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CURBING FREE SPEECH WORKS AGAINST TRUTH
BY: BRENDAN O'NEILL
Weekend Australian
January 28, 2012 Saturday
1 - All-round Country Edition
The French will pay a very high price for their new law on the
Armenian genocide
AS of this week, it is against the law in France to say: "I don't
think the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians."
Under a new act, passed by the French Senate on Monday, anyone who
denies or "minimises" the genocide suffered by the Armenians at the
hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915 could be jailed for one year or
fined E45,000 ($55,500).
A government minister says the act is part of a drive to "repress
racist and xenophobic statements". That is, the French government is
mainly concerned with preserving the safety and self-esteem of its
population of 600,000 ethnic Armenians.
A senator in France's upper house who voted for the act says it is
also about establishing the truth in the face of "continuing denial
of a tragic historical event". Who could be opposed to the desire of
the French state to protect its Armenian population from hurt feelings
and its commitment to the project of affirming the truth about history?
Well, I am. I'm against this massively illiberal law, which is a
disgrace to 21st-century Europe and particularly to that birthplace
of modern liberty, France. Whatever the backers of the act might tell
us, the truth is their speech-curbing piece of legislation will do
nothing to establish historical truth or improve cultural attitudes
towards Armenian people.
As it happens, I believe that what the Turks did to the Armenians
during and after World War I was a genocide. From 1915 to the early
1920s, between one million and 1.5 million Armenians were either
massacred or marched to their deaths by Ottoman Turkish forces. In
some parts of the empire, entire Armenian populations were destroyed.
However, there's still great scope for debate about the nature and
the naming of these tragic events. For example, many people mistakenly
see the Armenian genocide as a neat precursor to the Jewish Holocaust
of World War II. They tend to read history backwards, projecting the
terminology of the Holocaust on to the events of 1915, so that we
end up being presented with two samey events from a pretty warped
century in human affairs.
Some even refer to the "Armenian Holocaust" of the 1910s.
But there are great differences between the Armenian genocide and
the Jewish Holocaust, not only in terms of scale but also in terms
of intent.
It unquestionably involved the brutal wiping out of huge numbers
of an ethnic group, but it lacked the design of the Nazi plan to
liquidate every Jew on Earth. It was a brutal assault on a people,
a genocide, but was it part of a carefully worked-out program of
industrial extermination?
Historians must be free to raise questions such as that without the
threat of being hauled before the courts for "minimising" Armenian
suffering.
As the Socialist Party senator Jean-Pierre Sueur said, as he voted
against the act, "it isn't the business of the law, and especially
criminal law, to intervene in the field of history and to rule in
terms of historical truth".
Indeed. Such clumsy and censorious state intervention into matters of
historical interest do not help to clarify issues, far less get at the
truth; rather they make things more cloudy, discouraging researchers
from openly speaking their minds for fear of having their collars
felt by the cops.
John Stuart Mill, that great English defender of freedom of speech,
argued more than 150 years ago that truth can be established only
through testy debate in the public arena.
In his fiery 1859 pamphlet On Liberty, he said: "Complete liberty of
contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which
justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action." In short,
it is only by submitting your ideas or beliefs to the rigours of public
discussion and ridicule that you can be sure they are correct, true,
right. If you erect a moral or legal force-field around your theory,
denying anyone the chance to pick it apart, then it isn't "the truth";
it's a prejudice, a received wisdom, which you cleave to more out of
habit than conviction.
The French government hasn't established the truth of the Armenian
genocide; it has turned the Armenian genocide into a state religion
that you question at your peril.
As to the claim that this law will help improve cultural relations, the
opposite seems to be the case. It has provoked huge tensions between
France and Turkey (which denies it committed a genocide against
Armenians) and it has angered Turkish people living in France.
There have been hot-headed protests against the law, mainly by
young French-Turks who feel their people are being singled out for
a censorious slap on the wrists by the French state.
The end result of this legal instrument to control what people can
think and say is that some communities feel relieved (the Armenians)
but others feel aggrieved (the Turks). By turning a historic event
into a contemporary flash-point issue, France is stoking up tensions,
not combating xenophobia. The whole debacle demonstrates the extent
to which genocide has been politicised in recent years.
The motivation of Nicolas Sarkozy and his party in pushing the
Armenia genocide law is really to garner support at home, not just
among Armenians but also among native French people concerned about
Turkey's demand for more influence in Europe, and also to look tough
abroad, to appear uncompromising in relation to increasingly powerful
Eastern states.
Such cynical politicisation of a historical event has come with a
very high price: the denigration of free thought, the straitjacketing
of academic debate, and the intensification of West-East tensions in
this supposedly modern Europe.
BY: BRENDAN O'NEILL
Weekend Australian
January 28, 2012 Saturday
1 - All-round Country Edition
The French will pay a very high price for their new law on the
Armenian genocide
AS of this week, it is against the law in France to say: "I don't
think the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians."
Under a new act, passed by the French Senate on Monday, anyone who
denies or "minimises" the genocide suffered by the Armenians at the
hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915 could be jailed for one year or
fined E45,000 ($55,500).
A government minister says the act is part of a drive to "repress
racist and xenophobic statements". That is, the French government is
mainly concerned with preserving the safety and self-esteem of its
population of 600,000 ethnic Armenians.
A senator in France's upper house who voted for the act says it is
also about establishing the truth in the face of "continuing denial
of a tragic historical event". Who could be opposed to the desire of
the French state to protect its Armenian population from hurt feelings
and its commitment to the project of affirming the truth about history?
Well, I am. I'm against this massively illiberal law, which is a
disgrace to 21st-century Europe and particularly to that birthplace
of modern liberty, France. Whatever the backers of the act might tell
us, the truth is their speech-curbing piece of legislation will do
nothing to establish historical truth or improve cultural attitudes
towards Armenian people.
As it happens, I believe that what the Turks did to the Armenians
during and after World War I was a genocide. From 1915 to the early
1920s, between one million and 1.5 million Armenians were either
massacred or marched to their deaths by Ottoman Turkish forces. In
some parts of the empire, entire Armenian populations were destroyed.
However, there's still great scope for debate about the nature and
the naming of these tragic events. For example, many people mistakenly
see the Armenian genocide as a neat precursor to the Jewish Holocaust
of World War II. They tend to read history backwards, projecting the
terminology of the Holocaust on to the events of 1915, so that we
end up being presented with two samey events from a pretty warped
century in human affairs.
Some even refer to the "Armenian Holocaust" of the 1910s.
But there are great differences between the Armenian genocide and
the Jewish Holocaust, not only in terms of scale but also in terms
of intent.
It unquestionably involved the brutal wiping out of huge numbers
of an ethnic group, but it lacked the design of the Nazi plan to
liquidate every Jew on Earth. It was a brutal assault on a people,
a genocide, but was it part of a carefully worked-out program of
industrial extermination?
Historians must be free to raise questions such as that without the
threat of being hauled before the courts for "minimising" Armenian
suffering.
As the Socialist Party senator Jean-Pierre Sueur said, as he voted
against the act, "it isn't the business of the law, and especially
criminal law, to intervene in the field of history and to rule in
terms of historical truth".
Indeed. Such clumsy and censorious state intervention into matters of
historical interest do not help to clarify issues, far less get at the
truth; rather they make things more cloudy, discouraging researchers
from openly speaking their minds for fear of having their collars
felt by the cops.
John Stuart Mill, that great English defender of freedom of speech,
argued more than 150 years ago that truth can be established only
through testy debate in the public arena.
In his fiery 1859 pamphlet On Liberty, he said: "Complete liberty of
contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which
justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action." In short,
it is only by submitting your ideas or beliefs to the rigours of public
discussion and ridicule that you can be sure they are correct, true,
right. If you erect a moral or legal force-field around your theory,
denying anyone the chance to pick it apart, then it isn't "the truth";
it's a prejudice, a received wisdom, which you cleave to more out of
habit than conviction.
The French government hasn't established the truth of the Armenian
genocide; it has turned the Armenian genocide into a state religion
that you question at your peril.
As to the claim that this law will help improve cultural relations, the
opposite seems to be the case. It has provoked huge tensions between
France and Turkey (which denies it committed a genocide against
Armenians) and it has angered Turkish people living in France.
There have been hot-headed protests against the law, mainly by
young French-Turks who feel their people are being singled out for
a censorious slap on the wrists by the French state.
The end result of this legal instrument to control what people can
think and say is that some communities feel relieved (the Armenians)
but others feel aggrieved (the Turks). By turning a historic event
into a contemporary flash-point issue, France is stoking up tensions,
not combating xenophobia. The whole debacle demonstrates the extent
to which genocide has been politicised in recent years.
The motivation of Nicolas Sarkozy and his party in pushing the
Armenia genocide law is really to garner support at home, not just
among Armenians but also among native French people concerned about
Turkey's demand for more influence in Europe, and also to look tough
abroad, to appear uncompromising in relation to increasingly powerful
Eastern states.
Such cynical politicisation of a historical event has come with a
very high price: the denigration of free thought, the straitjacketing
of academic debate, and the intensification of West-East tensions in
this supposedly modern Europe.