Making Genocide Official
Larison has been very eloquent on the Armenian issue lately, but I find myself thinking other thoughts. Bottom line:
[…] as a private citizen I have always worked the fact of the Armenian genocide into casual conversation whenever not inappropriate; as private citizen and public legislator I would have ardently hoped that the Official Resolution of Genocide Fact Affirmation issue would not ever come up, in public debate or for a vote; and as a public legislator I would have voted at once for its immediate passage.
Am I right that this set of positions is consistent, fair, and advisable? I’m open to persuasion.
Not advisable. There is no compelling reason for the U.S. Congress to make any declarations on this matter. Also, among those who have disputed various claims of Armenian advocacy groups are Justin McCarthy, who may know more about the historical demography of the late Ottoman period than just about anyone else in the English or French speaking world, and Bernard Lewis, the doyen of middle eastern studies in the United States. There is no need for laymen in this country to have vehement opinions on this matter.
— Art Deco · Oct 19, 10:35 PM · #
James’ position seems reasonable to me. I can’t say whether McCarthy’s arguments do much to undermine the case for the genocide, but I’m quite confident that Lewis’ revisionism doesn’t stand up very well against the Turkish scholars who have done much of the most recent research. Laymen probably shouldn’t have a strong opinion on the matter if they don’t know anything about it, but then one of the reasons why many laymen in America know nothing about it is that many of them take the word of denialist scholars as the final word.
— Daniel Larison · Oct 20, 10:48 PM · #
<i>One of the reasons many laymen know nothing about it is that many of them take the word of denialist scholars as the final word.</i>
Daniel, about 20 years ago, I saw a piece of social survey research which indicated that about 12% of the public polled could identify George Will. (I am not sure how the pollster’s question was phrased). At that point, Dr. Will had been on broadcast television weekly for 12 years and had a column syndicated in over 400 newspapers. Neither Bernard Lewis, nor Heath Lowry, nor Justin McCarthy have that kind of exposure. I am sure you can find an agitated Turkish partisan here or there who takes their statements as the last word. I have an alternative hypothesis: nearly all Americans who know nothing about it know nothing about it because it is not part of any curriculum they were required to study and they have not the time nor the motivation to learn or retain anything about it as it is remote from their mundane life.
While the ordinary layman can learn something about it by reading the scholarly literature out there, people who do that most assiduously (e.g. Gunther Lewy and Peter Balakian) come to divergent conclusions.
— Art Deco · Oct 21, 12:49 AM · #