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Sunday, October 28, 2007
********************************************
WHO IS A FASCIST?
***********************************
People may think, feel, and speak like fascists but they object strenuously to being identified as such. How to recognize a dyed-in-the wool, real McCoy fascist? Easy! Follow the instructions below.
*
THE THREE PILLARS OF FASCISM
********************************************
They are nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism.
*
NATIONALISM
**************************
Not only are we nationalists, we also brag about it. We wear our nationalism like a badge. We look down on anyone who dares to say anything against it. We may even cover him with verbal abuse. I speak from experience.
How do we define nationalism? Answer: Love of country, contempt for fellow countrymen.
*
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
*****************************************
Read a history of our literature and draw your own conclusions. But if you are too busy to read books of no interest to you, take my word for it: our treatment of intellectuals has been a disaster area and we could easily qualify as one of the most anti-intellectual people on earth. We lost two generations of intellectuals under Talaat and Stalin, and both “purges” (to use a euphemism) with the cooperation of our philistines. But the worst was yet to come. Where Talaat and Stalin failed, our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (“Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation!”) succeeded. Our intellectual class today has been so thoroughly marginalized that it might as well be extinct. The very few who exist, if at all, have gone underground, sometimes literally.
Oh! don’t get me wrong. We love and venerate poets who sing the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and the “sunripe flavor” of our language (whatever the hell that means) but we prefer to speak English in America, French in France, Greek in Greece, Turkish in Turkey, and with a forked tongue with one another.
*
ANTI-SEMITISM
********************************
Anecdotal evidence: after visiting New York City, an old schoolteacher of mine came to see me. “We saw a lot of Jews there,” said he. “They are people like us, don’t you know. They dress like ordinary folks, they walk like ordinary folks, and they look like the rest of us. Zarmatsa mnatsi!”
What about Jews who are pro-Turkish and anti-Armenian? Speaking for myself, I do not see them in terms of pro and anti, and if I were cornered to do so, I would say they are pro-themselves, and they have every right to be, and more power to them. Why are we surprised (like my senile schoolteacher) to learn that Jews are like everyone else, not to say, like us? So what if after millennia of persecution they have learned the hard way to place their own survival above the survival of others (who may or may not be anti-Semites)? When was the last time we placed the survival and welfare of other nations above ours?
Speaking of Armenians and survival, allow me to conclude by quoting Zarian, one of the greatest connoisseurs of the Armenian psyche: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
P.S. ON NATIONALISM
**************************************
After writing these lines, I read a long article-interview with Serge Tankian, leader of System of a Down, who is identified as an Armenian from Beirut and “a thoughtful, erudite man…a fervent social crusader with a special interest in the Armenian genocide.” We are further told he espouses the thesis that “nationalism” is one of the three evils that haunt mankind, the other two being “greed” and “indifference.”
#
Monday, October 29, 2007
*******************************************
THE SOURCE
***************************
At the source of all divisions there is a dogma, that is to say, a charlatan who asserts infallibility by speaking in the name of god or ideology. The hidden message of all dogmas is: “No need to think for yourself. We will do the thinking for you. All you have to do is give us your consent, trust, and support” (which, in our context, means taxation without representation). After centuries of subservience to sultans and commissars, nothing comes more easily to us than to say, “Yes, sir!” to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (“Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation”).
*
PORTRAIT OF A LEADER
*****************************************
After ASSessing himself as a good Armenian, he expects everyone to think as he does. But when it comes to thinking, to accede to preconditions is to conform, to parrot, to echo. When thinking surrenders its freedom, it ceases to be thinking and Homo sapiens ceases to be sapiens, he becomes a robot, a slave, a sheep whose destiny is the slaughterhouse.
*
MAILER SPEAKS
*****************************
Norman Mailer in a recent interview published in a French magazine: “The tentative title of my next book is ALL PRIESTS ARE LIARS.”
*
CLASSY VERBAL ABUSE
************************************
When a 19th-century English scholar by the name of Seely published a book about Jesus, a contemporary reviewer described it as “the most pestilential book ever vomited from the jaws of hell.” The book became a best-seller.
*
PRIORITIES
****************************
Our future is more important than our past. That doesn’t mean let bygones be bygones and amnesia. It only means rearranging our priorities.
*
POLYBIUS SPEAKS
*********************************
Somewhere Polybius explains that good constitutions and laws make good citizens. In a just society, he writes, “vice will not readily spring nor will men be easily overcome by their enemies.” Except of course when they have been shaped by laws enacted by their enemies – in our case, Ottoman and Soviet constitutions and laws.
*
ON AMERICAN POLITICS
************************************
In this morning’s paper, the Dalai Lama on American politics: “No matter what the intentions, methods become unrealistic. So instead of solving the problem, they increase the problem.”
Whenever I hear an Armenian say that this or that boss, bishop, or benefactor (Woe!) is a good man with good intentions and as such beyond criticism, I am reminded of the American cliché: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And whenever I am told I am wasting my time, I say, “I am gathering the material for a book.”
#
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
***************************************
VERSIONS OF THE PAST
*********************************
In his PAST IMPERFECT (New York, 2004) Peter Charles Hoffer explains that the official version of American history is essentially that of its dominant WASP minority, which means, Indians, women, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and Blacks are marginalized to the point of irrelevance. The result, he goes on, is more fiction than fact, and more fraud than honest narrative. To further illustrate and expose the dishonesty of pro-WASP and pro-Establishment historians, Hoffer discusses at considerable length the works of, among others, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, both of whom were also accused of plagiarism.
What Hoffer says of American historians could be said of all nationalist historians, or for that matter, anyone who approaches his task with a belief system or ideology. To see the amount of fiction and fraud that has gone into a history of, say, Christianity by a Christian, read Edward Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. For more details on this subject, see also GOD’S FUNERAL by A.N. Wilson (New York, 1999).
*
CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM
**********************************************
To be civilized also means to disagree in a civilized manner. One does not have to be a prophet to predict that those who disagree like barbarians will have more enemies than friends, and since it is impossible to agree on everything, the chances are they will make enemies even of their friends.
*
ENDS AND MEANS
******************************
In the final analysis, everything we say leads either to tolerance or intolerance, to love or hatred, to peace or war. If those who are partisans of intolerance, hatred, and war knew they would have to confront the enemy in a field of honor, I suspect they would think twice before spewing their venom.
*
ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
************************************************** **
“Since very few Muslims had traveled in Europe or commanded its languages, Ottoman and Iranian rulers often relied for their dealings with European states on agents who were drawn from their Christian minorities, Greek or Armenian.” From AFTER TAMERLANE: THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF EMPIRE by John Darwin (London, 2007), page 204.
#
********************************************
WHO IS A FASCIST?
***********************************
People may think, feel, and speak like fascists but they object strenuously to being identified as such. How to recognize a dyed-in-the wool, real McCoy fascist? Easy! Follow the instructions below.
*
THE THREE PILLARS OF FASCISM
********************************************
They are nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism.
*
NATIONALISM
**************************
Not only are we nationalists, we also brag about it. We wear our nationalism like a badge. We look down on anyone who dares to say anything against it. We may even cover him with verbal abuse. I speak from experience.
How do we define nationalism? Answer: Love of country, contempt for fellow countrymen.
*
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
*****************************************
Read a history of our literature and draw your own conclusions. But if you are too busy to read books of no interest to you, take my word for it: our treatment of intellectuals has been a disaster area and we could easily qualify as one of the most anti-intellectual people on earth. We lost two generations of intellectuals under Talaat and Stalin, and both “purges” (to use a euphemism) with the cooperation of our philistines. But the worst was yet to come. Where Talaat and Stalin failed, our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (“Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation!”) succeeded. Our intellectual class today has been so thoroughly marginalized that it might as well be extinct. The very few who exist, if at all, have gone underground, sometimes literally.
Oh! don’t get me wrong. We love and venerate poets who sing the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and the “sunripe flavor” of our language (whatever the hell that means) but we prefer to speak English in America, French in France, Greek in Greece, Turkish in Turkey, and with a forked tongue with one another.
*
ANTI-SEMITISM
********************************
Anecdotal evidence: after visiting New York City, an old schoolteacher of mine came to see me. “We saw a lot of Jews there,” said he. “They are people like us, don’t you know. They dress like ordinary folks, they walk like ordinary folks, and they look like the rest of us. Zarmatsa mnatsi!”
What about Jews who are pro-Turkish and anti-Armenian? Speaking for myself, I do not see them in terms of pro and anti, and if I were cornered to do so, I would say they are pro-themselves, and they have every right to be, and more power to them. Why are we surprised (like my senile schoolteacher) to learn that Jews are like everyone else, not to say, like us? So what if after millennia of persecution they have learned the hard way to place their own survival above the survival of others (who may or may not be anti-Semites)? When was the last time we placed the survival and welfare of other nations above ours?
Speaking of Armenians and survival, allow me to conclude by quoting Zarian, one of the greatest connoisseurs of the Armenian psyche: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
P.S. ON NATIONALISM
**************************************
After writing these lines, I read a long article-interview with Serge Tankian, leader of System of a Down, who is identified as an Armenian from Beirut and “a thoughtful, erudite man…a fervent social crusader with a special interest in the Armenian genocide.” We are further told he espouses the thesis that “nationalism” is one of the three evils that haunt mankind, the other two being “greed” and “indifference.”
#
Monday, October 29, 2007
*******************************************
THE SOURCE
***************************
At the source of all divisions there is a dogma, that is to say, a charlatan who asserts infallibility by speaking in the name of god or ideology. The hidden message of all dogmas is: “No need to think for yourself. We will do the thinking for you. All you have to do is give us your consent, trust, and support” (which, in our context, means taxation without representation). After centuries of subservience to sultans and commissars, nothing comes more easily to us than to say, “Yes, sir!” to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (“Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation”).
*
PORTRAIT OF A LEADER
*****************************************
After ASSessing himself as a good Armenian, he expects everyone to think as he does. But when it comes to thinking, to accede to preconditions is to conform, to parrot, to echo. When thinking surrenders its freedom, it ceases to be thinking and Homo sapiens ceases to be sapiens, he becomes a robot, a slave, a sheep whose destiny is the slaughterhouse.
*
MAILER SPEAKS
*****************************
Norman Mailer in a recent interview published in a French magazine: “The tentative title of my next book is ALL PRIESTS ARE LIARS.”
*
CLASSY VERBAL ABUSE
************************************
When a 19th-century English scholar by the name of Seely published a book about Jesus, a contemporary reviewer described it as “the most pestilential book ever vomited from the jaws of hell.” The book became a best-seller.
*
PRIORITIES
****************************
Our future is more important than our past. That doesn’t mean let bygones be bygones and amnesia. It only means rearranging our priorities.
*
POLYBIUS SPEAKS
*********************************
Somewhere Polybius explains that good constitutions and laws make good citizens. In a just society, he writes, “vice will not readily spring nor will men be easily overcome by their enemies.” Except of course when they have been shaped by laws enacted by their enemies – in our case, Ottoman and Soviet constitutions and laws.
*
ON AMERICAN POLITICS
************************************
In this morning’s paper, the Dalai Lama on American politics: “No matter what the intentions, methods become unrealistic. So instead of solving the problem, they increase the problem.”
Whenever I hear an Armenian say that this or that boss, bishop, or benefactor (Woe!) is a good man with good intentions and as such beyond criticism, I am reminded of the American cliché: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And whenever I am told I am wasting my time, I say, “I am gathering the material for a book.”
#
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
***************************************
VERSIONS OF THE PAST
*********************************
In his PAST IMPERFECT (New York, 2004) Peter Charles Hoffer explains that the official version of American history is essentially that of its dominant WASP minority, which means, Indians, women, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and Blacks are marginalized to the point of irrelevance. The result, he goes on, is more fiction than fact, and more fraud than honest narrative. To further illustrate and expose the dishonesty of pro-WASP and pro-Establishment historians, Hoffer discusses at considerable length the works of, among others, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, both of whom were also accused of plagiarism.
What Hoffer says of American historians could be said of all nationalist historians, or for that matter, anyone who approaches his task with a belief system or ideology. To see the amount of fiction and fraud that has gone into a history of, say, Christianity by a Christian, read Edward Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. For more details on this subject, see also GOD’S FUNERAL by A.N. Wilson (New York, 1999).
*
CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM
**********************************************
To be civilized also means to disagree in a civilized manner. One does not have to be a prophet to predict that those who disagree like barbarians will have more enemies than friends, and since it is impossible to agree on everything, the chances are they will make enemies even of their friends.
*
ENDS AND MEANS
******************************
In the final analysis, everything we say leads either to tolerance or intolerance, to love or hatred, to peace or war. If those who are partisans of intolerance, hatred, and war knew they would have to confront the enemy in a field of honor, I suspect they would think twice before spewing their venom.
*
ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
************************************************** **
“Since very few Muslims had traveled in Europe or commanded its languages, Ottoman and Iranian rulers often relied for their dealings with European states on agents who were drawn from their Christian minorities, Greek or Armenian.” From AFTER TAMERLANE: THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF EMPIRE by John Darwin (London, 2007), page 204.
#