The first episode of Disney+'s Moon Knight is getting review bombed owing to a historical reference made by antagonist Arthur Harrow.
Disney+'s Moon Knight series, which only recently saw the release of its premiere episode, has been the subject of review-bombing on IMDb, owing to the fact that the show acknowledged a historical event that the nation of Turkey has consistently denied: the Armenian genocide.
Alongside seemingly legitimate one-star reviews on the site, several viewers have criticized the mention of the Armenian genocide, insisting that no such event took place and that the show is serving as propaganda– some going so far as to call the show "racist." Similar comments and one-star reviews have appeared on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, though the vast majority of audiences have provided a positive review of the show.
The scene in question featured a confrontation between Arthur Harrow and Steven Grant at the museum he works at. Harrow tells Grant of the Egyptian god Ammit, who was able to judge a life in its entirety– for crimes a person had yet to commit. In his speech, Harrow claims that if Ammit had not been betrayed by gods and avatars, she could have prevented horrors such as Hitler, the Armenian genocide, Pol Pot and more.
The Turkish government's official stance is that the Armenian genocide, which took place during World War I between 1915 and 1917, is largely fabricated. It should be noted that the genocide, which was committed by the Ottoman Empire (now the Republic of Turkey), was well-documented. Mentions of the genocide are censored in Turkey and several countries have refused to acknowledge it in the past in order to maintain a positive relationship with the country.
It is understood that during WWI, the Ottoman Empire saw between 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenian people sent into the Syrian Desert, where they were placed into concentration camps and subjected to torture and abuse and killed. Furthermore, approximately 200,000 Christian Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam and brought into Muslim households for integration.
While the Turkish government does not outright deny the historical event, it does deny that a genocide took place, stating only that the Ottoman Empire committed atrocities. It is often mentioned that Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" and initiated the Genocide Convention of 1948, was prompted to do so after because of the Armenian genocide and the absence of international laws at the time that could be used to prosecute those behind the tragedy. There are currently 31 countries, including the United States, that officially recognize the Armenian genocide.
New episodes of Moon Knight air every Wednesday on Disney+.