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The Armenian Weekly On-Line
80 Bigelow Avenue
Watertown MA 02472 USA
(617) 926-3974
[email protected]
http://www.a rmenianweekly.com
The Armenian Weekly; Volume 74, No. 5; Feb. 9, 2008
Commentary and Analysis:
1. Are Genocide Deniers Mental Cases?
By Israel W. Charny
2. Putting Tiles in Place
By Garen Yegparian
***
1. Are Genocide Deniers Mental Cases?
The Question of a Possible Relationship between Mental Disturbance and
Denials of Known Genocides such as the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide
By Israel W. Charny
Perhaps it is because I am also a practicing clinical psychologist, but I
suspect others will also identify with the observation that at some point,
another question crosses one's mind as to whether there is any possibility
that some deniers of the Holocaust or other genocides are, in fact, quite
crazy, or in more polite scientific parlance, mentally ill. For on the
surface of it, the basic claim that a major historical event of genocide,
which the whole world knows took place, never took place, is madness; let
alone that many of the particularly sloppy kinds of denials and revisions of
history, for example the claim that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were built
only after the war in order to vilify the hapless Nazis, are manifestly the
ravings of mad men.
In one case where a denier of the Holocaust was involved in court
proceedings which had been initiated by him, a reporter for a major American
newspaper (The Atlantic Constitution) described the structure of the denier's
thought processes in the courtroom as "rambling," and in another instance
characterized the structure of the denier's argumentation as "bizarre." In
textbooks of abnormal psychology, these are both characteristic of the
thinking of a paranoid.
Is there not room to pause to think about the fact that classical psychiatry
describes various paranoid conditions as characterized by tortured
accusativeness of someone(s); litigiousness or a need to go to legal or
other kinds of overt conflict with said other(s); a concealing framework of
ostensible and at times even intricate and impressive logic but in which are
embedded bizarre denials of and breaks with reality, including delusory
fantasies and wild constructions of a non-existent reality. Thus, in the
earlier days of the 20th century, many self-respecting paranoid patients
would understandably seize on themes of radio waves speaking to them,
penetrating them, or what have you as civilization grappled with the mystery
of the new-found radio. In subsequent years, chemical and germ warfare
devices became a heady basis for paranoid ideation, and there is absolutely
no reason to think that denials that masses of human beings were taken in
freight cars to gas chambers and then incinerated in ovens would not be a
delicious invitation for mayhem in the mind of a paranoid in our times.
But even if there is a possible relationship between mental illness and
denials of genocide, there are enormous problems in working with the mental
health aspects of denials. For one thing, on a clinical level it is
characteristic that much of the argumentation, including even persecutory
contents, of a well-organized paranoiac is well reasoned and presented in
coherent and logical forms; and insofar as this would be true of a denier
who is also mad, we as a community are still required to address the
coherent aspects of presentations of denials and not simply dismiss them as
the ravings of a lunatic, so that there can be no suggestion of our having
walked away from confronting the issues raised.
Moreover, as we have learned, so many denials are inherently political
strategies in the service of bigotry and hatred, e.g., anti-Semitism, and
celebrations of and calls to collective violence; and so many other denials
are also political statements espousing policies such as realpolitik, even a
decently motivated search for reconciliation and cessation of conflict, and
these and other not-crazy assertions of deniers cannot be dismissed as the
doings of mad people, but have to be confronted for their intrinsic
immorality, nastiness and self-serving political agendas at the expense of
the integrity of historical memory and the heartbreak and protests of decent
people against mass murder.
Finally, what is possibly the really deeply challenging truth with respect
to the relationship between mental illness and denials of the Holocaust, the
Armenian Genocide, or other genocides is that looking in depth at the
thinking of deniers brings us in touch not simply with the madness of a
given individual, but with a close-to-madness aspect of the normal human
mind which we have all been issued from the original factory, as well as a
'larger than life' grand madness of our human readiness to destroy so much
of life. By the former or close-to-madness aspect of the normal human mind,
I refer to so many evidences that the human mind inherently is given to
stereotyped thinking, magical thinking, totalistic thinking, massive
projections of one's weaknesses onto others, deep difficulties in discerning
the difference between legitimate self-defense and unduly suspicious
paranoid attributions of dangers to others, undue needs for power, and other
attributes which in effect are found in the minds of all people, and which
good mental health requires us to work at overcoming (see Greenwald, 1980 on
characteristics of the mind as initially and naturally "totalitarian"-his
word).
By the latter, or larger than life grand madness of destructiveness, I refer
to the readiness of perfectly sane human beings, as far as the psychiatric
establishment is concerned, to round up masses of others, torture them
cruelly, and destroy them unconscionably. Albert Camus (1980, initially
1946) said following World War II that he discerned that all human beings
have to choose whether they are available to be executioners, for in the
psychological language I am presently using this is at least a default
option waiting in the natural machinery we have, and Camus said of himself
that he had chosen neither to be a victim nor an executioner:
.The years.have killed something in us. And that something is simply the old
confidence man had in himself which led him to believe that he could always
elicit human reactions from another man if he spoke to him in the language
of a common humanity. We have seen men lie, degrade, kill, deport, torture -
and each time it was not possible to persuade them not to do these things
because they were sure of themselves.
Before anything can be done, two questions must be put: "Do you or do you
not, directly or indirectly, want to kill or assault?".
. For my part, I am fairly sure that I have made the choice. And, having
chosen, I think that I must speak out, that I must state that I will never
again be one of those, whoever they be, who compromise with murder. (Camus,
1946, p.5)
So whether or not a denier is also mad-and for the fun of it I may want to
publicly tell him to his face that he is meshugah, I prefer to fight the
denier by discrediting his ideas and argumentation as dangerous to human
life, rather than taking him out on the grounds that he specifically is
psychiatrically incompetent. On the individual level, there may very well be
in a given denier a bona fide psychiatric paranoid personality disorder or
even a worse psychotic paranoid condition, but first there is a diagnostic
problem that the mad person is riding the tail (or broomstick) of an as if
accepted madness of our human society to first committing mass murder and
then in denying the facts, and diagnosis can be difficult. The really
disturbed organism is man the species, and our human society, and it would
set us back to focus on the individual instead of do battle with denials as
an aspect and reflection of the madness of our human readiness to commit
genocide let alone then to deny it. Nonetheless, it is interesting to
consider the possibility that some deniers are also mental cases.
Israel Charny is the editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Genocide, past
president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and
executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide. He is the
author of Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind, which has been hailed as
one of the outstanding works of the decade. The book was published by the
University of Nebraska Press in 2006, and will be republished in the spring
of 2008 as a paperback.
--------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------
2. Putting Tiles in Place
By Garen Yegparian
Saturday, Jan. 26, marked the second Mosaic presented to the greater L.A.
Armenian community. I missed it last year, but enjoyed it this year, enough
to want to comment on it.
The program consisted of five musical groups, interspersed with comedy,
quite humorous. It was well structured and presented an eclectic mix of
musical styles. The overall program was a bit lengthy; perhaps each of the
acts should play a shorter set. I liked the lighting theme-it looked like
fragments, presumably resembling the tiles composing a mosaic. The order in
which the acts performed should also have been different. It seemed to me
that the groupies (generally younger) of the first two bands left after
hearing their favorites, perceptibly impacting the fullness of Glendale's
Alex Theatre.
The first half of the program consisted of two rock bands. This is where
things get really interesting. Some were offended that this was "passed off"
as Armenian culture. The lyrics were in English, mostly indistinguishable to
me. The music didn't have an Armenian sound to it, except the rendition of
one verse of "Giligia." All but one of the baker's dozen musicians involved
in these two bands was Armenian. So, does this qualify? As Armenian, that
is.
I'm reminded of the analogous question that Vahe Oshagan had posed in a
class I took from him in college. "Do Armenians who write in foreign
languages fall into the realm of Armenian literature?"
If nothing else, for selfish and national preservation reasons, the answers
to both those questions must be "yes" resoundingly. No matter what other
factors affect the music or literature produced, Armenians are producing it.
These human beings, to at least some degree, bear an Armenian imprint on
their being. This will permeate the art produced. Otherwise, our churches,
sharagans and illuminated bibles would also have to be deemed non-Armenian
since they manifest a foreign, borrowed, non-native religion. Which brings
us to the notion that as we borrow art forms-in this case musical-developed
elsewhere, we (and other nations for that matter) eventually put our own
stamp on it, modifying and Armenianizing it. No one complained during the
second half of the evening when jazz was performed or another performer sang
Armenian-themed songs but with music that sounded non-Armenian, was produced
on non-Armenian instruments, and had English lyrics.
I also came to a conclusion on an issue that's been troubling me since 2007's
genocide commemorations. If you'll recall, I had described a plethora of
bands playing at the various events I attended. The open question was over
the propriety of those acts playing their
not-necessarily-thematically-related music at those gatherings. I was torn.
On the one hand, we must provide fora for our developing talent. On the
other, genocide commemorative activities can become trivialized through
their presence. The solution to this dilemma is for these types of groups to
play at gatherings like Mosaic, not at genocide-related gatherings in April.
More should be organized, perhaps all-day festivals where band after band
plays. The Homenetmen's Navasartian games could provide another great forum
for such performances.
The post-intermission program was less controversial. The trio performing
old Armenian songs was the most interesting part for me. Their telling the
story of each song (in English) then performing it in our now largely
vanished dialects was a very illuminating presentation. For me this was the
most interesting part of the program.
I look forward to more of these events. Don't miss them.
80 Bigelow Avenue
Watertown MA 02472 USA
(617) 926-3974
[email protected]
http://www.a rmenianweekly.com
The Armenian Weekly; Volume 74, No. 5; Feb. 9, 2008
Commentary and Analysis:
1. Are Genocide Deniers Mental Cases?
By Israel W. Charny
2. Putting Tiles in Place
By Garen Yegparian
***
1. Are Genocide Deniers Mental Cases?
The Question of a Possible Relationship between Mental Disturbance and
Denials of Known Genocides such as the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide
By Israel W. Charny
Perhaps it is because I am also a practicing clinical psychologist, but I
suspect others will also identify with the observation that at some point,
another question crosses one's mind as to whether there is any possibility
that some deniers of the Holocaust or other genocides are, in fact, quite
crazy, or in more polite scientific parlance, mentally ill. For on the
surface of it, the basic claim that a major historical event of genocide,
which the whole world knows took place, never took place, is madness; let
alone that many of the particularly sloppy kinds of denials and revisions of
history, for example the claim that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were built
only after the war in order to vilify the hapless Nazis, are manifestly the
ravings of mad men.
In one case where a denier of the Holocaust was involved in court
proceedings which had been initiated by him, a reporter for a major American
newspaper (The Atlantic Constitution) described the structure of the denier's
thought processes in the courtroom as "rambling," and in another instance
characterized the structure of the denier's argumentation as "bizarre." In
textbooks of abnormal psychology, these are both characteristic of the
thinking of a paranoid.
Is there not room to pause to think about the fact that classical psychiatry
describes various paranoid conditions as characterized by tortured
accusativeness of someone(s); litigiousness or a need to go to legal or
other kinds of overt conflict with said other(s); a concealing framework of
ostensible and at times even intricate and impressive logic but in which are
embedded bizarre denials of and breaks with reality, including delusory
fantasies and wild constructions of a non-existent reality. Thus, in the
earlier days of the 20th century, many self-respecting paranoid patients
would understandably seize on themes of radio waves speaking to them,
penetrating them, or what have you as civilization grappled with the mystery
of the new-found radio. In subsequent years, chemical and germ warfare
devices became a heady basis for paranoid ideation, and there is absolutely
no reason to think that denials that masses of human beings were taken in
freight cars to gas chambers and then incinerated in ovens would not be a
delicious invitation for mayhem in the mind of a paranoid in our times.
But even if there is a possible relationship between mental illness and
denials of genocide, there are enormous problems in working with the mental
health aspects of denials. For one thing, on a clinical level it is
characteristic that much of the argumentation, including even persecutory
contents, of a well-organized paranoiac is well reasoned and presented in
coherent and logical forms; and insofar as this would be true of a denier
who is also mad, we as a community are still required to address the
coherent aspects of presentations of denials and not simply dismiss them as
the ravings of a lunatic, so that there can be no suggestion of our having
walked away from confronting the issues raised.
Moreover, as we have learned, so many denials are inherently political
strategies in the service of bigotry and hatred, e.g., anti-Semitism, and
celebrations of and calls to collective violence; and so many other denials
are also political statements espousing policies such as realpolitik, even a
decently motivated search for reconciliation and cessation of conflict, and
these and other not-crazy assertions of deniers cannot be dismissed as the
doings of mad people, but have to be confronted for their intrinsic
immorality, nastiness and self-serving political agendas at the expense of
the integrity of historical memory and the heartbreak and protests of decent
people against mass murder.
Finally, what is possibly the really deeply challenging truth with respect
to the relationship between mental illness and denials of the Holocaust, the
Armenian Genocide, or other genocides is that looking in depth at the
thinking of deniers brings us in touch not simply with the madness of a
given individual, but with a close-to-madness aspect of the normal human
mind which we have all been issued from the original factory, as well as a
'larger than life' grand madness of our human readiness to destroy so much
of life. By the former or close-to-madness aspect of the normal human mind,
I refer to so many evidences that the human mind inherently is given to
stereotyped thinking, magical thinking, totalistic thinking, massive
projections of one's weaknesses onto others, deep difficulties in discerning
the difference between legitimate self-defense and unduly suspicious
paranoid attributions of dangers to others, undue needs for power, and other
attributes which in effect are found in the minds of all people, and which
good mental health requires us to work at overcoming (see Greenwald, 1980 on
characteristics of the mind as initially and naturally "totalitarian"-his
word).
By the latter, or larger than life grand madness of destructiveness, I refer
to the readiness of perfectly sane human beings, as far as the psychiatric
establishment is concerned, to round up masses of others, torture them
cruelly, and destroy them unconscionably. Albert Camus (1980, initially
1946) said following World War II that he discerned that all human beings
have to choose whether they are available to be executioners, for in the
psychological language I am presently using this is at least a default
option waiting in the natural machinery we have, and Camus said of himself
that he had chosen neither to be a victim nor an executioner:
.The years.have killed something in us. And that something is simply the old
confidence man had in himself which led him to believe that he could always
elicit human reactions from another man if he spoke to him in the language
of a common humanity. We have seen men lie, degrade, kill, deport, torture -
and each time it was not possible to persuade them not to do these things
because they were sure of themselves.
Before anything can be done, two questions must be put: "Do you or do you
not, directly or indirectly, want to kill or assault?".
. For my part, I am fairly sure that I have made the choice. And, having
chosen, I think that I must speak out, that I must state that I will never
again be one of those, whoever they be, who compromise with murder. (Camus,
1946, p.5)
So whether or not a denier is also mad-and for the fun of it I may want to
publicly tell him to his face that he is meshugah, I prefer to fight the
denier by discrediting his ideas and argumentation as dangerous to human
life, rather than taking him out on the grounds that he specifically is
psychiatrically incompetent. On the individual level, there may very well be
in a given denier a bona fide psychiatric paranoid personality disorder or
even a worse psychotic paranoid condition, but first there is a diagnostic
problem that the mad person is riding the tail (or broomstick) of an as if
accepted madness of our human society to first committing mass murder and
then in denying the facts, and diagnosis can be difficult. The really
disturbed organism is man the species, and our human society, and it would
set us back to focus on the individual instead of do battle with denials as
an aspect and reflection of the madness of our human readiness to commit
genocide let alone then to deny it. Nonetheless, it is interesting to
consider the possibility that some deniers are also mental cases.
Israel Charny is the editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Genocide, past
president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and
executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide. He is the
author of Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind, which has been hailed as
one of the outstanding works of the decade. The book was published by the
University of Nebraska Press in 2006, and will be republished in the spring
of 2008 as a paperback.
--------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------
2. Putting Tiles in Place
By Garen Yegparian
Saturday, Jan. 26, marked the second Mosaic presented to the greater L.A.
Armenian community. I missed it last year, but enjoyed it this year, enough
to want to comment on it.
The program consisted of five musical groups, interspersed with comedy,
quite humorous. It was well structured and presented an eclectic mix of
musical styles. The overall program was a bit lengthy; perhaps each of the
acts should play a shorter set. I liked the lighting theme-it looked like
fragments, presumably resembling the tiles composing a mosaic. The order in
which the acts performed should also have been different. It seemed to me
that the groupies (generally younger) of the first two bands left after
hearing their favorites, perceptibly impacting the fullness of Glendale's
Alex Theatre.
The first half of the program consisted of two rock bands. This is where
things get really interesting. Some were offended that this was "passed off"
as Armenian culture. The lyrics were in English, mostly indistinguishable to
me. The music didn't have an Armenian sound to it, except the rendition of
one verse of "Giligia." All but one of the baker's dozen musicians involved
in these two bands was Armenian. So, does this qualify? As Armenian, that
is.
I'm reminded of the analogous question that Vahe Oshagan had posed in a
class I took from him in college. "Do Armenians who write in foreign
languages fall into the realm of Armenian literature?"
If nothing else, for selfish and national preservation reasons, the answers
to both those questions must be "yes" resoundingly. No matter what other
factors affect the music or literature produced, Armenians are producing it.
These human beings, to at least some degree, bear an Armenian imprint on
their being. This will permeate the art produced. Otherwise, our churches,
sharagans and illuminated bibles would also have to be deemed non-Armenian
since they manifest a foreign, borrowed, non-native religion. Which brings
us to the notion that as we borrow art forms-in this case musical-developed
elsewhere, we (and other nations for that matter) eventually put our own
stamp on it, modifying and Armenianizing it. No one complained during the
second half of the evening when jazz was performed or another performer sang
Armenian-themed songs but with music that sounded non-Armenian, was produced
on non-Armenian instruments, and had English lyrics.
I also came to a conclusion on an issue that's been troubling me since 2007's
genocide commemorations. If you'll recall, I had described a plethora of
bands playing at the various events I attended. The open question was over
the propriety of those acts playing their
not-necessarily-thematically-related music at those gatherings. I was torn.
On the one hand, we must provide fora for our developing talent. On the
other, genocide commemorative activities can become trivialized through
their presence. The solution to this dilemma is for these types of groups to
play at gatherings like Mosaic, not at genocide-related gatherings in April.
More should be organized, perhaps all-day festivals where band after band
plays. The Homenetmen's Navasartian games could provide another great forum
for such performances.
The post-intermission program was less controversial. The trio performing
old Armenian songs was the most interesting part for me. Their telling the
story of each song (in English) then performing it in our now largely
vanished dialects was a very illuminating presentation. For me this was the
most interesting part of the program.
I look forward to more of these events. Don't miss them.