Thursday, December 15, 2005
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There seems to be an unspoken law among us that
says, “If you disagree with me, you are my
enemy.” Result? We have three sets of enemies:
Turks, the corrupt West, and a fraction of our
fellow Armenians. Whoever first said “Mart bidi
chellank” (We will never acquire the status of
human beings) fully qualifies as one of our major
prophets.
*
To say or to imply “If you contradict me you are
my enemy,” is a fallacy based on another fallacy,
namely, “I know and understand all I need to know
and understand,” which happens to be the unspoken
assumption of all tyrants and fascist dictators.
It follows, all dissidents and critics are
enemies of the people and they don’t deserve to
live.
*
People who say they know and understand all they
need to know and understand, usually rely on
someone else’s knowledge and understanding, which
means that their knowledge is inadmissible
because based on hearsay.
*
Stalin relied on Marx and completely ignored
Marx’s statement “I am not a Marxist.” He also
ignored one of Marx’s central pillars of thought,
that of dialectic, which means dialogue, and
dialogue is possible only when contradiction (or
antithesis) is allowed to follow assertion (or
thesis). And because Stalin ignored that aspect
of the Marxist system, his empire collapsed and
the Soviets “mart cheghan.”
*
There are two approaches to our genocide: to
ascribe it (one) to pure evil, and (two) to
historic, social, and cultural conditions. When
Toynbee first wrote about the Genocide he
ascribed it to pure evil. But when he studied the
Turkish side of the story by making Turkish
friends and learning the Turkish language, he
realized the Genocide was an occurrence that
could be explained and understood. However, he at
no time said or implied that to explain is to
justify – which is where we tend to go wrong.
Whenever someone tries to explain the Genocide we
accuse him of being a denialist (among us, the
lowest form of animal life). And worse, we call
him an enemy, and in doing so we condemn
ourselves to have three sets of enemies, in other
words, to be perennial losers.
*
If we call the Turks Asiatic barbarians, what do
we call the Nazis? European barbarians? What do
we call Americans (in relation to their treatment
of natives and blacks)? American barbarians? What
do we call Stalin (a next door neighbor)? A
Caucasian barbarian? What do we call Mao,
compared to whom, Stalin was only an amateur
serial killer, (according to a recent
biography).
*
The list of crimes against humanity is endless
and they all begin in the convolutions of the
brain, and to call a fellow Armenian an enemy,
and worse, to silence him – as our “betters” do –
is the mother of all crimes against humanity.
#
Friday, December 16, 2005
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Whenever I express an honest opinion I make an
enemy, as if honesty were anti-Armenian.
*
Whether we like it or not, we are all in the
business of recycling a party line because none
of us knows the whole truth. We may know a
fraction of the truth but never the whole truth.
But a fraction of the truth is how propaganda is
defined.
*
I too recycle a party line, and more specifically
the party of Baronian, Voskanian, Zarian, and
Massikian; the party of Socrates and
Solzhenitsyn; the party of Toynbee and Pamuk, who
went on trial today not because he spoke the
truth – only the Good Lord knows the whole truth
– but because he expressed an honest opinion; and
it’s not that honesty is anti-Turkish, rather it
does not recognize any specific religion,
ideology, and power structure that speaks in the
name of god or truth.
*
I have said this before and it bears repeating:
god and truth have generated more victims than
the most diabolical big lies invented or imagined
by man.
#
Saturday, December 17, 2005
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EXCUSE MY FRENCH
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E.M. Forster, the author of some of the very best books on England and India, in a letter to a friend: “Most Indians, like most English people, are shits.”
*
I was born and raised in a ghetto near Athens that looked like an oversized gypsy encampment. Greeks called us “Turkish gypsies” and treated us like shit.
*
At the age of twenty I came to Canada and tried to make a living working at minimum-wage jobs in factories and department stores. That’s when I discovered that even the best among them are capable of behaving like shit when dealing with white trash.
*
I lived in Italy for a number of years and I found it difficult to resist their charm. But whenever I use that word I am reminded of Albert Camus. “Charm,” Camus once said, “is shit.” When I think of Mussolini and his Fascists I cannot help agreeing with Camus.
*
There are two drawbacks in being an Armenian writer: you work for less than minimum wage and whenever you refuse to recycle someone’s party line you are treated like shit.
*
If some of my readers are to be believed – and I for one do not feel qualified to question their honesty — I am myself a first-class shit.
*
Perhaps the only difference between tyrants and the rest of us is that tyrants have the means to deal with the shits whereas all we can do is resort to name-calling.
#