GENOCIDE DENIAL: SILENCING DEBATE DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD
Richard King
ABC Australia
Feb 3 2012
The word ‘genocide’ did not exist when, in 1915, under cover of the
fog of war, the most revolting campaign of massacre and mayhem was
visited upon the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population.
Nevertheless, that this systematic assault constitutes a paradigm
case of the kind of eliminationist violence that would call that
dread word into existence is not disputed by most historians with an
interest in the area. Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who coined
the term in 1944, referred specifically to the Armenian experience
when explaining his motivation for doing so:
“I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times,”
Lemkin told a CBS reporter, “It happened to the Armenians; and,
after the Armenians, Hitler took action.”
Anyone wishing to challenge the view that a genocide took place in
the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century is thus faced with a lot
of opinion to the contrary, some of it straight from the horse’s mouth.
All the same, there are such people, some of them of no small
reputation, and they are perfectly entitled to their view. Or rather
they were entitled to their view until the French government decided
that they weren’t. Last week, the French Senate passed legislation
banning any public denial of the Armenian genocide upon pain of a
one-year jail sentence and a fine of 45,000 euros. The measure will
now be sent to president Nicolas Sarkozy for final approval, which
it is almost certain to get.
Many Armenians, in France and elsewhere, are deliriously happy
about the new law. The Turkish government continues to dispute that
genocide occurred in 1915, and the spectacle of Turkish officials and
nationalists fulminating over the French legislation is, I imagine,
a blissful one to behold. (There have even been reports of an Armenian
couple naming their new-born baby ‘Sarkozy’.) But the bloody nose
delivered to Turkey is bought at the price of a broken jaw. Make no
mistake: this law is a bad one, especially for the people it seeks to
‘protect’.
Like many countries in Europe, France has laws banning Holocaust
denial. To this extent, and since it officially recognised the Armenian
genocide in 2001, it is merely following its own example by passing
this latest bill into law. Needless to say, those who believe that
freedom of opinion should be an absolute right to be defended at
all costs and on all fronts were against the first measure as well
as the second and could have told the French authorities that laws
against Holocaust denial were the thin edge of the wedge. So it has
proven. Now there is no ‘official’ position, in principal at any rate,
that cannot be given the force of law.
To ban an opinion is to ban not only the right of a person to express
that opinion but also everyone’s right to hear it. This is very bad
for democracy, as it is only by testing our opinions against others
that those opinions gain validity and strength. History works in the
same way. It proceeds by unencumbered research, with experts arguing
over the evidence, subjecting each other’s claims to scrutiny without
fear of prosecution. What goes for scientific truth also goes for
historical truth: it must be falsifiable. No-one knows what new
evidence will emerge or what existing evidence may be revealed to
be tainted. And while the evidence can be overwhelming, we condemn
ourselves to intellectual laziness if we invite the state to do
our arguing for us. Ask yourself this: If you were stuck in a lift
with a man who denied the Holocaust, and who, for all that he looked
and sounded like a thug, seemed fairly well informed about certain
‘facts’, could you successfully argue the contrary position?
True, such people are hard to argue with. Holocaust deniers, like most
conspiracy theorists, proceed by reversing the burden of proof. Thus,
you may stress till you’re blue in the face the statistics, documents,
confessions, testimonies, photographs and other phenomena that prove
that the Holocaust happened, but a single photograph of a death
camp to which smoke appears to have been added by hand is enough to
convince the denier that it didn’t. Deductive fallacies, misdirection,
tangential argumentation – these are the tactics of the Holocaust
denier, pressed into service in an infuriating tone of innocence and
self-righteousness (‘Hey, I’m only asking the question. It’s you who
seems so sure about things’). But while they are hard to fight against,
it is important to make the effort to do so, not least because we
have entered a period in which, increasingly, everyone’s ‘truth’
is considered as valid as everyone else’s.
One thing you can do, and which I’ve tried to do above, is to point
out the way in which the denier argues, the dishonest nature of his
argumentation. By pointing out that it isn’t incumbent upon those
who think the Holocaust happened to explain away every (ostensible)
anomaly, and that a few such anomalies do not add up to a convincing
alternative historical thesis, one can stress the underlying weakness
in the position of the Holocaust ‘revisionist’. However, this is a
lot more difficult when the government determines to support you
in your view and give that view the force of law. ‘Well, then,’
your antagonist is apt to counter, ‘if my argument is so weak, why
did they ban it?’ Sometimes, in order to defeat an argument, it is
better to underline it that to cross it out.
As it happens, the debate about the Armenian genocide has taken place
at a rather higher level than the one surrounding the Holocaust. The
key question has to do with intention. Did the Ottoman authorities
order the extermination of the Empire’s Armenian population, or were
the (estimated) 1.5 million Armenians that perished between 1915 and
the early 1920s victims of the confusion of war and the ethnic and
religious enmities it unleashes? As I say, most historians subscribe
to the first view, but there are some, including Bernard Lewis, who
subscribe to the second. In any case, and notwithstanding Turkey’s
self-serving official stance, the debate was progressing in the way
that it should, with historians arguing over the evidence. So why did
the French government feel the need to intervene in this clumsy way?
One reason is the one already cited – that the French are merely
following their own logic by extending the laws against genocide
denial. But it is quite possible – indeed it seems quite likely –
that there is also a political calculation here. Sarkozy is likely to
stand for re-election in April, and many regard this latest move as an
attempt to win the votes of French Armenians, a constituency of around
half a million souls. Moreover, by picking a fight with Turkey in this
way, Sarkozy gets to appear both sensitive and combative. One doesn’t
have to be that much of a cynic to suspect that in this case feelings
of offence are being harnessed for ulterior political purposes.
This is part of a growing trend. Governments have always flirted with
laws that appeal to the majority and discriminate against minorities.
But to attempt to win political advantage by indulging a minority
is, in these times of conspicuous offence, of ethnic or religious
sensitivity, a shrewder and far more subtle tactic. Just look at the
recent furore in India, when Salman Rushdie cancelled an appearance at
the Jaipur Literary Festival on the strength of advice from the state
government, which had almost certainly exaggerated the threat from
local Islamists in an attempt to keep Rushdie away and endear itself
to the Muslim minority ahead of the upcoming state elections. This
is the kind of cynical manoeuvre of which we can expect to see more
in the future.
There was a generous dollop of hypocrisy in Turkey’s response to
the French legislation, especially in its self-righteous references
to free speech. Turkey, after all, is a country in which a writer
can be dragged through the courts for ‘insulting Turkishness’ if he
contradicts the official line on the Armenian genocide. But we in the
‘West’ make a rod for our own backs if we try to fight fire with fire
in this way. How is it possible to criticise infringements of freedom
of speech in Turkey or elsewhere with such ridiculous legislation on
the books? When, in November 2005, just a few months after the Danish
Cartoons Crisis, Austria arrested the British historian David Irving
for Holocaust denial, the secretary general of the Arab League wasted
no time in pointing out the double standard.
“What about freedom of expression when anti-Semitism is
involved?” asked Amr Mousa.
“Then it is a crime. Yet when Islam is insulted, certain powers raise
the issue of freedom of expression.”
Secular society has its blasphemies too.
My argument is that it shouldn’t have. Clearly, there are limits to
free speech. To make false claims about a product is to be guilty
of fraud, while to spread lies about another person is to be guilty
of defamation. But fraud and defamation are rightly regarded as
corrosive of the very search for truth that freedom of speech is meant
to guarantee. History depends on facts, yes, but it also depends on
interpretation, and to attempt to control it is as absurd as it is
wrong. I don’t imagine my views on genocide weigh very much in the
French parliament, or indeed in any parliament, but I’ll be buggered –
you’ll excuse my French – if any parliament is going to tell me what
they are.
Richard King is a freelance writer based in Fremantle, WA.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3809978.html