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Beginning in 1915 the Armenians were the victims of a methodic attem

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  • Beginning in 1915 the Armenians were the victims of a methodic attem

    Public Radio, Armenia
    Jan 4 2012


    Beginning in 1915 the Armenians were the victims of a methodic attempt
    at annihilation, French philosopher writes


    04.01.2012 16:20

    `The law whose purpose is to penalize negationist revisionism, voted
    before Christmas by the French parliament, does not propose to write
    history in the place of historians. And this for the simple reason
    that this history has been told and written, well written, for a long
    time,' French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy writes in an
    article published in The Huffington Post.

    `This we have always known: that, beginning in 1915, the Armenians
    were the victims of a methodic attempt at annihilation,' the author
    writes. `In other words, this law has nothing to do with the will to
    establish a truth of state. No representative of the French National
    Assembly who voted for it saw himself as a substitute for historians
    or their work. Together, they only intended to recall this simple
    right, that of each of us not to be publicly attacked - and its
    corollary, the right to demand reparations for this particularly
    outrageous offense which is the insult to the memory of the dead. It
    is a question of law, not one of history.'

    `Presenting this law as one that denies liberty, one likely to hamper
    the work of historians is another strange argument that makes one
    wonder. It is the negationist revisionists who, up until now, have
    hampered the work of historians. It is their mad ideas, their
    hare-brained concepts, their twisting of facts, their terrifying and
    breathtaking lies that shake the earth upon which, in principle, a
    science should be built. And in punishing them, making their task more
    complicated, alerting the public that it is dealing not with scholars
    but with those who would enflame minds, that the law protects and
    shelters history. Is there one historian who has been prevented from
    working on the Shoah by the Gayssot law punishing denial of the
    Holocaust? Is there one author who, in good conscience, can claim that
    it has limited his freedom to do research and to raise questions? And
    isn't it clear that the only ones this law has seriously hindered are
    the Faurissons, the Irvings, and the other Le Pens? Well, the same
    applies to the genocide of the Armenians. This law, when the Senate
    will have ratified it, will be a stroke of fortune for historians, who
    can finally work in peace. Unless... Yes, unless those who oppose the
    law express this other, cloudier reservation: that it would be a bit
    premature to come to a conclusion, precisely and for nearly a century,
    of "genocide,' the author further writes.

    `I would add that it's time to stop mixing everything up and drowning
    the Armenian tragedy in the ritualized blahblahblah assailing the
    "memorial laws". For this law is not a memorial law. It is not one of
    those dangerous power plays capable of laying the path for dozens if
    not hundreds of absurd or blackguardly rules, codifying what one has
    the right to say about the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, the
    meaning of colonization, slavery, the Civil War, the misdemeanor of
    blasphemy and heaven knows what else. It is a law concerning a
    genocide -- which is not the same. It is a law sanctioning those who,
    in denying it, intensify and perpetuate the genocidal act - which is
    something else entirely. There are not, thank God, hundreds of
    genocides, or even dozens. There are three. Four, if we add the
    Cambodians to the Armenians, the Jews, and the Rwandans. And to place
    these three or four genocides on the same level as all the rest, to
    make their penalization the antechamber of a political correctness
    that authorizes a stream of useless or perverse laws on the disputed
    aspects of our national memory, to say, "Watch it! You're opening a
    Pandora's box from which everything and anything can pop out !" is
    another imbecility, exacerbated by another infamy and sealed with a
    dishonesty that is, really, grotesque.'

    `Let us confront this specious line of argument with the wisdom of
    national representation. And may the senators complete the process by
    refusing to be intimidated by this little band of historians,'
    Bernard-Henri Lévy concludes.

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