When Maria and I visited Armenia a couple of months ago, we noticed that the American government and NGOs manipulate the Armenian genocide in almost the same way they manipulate the holodomor. I also thought of how Saddam’s violent reprisals against Kurds are continually used to justify funding and arming Kurdish separatists across the Middle East. There’s a pattern here.
Almost every tourist location of any significance in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan has signage and literature at least partially produced by USAID, or several prominent “non-government” initiatives like the Armenian Missionary Association of America. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the AMAA is that I had literally never heard of it before I visited Armenia, which is odd. It’s apparently a fairly large and well-funded organization. Where are their monuments and propaganda? Where are their sponsored Facebook posts and TV ads? Where are the AMAA advocates sternly lecturing Americans for being complacent toward the plight of Armenians? Maybe I am mistaken and they are in fact quite diligent. Or maybe, the AMAA really isn’t about raising awareness of Armenian interests in America, it’s about raising awareness of American interests in Armenia. If I was an Armenian in Yerevan, I might think, judging from the sheer quantity of flags and propaganda, that the USA is my best friend – which could not be farther from the truth.
While in Yerevan, we spent a morning visiting the Armenian Genocide Memorial complex. Incidentally, the memorial was built in 1967, during the Soviet era, but the attached museum came much later, in 1995. With the construction of the museum came a political message that was absent from the original architecture.
When we entered the Armenian Genocide Memorial, one of the first signs in the museum warned of the “inherently violent nature of Turks and Islam.” Of course the various exhibits rely heavily on contemporary racial propaganda, up to and including the the museum’s crown jewel, a hall dedicated to the 1919 film Ravished Armenia.
I do not in any way mean to trivialize the Armenian genocide, but I question the motives of individuals and groups who seek to shape the narrative of historical events in the context of modern day politics – especially when the takeaway message seems to invariably involve hating a specific group of people, or a nation that still exists today. The lesson of the museum isn’t so much that everyone should hate the Ottoman Empire, the lesson is that we should hate Turks, Turkey, and Islam as a whole.
What makes the American sponsorship of fiery Armenian nationalism odd is that we are simultaneously arming and training their current neighbor/enemy Azerbajan, with the NATO website proudly proclaiming them as a “strong NATO partner.” It is, I think, even more bizarre for the USA to somewhat directly promote hate and resentment of Turkey while simultaneously allied with Turkey in NATO.
Also, I feel there’s some “racism of low expectations” here. In other words, one standard of behavior for “civilized” Anglo people, and a lower standard for lesser people who can’t be expected to know any better. I doubt it would be acceptable for a museum in the USA, regardless of context, to declare Islam and Turks as “inherently violent.”
The other major takeaway I had from the museum, and Yerevan as a whole, was how the Russian Empire and Soviet periods in their history has been effectively erased. It’s jarring, actually, because virtually all of Yerevan’s infrastructure, including their Metro, was built in the Soviet period, so it’s weird for the tourist signage to effectively pretend the Soviet Union didn’t exist. In the genocide memorial, it would be useful and interesting to discuss the Russian army’s successes up to and during World War I, and how this helped shield at least a portion of the Armenian population from violence. It would be equally useful to mention how Turkey shrewdly stayed neutral in WWII almost until the very end. Their motivation for this is pretty transparent, if the USSR collapsed, Turkey could invade and annex Armenia. The genocide museum misses an obvious opportunity to paint the Turks in a negative light because it would, however indirectly, paint the Russians in a positive light, which is unacceptable.
All that, said, I don’t think there’s going to be an equivalent of Ukraine’s Maidan revolution in Armenia. Take ancedotal evidence for what you will, but in my admittedly limited experience, Caucasian people are too shrewd to be conned so easily into dying for an abstract geopolitical goal. A few weeks ago I came across this photo of a Russian soldier in August 2008 stopping an entire Georgian convoy in its tracks:
Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Georgian soldiers are not cowardly or incompetent (I met some of them in Afghanistan back in 2016), but the guys in this photo don’t seem to be dripping with enthusiasm for a fight. This, ultimately, is the reason 2008 Georgia did not turn out the same way as 2014 Ukraine, or 2022 Ukraine. Yes, Georgia is a smaller country of less than 4 million people – but the main reason the brawl in 2008 didn’t turn into a bloody multi-year conflict is that, simply, the Georgians weren’t interested in that, and I don’t think Armenians are either. Are Armenians going to dig hundreds of kilometers of trenches and live in them for years like the Ukrainians? Uhh, no. Armenians haven’t even finished the Yerevan Cascade, which was started in 1971.
Call me racist, but I don’t think there are many groups of people in the world who would willingly live like this for nine years:
I’m sidetracking a bit. The main point I’m making here is that if you visit any nation anywhere in the world, there is some sore spot in their history that they’re upset and angry about. Sometimes these sore spots are recent, sometimes they happened hundreds of years ago. But they always exist, and an outside entity with an unlimited budget can find these hairline fractures in society and turn them into into new conflicts that breaks apart the entire country or region. That’s the goal of NATO and the only reason it exists.
Ian Kummer
Support my work by making a contribution through Boosty
All text in Reading Junkie posts are free to share or republish without permission, and I highly encourage my fellow bloggers to do so. Please be courteous and link back to the original.
I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.
Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).
This is the MO of the Empire. They will take any legitimate grievance – gay teenagers getting thrown out on the street by fundamentalist parents, the shoddy treatment of blacks by the police, some dumb beef between Russians and Ukrainians, even the battle of the sexes – and blow that up WAY out of proportion.
that picture of the soldier is a classic. takes me back to the good old days when NATO provoking russia lasted maybe a month or so.
as for the genocide, i recall a few years back “israel” decided they “own” holocausts and refused to call a spade a spade.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/24/israels-refusal-to-recognize-the-armenian-genocide-is-shameful-and-immoral-netanyahu-turkey-azerbaijan-yad-vashem-tsitsernakaberd/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-israel-wont-follow-bidens-lead-and-recognize-armenian-genocide/
https://armenianweekly.com/2018/09/10/the-hypocrisy-of-israels-denial-of-the-armenian-genocide/
Pro Primo : The beauty Cher, (but not Sony, when they were hippies…) as far as I know, lost her grandparents in the genocide of the the Armenians. Her sur-name had that “Cherevelaian” Armenian-like end.
Pro secundo: The Soviet Union built up Eastern Europe´s industrial capacity, as those 15 nuclear plants in Ukraine, (40% of their energy needs) most of it was paid if the Soviets, as the Polish communists rebuilt Poland, from 1945. But they have no gratitude, most Eastern Europes, that’s not fair and one can’t trust such people and most Western people do not. Who can trust the Ukrainians ? But people in the West are of the same fabric, and now they using the war to ” wea-ponize” the whole society against Russia, like they used “weaponize” the Covid-19, as a rehearsal, to take control over people. West must control or despise someone, out from a Churchill -or a Hitler-personality
Pro tertio: The Swedish parliament voted for condemnation of Turkey around 2015, for the genocide of Armenians, and supports the YPG-kurds in Syria, and approving the burning of the Quoran outside the Turkish legation, a month ago,
then the PKK/YPG made a symbolic hanging of Erdogan-puppet outside the Stockholm’s townhouse.
But now Turkey refuse to approve the opportunistic Sweden, to be a member
of the Nato, where Turkey was member already for 70 years(1952). So now Sweden dangling between a hard rock and a stone, begging, creeping everyday, to Erdogan to let Sweden into the pact. You can’t always get what you want…but you can get what…
If Sweden and Norway took part in the Nordstream sabotage, a casus belli, then what happens if Russia, starts testing nukes high north, close to this nations, what can arouse fear in the Scandinavian populations, no doubt, , but self-inflicted.