ESTABLISHING HISTORY IS NOT A JOB FOR POLITICIANS
by Steven Edwards, National Post

National Post (Canada)
October 14, 2006 Saturday
All but Toronto Edition

French bill making it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide ‘is
just silly’

The European left has been among the first to denounce America’s
anti-terrorist security measures as a threat to the West’s traditional
rights and freedoms.

While the U.S. courts and Constitution will eventually weed out
excesses, the same cannot be said in Europe, where there is a growing
tendency to legislate history.

The latest example is unfolding in France, where the Socialists have
put forward a bill that would make it a crime to deny that Turks
committed genocide against Armenians in the final years of the
Ottoman Empire.

There are other "official histories" in France and across Europe. The
most prominent involves the Holocaust, which is illegal to deny or
downplay in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany,
Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland.

This is one European trend that should stay on the other side of
the Atlantic.

Not that there is any question that the Holocaust saw the Nazi-led
extermination of six million Jews and other disfavoured minorities.

But at the heart of democracy’s success is the premise that truth
and reason will triumph in free debate. So why outlaw deviations from
historical fact?

"Either there is a legitimate question about whether the Armenian
genocide occurred or not. If there is, then people should be free
to argue both sides. If not, and if you deny it, then you are just
going to look ridiculous," says Wayne Sumner, a University of Toronto
philosophy professor and author of The Hateful and the Obscene:
Studies in the Limits of Free Expression.

"In both cases, legislation is not required."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, comes across as an
inveterate anti-Semite when he questions the overwhelming evidence
for the Holocaust.

But limiting his right to free expression hands him and other critics
of the West an opportunity to justify their own warped interpretations
of history.

"When we’re criticizing other countries for the restrictions they
place on free speech — especially Islamic states such as Iran —
it does weaken our moral position because they can reply that we’re
imposing restraints on what we regard as illegitimate forms of speech,"
Mr. Sumner says.

The French bill, which was passed by the lower house, provides for
the same maximum punishment mandated for someone convicted of denying
the Holocaust: a year in jail and a 45,000 fine ($64,000).

It builds on a 2001 law declaring the 1915 Turkish killings of
Armenians as genocide. France has also legislated that the trade in
African slaves was a crime against humanity.

"First we have a law that says a historical fact happened, which is
just silly," says David Boaz, executive vice-president of the Cato
Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer.

"Either the event happened or it didn’t, but we ask historians to
make that determination, not legislators and politicians, because
establishing official history is something that belongs behind the
Iron Curtain, not in the West.

"But then you go a step further when you say it is illegal to deny
the official history. That really is looking into men’s souls, trying
to impose truth through a prison term — and that’s what we don’t do
in the West, which is founded on the notion of free inquiry and open
debate, and the right to believe as you choose."

Limiting debate inevitably drives the subject into the shadows,
where people who promote truly sinister theories are more likely to
claim legitimacy.

"If you are not able to have a serious debate with historians
presenting papers or newspaper columnists challenging each other’s
arguments, then you will get offshore Web sites and flyers handed out
by the kind of people who really ought to be excluded from society,"
Mr. Boaz says.

Turkey has always denied the Armenian charge that the Young Turks,
the dominant party in 1915, systematically killed or deported 1.5
million Armenians.

Ankara says as many as 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks
died in the eastern part of the country as inter-ethnic violence
raged during the First World War.

Turkey has always banned debate on the subject and last year began
prosecutions under a law criminalizing a notion called "insulting
Turkishness." France and the rest of the European Union have said
this law has to go if Ankara holds out any hope of admission to the
bloc of democracies.

The hypocrisy of the French bill, which needs Senate and presidential
approval before it becomes law, was pointed out yesterday by Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk, who stood trial for "insulting Turkishness"
this year over his questioning of the official line on the Armenian
massacres.

"France has a very old tradition of liberal and critical thinking,
and I myself was influenced by it and learned much from it," said Mr.

Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature this week.

"But the decision they made constitutes a prohibition."

Pundits explain the Socialists’ move as having more to do with winning
votes among France’s 450,000-strong Armenian expatriate population
than any desire to ensure the historical record is accurate.

Which makes the move even more despicable. When France’s voters
realize the truth, one can only hope it will trump the politicians’
cynicism and see them defeated in next year’s election.

GRAPHIC: Black & White Photo: John Schults, Reuters; Members of
France’s Armenian community attend a demonstration near the National
Assembly in Paris after the lower house approved a bill making denial
of the Armenian genocide a crime.