[BRIEF NOTE] The Crucial Role of Facts
Feb. 26th, 2006 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom an article in the EU Observer discussing the recent conviction of David Irving:
What the author misses is that, in fact, the Armenian genocide did happen just like the Holocaust did. Irving's conviction is almost certainly a mistake, though my sense of schadenfreude means that part of me is pleased that the malicious liar has finally been thrown in jail. Call me a traditionalist, if you will, for believing that what actually happened does have a pronounced and direct relevance to the situations at hand.
Turkey is prosecuting people who say that a genocide happened, because this public statement of the obvious threatens Turkey and gives the victims' survivors and descendants extra angst; Austria is prosecuting people who say that another genocide did not happen, because the public denial of the obvious serves their needs and is a nice knife in the gut to the survivors besides. Find the symmetry there.
What right can we have to tell Turkey not to prosecute those who question the official view of the Armenian genocide, if we ourselves lock up people who question the facts of the genocide in Europe?
What the author misses is that, in fact, the Armenian genocide did happen just like the Holocaust did. Irving's conviction is almost certainly a mistake, though my sense of schadenfreude means that part of me is pleased that the malicious liar has finally been thrown in jail. Call me a traditionalist, if you will, for believing that what actually happened does have a pronounced and direct relevance to the situations at hand.
Turkey is prosecuting people who say that a genocide happened, because this public statement of the obvious threatens Turkey and gives the victims' survivors and descendants extra angst; Austria is prosecuting people who say that another genocide did not happen, because the public denial of the obvious serves their needs and is a nice knife in the gut to the survivors besides. Find the symmetry there.
