What Genocide Deniers and Their Would Be Censors Share

A Society That Eats Its Young

The Armenian Genocide Debate: What's at Stake

6 Comments

• Phantom said:

  In a perfect world where all speech is expressed in a vacuum, you may be correct. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect, and the winners, conquerors and powerful of this world tend to have an extreme advantage over those who are oppressed and slaughtered. It's the reason why an educated person like you is still supposedly ignorant about the facts of the Armenian Genocide. If the marketplace of ideas was a perfect marketplace, you wouldn't be running around telling people that you are agnostic on whether or not to call the Armenian situation a Genocide. The truth is known by the historians, yet people like you still feign ignorance, and you may even be honest in your declaration of ignorance. But the reason why you are ignorant and agnostic on this issue is because the powerful denial machine of an entire nation has been hard at work for 92 years covering up their crime; not because the marketplace of ideas has two opposing and equally strong viewpoints. Thus, I am sorry, but when it comes to hate speech, especially when the speech comes from the powerful against the oppressed, I cannot be with you in your view. If Hitler had prevailed as the Turks did after the fallout of WWI, the marketplace of ideas would not have illuminated us about the truth of the Holocaust. We need freedom of speech to make sure the little voices are heard, but we also need to keep it in check so that the powerful do not use it to oppress the weak. This is especially true with respect to the crime of Genocide, because the victims usually have no voice for generations if ever again. They don't have the strength and the power to fight revisionism and lies. Just look at the Armenians; 92 years later, and we are still dealing with "agnostics" like you!
  September 24, 2007 10:33 PM

• Megan Rees said:

  I think that Ms. Kaminer is confused about the source of our anger with the ADL. As an international lobbying group they are entitled to say whatever they want about whomever they want. But I will not stand back while this same group tries to come into our towns under the guise of a human rights organization to teach our children about anti-bias and anti-hate. They themselves say that genocide denial is the worst form of hate crime. Though they are entitled to their denialist opinions, these opinions automatically disqualify them from being able to teach our children about truth and justice.
  September 25, 2007 1:38 PM

• Megan Rees said:

  Correction: It is Mr. Silverglate who I am referring to in the above comment, not Ms. Kaminer.
  September 25, 2007 3:54 PM

• Narini Badalian said:

  FACT: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations [of the Armenians], they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”- Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, 1915. FACT: "The Turkish government has driven its Armenian subjects, the innocent ones, mark you, into the desert by the thousands upon thousands, under the pretext of having to remove them from the war areas, exempting neither the sick nor the pregnant women... has had the men illegally shot in lonely places...It has released prisoners from the prisons, put them in soldiers' uniforms and sent them into the desert where the deportees would be passing through...The Turkish government will not be able to deny responsibility for all that has happened."- Germany’s (Turkey's wartime ally) Consular in Aleppo, Roessler. FACT: “We Turks savagely killed off the Armenians” “Armenians were not killed en masse by individual Turks; they were killed wholesale by the official policy of the central government of the Ottoman empire." -President of the Post-WWI Senate Ahmed Riza, October 1918 FACT: The Turkish-Military Tribunals from the Armistice Period (1918-1919) found the Ittihadist ve Terraki (Committee of Union and Progress) governmental officials, on all levels, guilty of crimes against Armenians- Enver, Talaat and Cemal Pashas sentenced to death in absentia. FACT: Dozens of nation-states and international bodies have recognized the Armenian Genocide as historical fact AND condemned the denial by Turkey. For full details of Affirmation please see: http://www.armeniangenocide.org/affirmation.html FACT: When the Turkish government, in 2005, called for a "joint- commission" - The International Association of Genocide Scholars- the people who study the evidence and facts- wrote an open letter to Prime Minster Erdogan, which I will post-separately, but note here: “We [IAGS] represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe…We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide—how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history." COMMENT: Wendy Kaminer writes (9/20/07) “why should we encourage people to feel so horribly victimized…I leave to history both its perpetrators and victims.” The real victims in this equation, however, are those who believe that genocide is simply a historical issue and that history is something that exists in textbooks. The real victims are those, who believing they are being critical are simply being fashionably proactive. How much more exciting it must be to be on the forefront of pointing fingers and not having to be accountable for the facts. QUESTION: What is it going to take on your part, what more do you require, to accept the fact of the Armenian Genocide?
  September 25, 2007 7:42 PM

• Zareh Sahakian said:

  Ms. Kaminer, if freedom of speech is what you are advocating then it is only logical that you hear also what others have to say about your opinions. With all due respect your ideas about the "Armenian genocide fracas" as you call it are simply nonsensical. You seem to think this whole issue about Foxman and ADL rests in the word "tantamount" in his description of the Armenian genocide. It is much more than that. You ignore the policies taken many years ago by prominent Jewish organizations in the United States, including the ADL to actively work for the Turkish government to block any resolutions that come up in the US Congress. You ignore the fact that the day Foxman took to "recognize" the "tantamount" genocide he called Turkish Prime minister Erdogan to apologize for what he had to do. You ignore the fact that on one hand he reluctantly "compromises" on this issue and then quickly reaffirms his intentions to work against the Armenians. You have said before that you also regard Foxman's behaviour as hypocritical, then why do you disagree with people who want to put a stop to such hypocrisies? If you really believe that "one's hate speech is another's truth" then it is up to you, as an outside observer, to look at the issues with more depth and hopefully with more research , how else can one determine which is hate and which is truth, and why bother with this issue in the first place? By the way, for your information, when you repeatedly call "distant descendants" as being the victims of genocide, I understand that you mean: "it's an old story why to bother with people who have no connections to it", Well, you are talking about both my parents who survived the genocide thanks to European and American missionaries working in the Ottoman Empire, to whom they owed their lives and to whom I have deep and everlasting gratitude. You also say that the Genocide recognition is simply a case of "following money". It is not about money. It is about modern Turkey, which seemingly has nothing to do with the old Ottoman Empire, yet continuously denies the reality and worst, fabricates lies to support the official stance, under serious penalties against those who disagree with official fabrications. Now there's a subject for you to expand your horizon. This is not an old story, this is happening today. On the issue of reparations, neither you nor anybody else can dismiss the rightful pursuit by Armenians for true and fair reparations. No self respecting nation can abdicate the responsibility for demanding the lands and the properties of their forefathers, a stolen homeland that was achieved by murder, plunder and wholesale centrally planned extermination of an indigenous people, and then incorporate those "empty" lands in a country called Turkey.
  September 25, 2007 7:53 PM

• Alik said:

  The Armenian genocide is denied by its perpetrator, the Turkish government. When individuals or organizations use their right to free speech to deny the Armenian genocide, they help Turkey in its denial campaign, and that’s the reason why they should be exposed. After Turkey acknowledges its crime against my people and starts educating the Turkish people about their past instead of perpetuating a lie, I personally don’t give a damn about who else denies the Armenian genocide. In this specific case, the ADL is targeted because it is a HUMAN RIGHTS organization and is working against the HUMAN RIGHTS of Armenians, not only by denying the Armenian genocide, but also by helping Turkey in its campaign of denial. Ms. Kaminer, the fact that we have to explain these “details” to you is truly astonishing.
  September 26, 2007 1:02 PM

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