[BRIEF NOTE] Genocides and Denial

[rfmcdonald]

An American army regulation
Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
'Cos to do so causes permanent "psychological damage"
It's not permanent but they didn't know that
Anyway during the supposed "famine"
We lost a lot more than 10% of a nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
BUT ITS USE IN THE CONTROLLING OF OUR EDUCATION
Schools go on about "Black 47"
On and on about "The terrible "famine""
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one

- from Sinéad O'Connor, "Famine," Universal Mother (1994)

I'm quite fond of this song of Sinéad's and not only from a music perspective, since it hits upon a central fact in Ireland's demographic trauma of the 1840s: The Irish famine wasn't nearly so much an agricultural or a climatic failure as it was a massive political and economic failure, and its effects were magnified by the British government's utter lack of concern.



Indeed, as John Dolan wrote in The Exile, the Irish famine

was every bit as artificial as the one Stalin imposed on Ukraine. In Ukraine, NKVD guards sat on piles of grain while whole villages starved to death; in Ireland, armed guards accompanied shipments of food that were exported for the profit of landlords while whole counties starved. Ireland, like Ukraine, was a net exporter of food at the time of the famine, and while the potato crop failed in France, Germany, and many other European countries, there were no deaths from starvation. Only in Ireland did genocidal authorities decide to use a crop problem to kill off a troublesome peasant population. You think I'm exaggerating here? OK, try this: it's a direct quote from Lord Trevalyan, spoken at the time this artificial famine was at its height: "This famine is a judgment of God on a stubborn and indolent people, and we must not ameliorate it."

The only difference between Trevalyan and the Stalinists is that Trevalyan was more articulate and smug; he said outright what they cloaked in progressive cant.

Honesty about the historical record is important, not only in order to develop an accurate historical record but in order to provide some sort of basis for reconciliation between peoples divided by differing interpretations of the same historical events. If, for instance, French and German schoolchildren were still taught about the innate warmongering evil of their neighbour country across the Rhine in the First World War, the European Union would be a less viable proposition.

That's why I'm disturbed by this news from Turkey, concerning the recent conclusion of Turkish scholars regarding the Armenian genocide. For, you see, there was no genocide. Rather, the Armenians all emigrated:

The Ottoman Empire exiled Armenians living particularly in the East and Central Anatolia to Syria and Northern Iraq regions belonging to the Ottomans at the time. During this exile, a certain number of Armenian people died due to disease and inconvenient conditions. However, this loss never amounted to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians and it did not even reach thousands. Thus, documents that indicate the Armenian population in the whole of Anatolia were just that. The number of exiled Armenians was nearly 500,000 and most of the exiled ones returned to their old places after 1918.

Presumably, the Armenians who never returned--the families, communities, entire regional populations never heard from again--travelled to, say, Antarctica, or Mars, or Alpha Centauri, some location beyond the reach of civilization where they could prepare for future waves of migrants mysteriously vanished from known realms. Perhaps they were joined by Ukrainian kulaks in the 1930s, central and eastern European Jews in the 1940s, Stalinist political prisoners in the 1950s, and the missing tens of millions from China in that country's 1960s. A pity we haven't found that place yet.

Turkey's an important country, given its location, its level of economic development, and its emerging political and social liberalism. It has the potential to serve as the testbed for an Islamic Democratic movement; and, in a decade's time, the potential to be a viable candidate for membership in the European Union. I wish it well.



I'm disappointed that even now, after three generations, official Turkey still feels the need to deny the fact of the genocide of the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. Just as (West) German recognition of tremendous Polish suffering under a previous German regime was a prerequisite for the relatively friendly modern relations between reunified Germany and Poland in a reunited Europe--indeed, may have been a prerequisite for German reunification--so must Turkish recognition of tremendous Armenian suffering under a previous Turkish regime be a prerequisite for relatively friendly modern relations between Turkey and Armenia in a greater Europe.

During the First World War, large numbers of Armenians--and more specifically, large numbers of Armenian civilians--were systematically slaughtered by the Ottoman Turkish government. How many were killed? The figures vary, given the lack of proper statistics-keeping in the Ottoman regime, the fuzzy question of what an Armenian actually was, and the extreme disorder prevailing throughout Anatolia and the Caucasus in the decade after the beginning of the First World War. Certainly in excess of a million Armenians were killed, possibly as many as 1.5 million. The scale of the massacres, and the degree of planning involved, is enough to qualify it as the first of the 20th century's genocides.

As I said, I wish Turkey well. Forgive me, though, if I'm skeptical of its candidacy for European Union membership so long as the Turkish government engages in what is basically officially sanctioned Holocaust denial. How can a regime be trusted in the future when it can't be trusted on the past?







UPDATE (11:12 PM) : Crossposted to Living in Europe.