State of Denial

I can’t comment substantively on the proposed French law that would criminalize the denial of the World War I-era Armenian genocide. I know too little about French politics to predict whether it will pass or not (though some of the reporting suggests it probably won’t), and I know too little about the continental politics of the EU to speculate on the weave of motives that might be prompting this bill. Moreover, I tend not to get too animated about the contours of free speech law outside the US (where my ability to alter anything amounts to something less than nil.)

Like Henry, though, I can’t imagine this is going to be especially productive. The Turkish government has always sought to quash debate about the Armenian genocide within and outside its national borders; and whereas few people recall the attempted extermination of the Armenian people (as Hitler once noted in an oft-quoted remark), I simply can’t imagine that the state of actual genocide denial is so great that a law of any sort is going to have much of an effect. There really isn’t any room for disputing the historical evidence of genocide against Armenians within the Ottoman Empire. Like all great bureaucratic atrocities, this one is abundantly documented. To be quite reductive and personal, I equate denying the Armenian genocide with being a shithead. Whether France or anyone else needs an anti-shithead law is worth considering, I suppose, but it strikes me as being somewhat beside the point.

Meantime, though, it’s worth reflecting for a moment on the official stance of the United States government with respect to the Armenian genocide. If the statute being considered in France has debatable value, what are we to make of the official American position, which continues to resist using the actual term “genocide” to describe the liquidation of 1.5 million lives between 1915 and 1917. In a letter sent on 19 February 2000 to Edgar Hagopian and Vasken Setrakian of the Armenian National Committee of America, candidate George W. Bush offered the following uncontroversial observations, which he topped off with a simple pledge:

The twentieth century was marred by wars of unimaginable brutality, mass murder and genocide. History records that the Armenians were the first people of the last century to have endured these cruelties. The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people.

After his ascent to office, however, Bush carried on in the tradition of his predecessor, who had also — after campaigning in 1992 on a similar pledge — resorted to post-election vague phrases intended not to dismay the Turkish government. It has been 25 years now since an American president used the word “genocide” to describe the 1.5 million Armenian deaths that occurred between 1915-1917. Ronald Reagan was the last — and in fact the only one ever — to do so, which he did quite clearly on 22 April 1981. Every April 24, the date on which Armenians mark the commencement of the genocide, Bush has spoken of the “tragedy,” the “calamity” of these “mass killings”; he has mourned the “bitter fate” and celebrated the “indomitable will” of the Armenian people. But he has carefully refused to use the proper words — that is, the proper word — on those days or any others.

I used to think this cowardice was merely strategic, a style of discourse calculated not to offend an important military and economic ally. I’m now convinced, though, that the vague annual rituals surrounding the Armenian “tragedy” are more than that. Genocide is in fact a legal category, with unmistakable implications for states who choose to invoke the term; by virtue of the 1948 Convention on Genocide (not ratified by the US until the mid-1980s), signatories are obliged to act to “prevent and suppress” acts of genocide. Clearly, to call the slaughter of Armenians “genocide” does nothing to alter the history of that period. The use of the term, however, does serve perhaps as a reminder that the United States knew about the events in eastern Anatolia as they were occurring — they were widely and graphically discussed in the pages of the New York Times, for example — and chose to remain silent. Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State Robert Lansing even expressed his view at the time that the Ottoman policies were “more or less justifiable” given the “disloyalty” of Armenians within the realm. He did note, almost off-handedly, that the harsh treatment of the Armenian people might jeopardize the “good feeling” that existed between the Ottoman rulers and the United States.

Lansing’s equivocations would be replicated countless times over the next century, as the United States mumbled and ruminated over — and at times passively abetted — genocidal campaigns in Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, and the disintegrating Yugoslavia. The Armenian genocide calls to mind this depressing history. Our government’s refusal to use the correct language is a revealing embarrassment.