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DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS BRUTALIZING THE WORLD
Huffington Post
April 17 2015
Posted: 04/17/2015 11:11 am EDT
Stefan Ihrig , Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
JERUSALEM -- I have this imaginary Armenian kid sister. Well,
actually, she is your kid sister, too -- in the same way we all have
this imaginary 8-year-old in Syria who has been afraid for her life
for the past few years. We are all humans after all.
My imaginary Armenian kid sister is 4 and a 1/2; talks too much;
is easily distracted; for reasons beyond me, does not like raisin
cookies; and, for reasons even further beyond me, died in early 1916.
Nobody put a pistol to her head and executed her. Her parents were
killed, and she simply had no food, no care and no proper shelter. She
just wasted away. I cannot get over her death and her suffering, even
though I want to, and I need to. I need to remember her and honor
her memory, her life and her death. And I also have that Syrian kid
to worry about -- or to purposely ignore.
The problem is, I don't really get to the point where I can mourn her
because my Armenian kid sister just keeps dying over and over again.
We -- us and our Armenian sister -- are all stuck in 1915-1916.
Turkish denialism (and its international helpers) will not let her or
us come to rest. (Just take a look at the Turkish Foreign Ministry's
website on the topic). Turkish denialism says, "She probably did not
die. Well, perhaps she did but it was really her own fault because
the Armenians were in open rebellion against the state."
It must have been an interesting kind of war in which 4-year-olds and
the elderly threatened the very existence of a once powerful empire to
the extent that it seemed okay to kill them, in "self-defense." And
here already we have the futility of engaging with denialist
discourse. This is not the contemporary military excuse of "collateral
damage." No, my Armenian sister, along with all the other sisters,
brothers, granddads and grandmothers, were all rounded up and deported
so that they could die. I keep seeing her in the famous pictures that
Armin T. Wegner, a German writer and former field medic in the Ottoman
Empire, left us -- today's iconic images of the Armenian Genocide. And
I keep hearing these unsettling voices that tell me it is perfectly
okay to kill my Armenian kid sister. . .
As a historian working on the coverage of and the debates on the
Armenian Genocide during World War I and in the 1920s, I am still
absolutely baffled that the debates, one hundred years later, have
progressed so little -- in fact, they have regularly taken steps
backward. Clear proof of this was provided this week by an unlikely
pair jumping forward together: Pope Francis and Kim Kardashian. That
the acknowledgment of the genocide by the pope and Kim Kardashian's
trip to Armenia were so newsworthy and were hailed as such a great
"PR disaster for Turkey" shows that something went terribly wrong
over the course of the last century.
Instead of merely celebrating it as a victory for acceptance, one
needs to ask why it took the Vatican so long, why it had given in
to denialism for so many decades and why it, too, in this respect,
had abandoned the world and the Armenians. And on the other hand,
one needs to point out that Kim Kardashian has promoted awareness
of the Armenian Genocide already before -- scoring moral points way
ahead of the Vatican. We -- the Kardashians, my Armenian sister, the
world and the denialists -- have been playing this perverse game of
acceptance and denial for a long time already; far too long.
"The Armenian Genocide is a piece of history that is not allowed to
be history. It continually seeps into the present and cannot find
its own historical finality."
Take, for example, Germany in the early 1920s, where there was, for
a moment, a broad acceptance of the allegation of the "murder of a
nation" carried out by the Ottoman leadership during World War I.
Parts of Germany's diplomatic documents on the Armenian Genocide were
published as early as 1919. In expanded form, they have been published
again and can today be easily bought in English translation or read
online. These documents alone, stemming from the Ottomans' prime ally
during World War I, make it impossible not to use the "g" word.
Back to the 1920s and Germany: these diplomatic documents were
discussed widely. Many experts wrote their own accounts for
newspapers, and after some resistance from former military men and
rightist commentators, awareness and acceptance of the charge --
"murder of a nation" -- solidified. But then, the former (German)
denialists launched another counterattack, and the whole debate
ended with essays justifying genocide (per se). Later came Hitler,
another world war and an even greater crime against humanity.
The Armenian Genocide is a piece of history that is not allowed to
be history. It continually seeps into the present and cannot find its
own historical finality. Turkish denialism perpetually prevents all of
them -- the events of World War I in the Ottoman Empire, the victims
and the perpetrators, their descendants, their successor states and
their diasporas -- from getting some peace. Not only the Armenians
and the Turks today, but also the first great genocide of the 20th
century -- an integral part of our world history -- is still being
held hostage by a perverse fight over establishing the most basic
facts that have long since been established over and over again.
Some scholars allege that genocide denialism is the last stage of
genocide. But in the Armenian case, it was part and parcel of the
unfolding process. Since 1915, the world has been exposed to a morbid
battle over "truth," which in fact is a battle over the right to
commit genocide as Turkish denialism dramatically overshoots its goal.
It is different from other genocide denialisms because it mainly
advances justifications for whatever had happened. For one hundred
years -- periodically in the press of all major nations around the
globe whenever somebody important uttered the "g" word, generations of
humans have been exposed to reasons why the first major genocide of the
20th century was not worth remembering, simply had to be committed and
why the victims were responsible for their own fate. The guilt of the
perpetrators of 1915-1916 is clear; the guilt of those perpetuating
genocide justification on humanity is beyond comprehension.
After the Armenian horrors of 1894-1896 under Abdul Hamid II (sultan
of the Ottoman Empire at the time), Martin Rade, a prominent German
Protestant pro-Armenian activist, reflected on the way the German
press had excused and justified the violence against the Armenians.
Others had even used the German equivalent of "genocide" in this
context, many years before Raphael Lemkin coined his term. Rade was
worried about the impact the continuous advancing of justifications
for mass murder in the public sphere would have on ordinary Germans,
who had been exposed to them for years in the German press. He wrote:
It is impossible to appreciate what kind of impression the way in
which society and the press are discussing the Armenian Horrors will
make on the generation of men growing up [today]. They are learning to
worship an idol of opportunism and realpolitik, which, if it becomes
dominant, will cleanse away all noble dispositions.*
Almost 120 years after Rade's warning, we have to pause for a moment
and think about what prolonged exposure to genocide denialism
and genocide justification have done to all the generations of
humans growing up in the meantime. It has been part of the constant
background noise of the bloody 20th century, whispering into our ears,
that genocide can be gotten away with, that it can even be okay to
commit it.
Every time somebody of importance in the world uses the "g" word,
Turkish denialism responds, and my Armenian kid sister has to die
again. For a century stuck in this genocidal circle of hell, it is time
for us all to use the "g" word and break the spell once and for all.
*Footnote: Martin Rade in the Christliche Welt (1896) as quoted
in Axel Meissner, "Martin Rades 'Christliche Welt' und Armenien"
(Berlin, 2010), p. 80.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-ihrig/armenian-genocide-denial_b_7079384.html
From: Baghdasarian
Huffington Post
April 17 2015
Posted: 04/17/2015 11:11 am EDT
Stefan Ihrig , Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
JERUSALEM -- I have this imaginary Armenian kid sister. Well,
actually, she is your kid sister, too -- in the same way we all have
this imaginary 8-year-old in Syria who has been afraid for her life
for the past few years. We are all humans after all.
My imaginary Armenian kid sister is 4 and a 1/2; talks too much;
is easily distracted; for reasons beyond me, does not like raisin
cookies; and, for reasons even further beyond me, died in early 1916.
Nobody put a pistol to her head and executed her. Her parents were
killed, and she simply had no food, no care and no proper shelter. She
just wasted away. I cannot get over her death and her suffering, even
though I want to, and I need to. I need to remember her and honor
her memory, her life and her death. And I also have that Syrian kid
to worry about -- or to purposely ignore.
The problem is, I don't really get to the point where I can mourn her
because my Armenian kid sister just keeps dying over and over again.
We -- us and our Armenian sister -- are all stuck in 1915-1916.
Turkish denialism (and its international helpers) will not let her or
us come to rest. (Just take a look at the Turkish Foreign Ministry's
website on the topic). Turkish denialism says, "She probably did not
die. Well, perhaps she did but it was really her own fault because
the Armenians were in open rebellion against the state."
It must have been an interesting kind of war in which 4-year-olds and
the elderly threatened the very existence of a once powerful empire to
the extent that it seemed okay to kill them, in "self-defense." And
here already we have the futility of engaging with denialist
discourse. This is not the contemporary military excuse of "collateral
damage." No, my Armenian sister, along with all the other sisters,
brothers, granddads and grandmothers, were all rounded up and deported
so that they could die. I keep seeing her in the famous pictures that
Armin T. Wegner, a German writer and former field medic in the Ottoman
Empire, left us -- today's iconic images of the Armenian Genocide. And
I keep hearing these unsettling voices that tell me it is perfectly
okay to kill my Armenian kid sister. . .
As a historian working on the coverage of and the debates on the
Armenian Genocide during World War I and in the 1920s, I am still
absolutely baffled that the debates, one hundred years later, have
progressed so little -- in fact, they have regularly taken steps
backward. Clear proof of this was provided this week by an unlikely
pair jumping forward together: Pope Francis and Kim Kardashian. That
the acknowledgment of the genocide by the pope and Kim Kardashian's
trip to Armenia were so newsworthy and were hailed as such a great
"PR disaster for Turkey" shows that something went terribly wrong
over the course of the last century.
Instead of merely celebrating it as a victory for acceptance, one
needs to ask why it took the Vatican so long, why it had given in
to denialism for so many decades and why it, too, in this respect,
had abandoned the world and the Armenians. And on the other hand,
one needs to point out that Kim Kardashian has promoted awareness
of the Armenian Genocide already before -- scoring moral points way
ahead of the Vatican. We -- the Kardashians, my Armenian sister, the
world and the denialists -- have been playing this perverse game of
acceptance and denial for a long time already; far too long.
"The Armenian Genocide is a piece of history that is not allowed to
be history. It continually seeps into the present and cannot find
its own historical finality."
Take, for example, Germany in the early 1920s, where there was, for
a moment, a broad acceptance of the allegation of the "murder of a
nation" carried out by the Ottoman leadership during World War I.
Parts of Germany's diplomatic documents on the Armenian Genocide were
published as early as 1919. In expanded form, they have been published
again and can today be easily bought in English translation or read
online. These documents alone, stemming from the Ottomans' prime ally
during World War I, make it impossible not to use the "g" word.
Back to the 1920s and Germany: these diplomatic documents were
discussed widely. Many experts wrote their own accounts for
newspapers, and after some resistance from former military men and
rightist commentators, awareness and acceptance of the charge --
"murder of a nation" -- solidified. But then, the former (German)
denialists launched another counterattack, and the whole debate
ended with essays justifying genocide (per se). Later came Hitler,
another world war and an even greater crime against humanity.
The Armenian Genocide is a piece of history that is not allowed to
be history. It continually seeps into the present and cannot find its
own historical finality. Turkish denialism perpetually prevents all of
them -- the events of World War I in the Ottoman Empire, the victims
and the perpetrators, their descendants, their successor states and
their diasporas -- from getting some peace. Not only the Armenians
and the Turks today, but also the first great genocide of the 20th
century -- an integral part of our world history -- is still being
held hostage by a perverse fight over establishing the most basic
facts that have long since been established over and over again.
Some scholars allege that genocide denialism is the last stage of
genocide. But in the Armenian case, it was part and parcel of the
unfolding process. Since 1915, the world has been exposed to a morbid
battle over "truth," which in fact is a battle over the right to
commit genocide as Turkish denialism dramatically overshoots its goal.
It is different from other genocide denialisms because it mainly
advances justifications for whatever had happened. For one hundred
years -- periodically in the press of all major nations around the
globe whenever somebody important uttered the "g" word, generations of
humans have been exposed to reasons why the first major genocide of the
20th century was not worth remembering, simply had to be committed and
why the victims were responsible for their own fate. The guilt of the
perpetrators of 1915-1916 is clear; the guilt of those perpetuating
genocide justification on humanity is beyond comprehension.
After the Armenian horrors of 1894-1896 under Abdul Hamid II (sultan
of the Ottoman Empire at the time), Martin Rade, a prominent German
Protestant pro-Armenian activist, reflected on the way the German
press had excused and justified the violence against the Armenians.
Others had even used the German equivalent of "genocide" in this
context, many years before Raphael Lemkin coined his term. Rade was
worried about the impact the continuous advancing of justifications
for mass murder in the public sphere would have on ordinary Germans,
who had been exposed to them for years in the German press. He wrote:
It is impossible to appreciate what kind of impression the way in
which society and the press are discussing the Armenian Horrors will
make on the generation of men growing up [today]. They are learning to
worship an idol of opportunism and realpolitik, which, if it becomes
dominant, will cleanse away all noble dispositions.*
Almost 120 years after Rade's warning, we have to pause for a moment
and think about what prolonged exposure to genocide denialism
and genocide justification have done to all the generations of
humans growing up in the meantime. It has been part of the constant
background noise of the bloody 20th century, whispering into our ears,
that genocide can be gotten away with, that it can even be okay to
commit it.
Every time somebody of importance in the world uses the "g" word,
Turkish denialism responds, and my Armenian kid sister has to die
again. For a century stuck in this genocidal circle of hell, it is time
for us all to use the "g" word and break the spell once and for all.
*Footnote: Martin Rade in the Christliche Welt (1896) as quoted
in Axel Meissner, "Martin Rades 'Christliche Welt' und Armenien"
(Berlin, 2010), p. 80.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-ihrig/armenian-genocide-denial_b_7079384.html
From: Baghdasarian