides decreasing farm area by increasing number of people in the household, one finds that each person was living off of only one-fifth of an acre in 1988, declining to one-seventh of an acre in 1993.

The percentage of the population consuming less than 1,600 calories per day (i.e., what is considered below the famine level) was 9% in 1982, rising to 40% in 1990 and some unknown higher percentage thereafter.

It is not rare, even today, to hear Rwandans argue that a war is necessary to wipe out an excess of population and to bring numbers into line with the available land resources."

The survivor is a Tutsi teacher whom Runier interviewed, and who survived only because he happened to be away from his house when killers arrived and ;murdered his wife and four of his five children:

"The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs."

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}