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NYC: BARNES & NOBLE IMBROGLIO OVER ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Submitted by Bill Weinberg
World War 4 Report, NY
May 4 2007
First-time author Margaret Ajemian Ahnert's May 1 appearance at a
Barnes & Noble store on New York's Upper East Side to promote her
new memoir on survivng the Armenian genocide, The Knock at the Door,
was disrupted by hecklers who shouted and passed out leaflets denying
the genocide occurred.
Ahnert's book relates how her mother survived the genocide as a
teenager during World War I and eventually resettled in the United
States. "Here I was trying to tell the story of my mother, not making
a political statement," she said. "It's a mother-daughter story, it's
how it affected my life. It's not just about the Armenian genocide,
it's about my mother growing up, my life, and events in her life
that affected me. It's a mother-daughter memoir. I'm not making any
historical statements."
The crowd apparently included such notables as former governor Hugh
Carey and the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, whose
grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
from 1913 to 1916. But trouble broke out in the Q&A session.
"Someone in the middle of the back of the room stood up and said,
'That's not so,'" Ahnert said. "Five or six men started to pass
out fliers of denial. I thought, oh, my goodness sakes, it's like
Holocaust deniers. I was completely taken aback."
Audience member Mary Occhino, the host of a call-in program on Sirius
satellite radio, said some of the people were shouting, "This is a
lie, this is a lie, this never happened." Added Occhino: "I got up
and said, 'Enough.' "Her mother lived through the genocide-that's
all she said. They said, 'That's a lie, that's a lie, that never
happened.' But this story is not about genocide; it's about a mother's
love for her daughter."
One man was arrested, identified by the police as Erdem Sahin of Staten
Island, charged with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor punishable by
up to a year in jail, and lesser charges including disorderly conduct.
At a hearing the following day in Manhattan Criminal Court, Judge Rita
Mella adjourned the charges in contemplation of dismissal, meaning
the case will be dropped in six months if Sahin is not arrested again.
Sahin said afterward that he and his fellow protesters were angry
that France had "made it illegal to say there was no genocide." The
French National Assembly approved the law last fall. "We realize that
if we don't do something, we will soon have no rights," he said. "We
are fighting for freedom of speech." When asked about his views
on the Armenian genocide, he said, "Honestly, I'm not a historian,
but historians say there is no genocide."
In recent years, Turkish writers who have referred to genocide have
faced reprisal. A legal claim against the novelist Elif Shafak was
dropped last fall, but she cut short a six-city US tour promoting
her sixth novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.
Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, was also sued
by a nationalist group for referring to genocide in a Swiss interview,
and in January, Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor who had challenged the
official Turkish version of the genocide, was fatally shot as he left
his office in Istanbul.
A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said passing out pamphlets violated
the company's no-solicitation policy: "They were asked to stop passing
out leaflets. They refused. They were jeering the author.
They were asked to sit down and they refused." That was when the
police were called, she said.
Ahnert said she had appeared on college campuses and at a literary
festival in Florida with no problems. "This is something I hope I
don't have to look forward to," she said. (NYT via IHT, May 3)
Now let's see, how many people deserve to be dissed in this sorry
episode? Let's count.
1. Erdem Sahin and his fellow revisionist hoodlums. (Of course!) But
also:
2. The French, whose absurd law criminzalizing denial of the genocide
only paradoxically vindicates the deniers by making them free-speech
martyrs.
3. Barnes & Noble, whose "no soliciting" policy also bottlenecks
free speech. The hypetrophy of their mall-like "bookstores" has made
B&N the equivalent of the town square in this corporate-dominated
age, and they should be made to take some responsibility for
that. Handing out leaflets (even vile genocide-denying leaflets) is
First Amendment-protected activity, and when B&N dominates intellectual
space to the degree that it does in New York, the Bill of Rights must
have some force of law on its turf. However, it should also be noted
that as soon as Sahin and his pals started to shout down Ahnert,
they violated her free speech rights, and crossed the line from
dissent to mere thuggery.
4. The New York Times, whose account of the incident states:
Many historians say that the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the
death of more than one million people around 1915 in a campaign
intended to eliminate the Armenian population throughout what is
now Turkey.
Would they use such appallingly neutral language about the Nazi
Holocaust? Of course not.
Why is that?
http://ww4report.com/node/3761
Submitted by Bill Weinberg
World War 4 Report, NY
May 4 2007
First-time author Margaret Ajemian Ahnert's May 1 appearance at a
Barnes & Noble store on New York's Upper East Side to promote her
new memoir on survivng the Armenian genocide, The Knock at the Door,
was disrupted by hecklers who shouted and passed out leaflets denying
the genocide occurred.
Ahnert's book relates how her mother survived the genocide as a
teenager during World War I and eventually resettled in the United
States. "Here I was trying to tell the story of my mother, not making
a political statement," she said. "It's a mother-daughter story, it's
how it affected my life. It's not just about the Armenian genocide,
it's about my mother growing up, my life, and events in her life
that affected me. It's a mother-daughter memoir. I'm not making any
historical statements."
The crowd apparently included such notables as former governor Hugh
Carey and the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, whose
grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
from 1913 to 1916. But trouble broke out in the Q&A session.
"Someone in the middle of the back of the room stood up and said,
'That's not so,'" Ahnert said. "Five or six men started to pass
out fliers of denial. I thought, oh, my goodness sakes, it's like
Holocaust deniers. I was completely taken aback."
Audience member Mary Occhino, the host of a call-in program on Sirius
satellite radio, said some of the people were shouting, "This is a
lie, this is a lie, this never happened." Added Occhino: "I got up
and said, 'Enough.' "Her mother lived through the genocide-that's
all she said. They said, 'That's a lie, that's a lie, that never
happened.' But this story is not about genocide; it's about a mother's
love for her daughter."
One man was arrested, identified by the police as Erdem Sahin of Staten
Island, charged with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor punishable by
up to a year in jail, and lesser charges including disorderly conduct.
At a hearing the following day in Manhattan Criminal Court, Judge Rita
Mella adjourned the charges in contemplation of dismissal, meaning
the case will be dropped in six months if Sahin is not arrested again.
Sahin said afterward that he and his fellow protesters were angry
that France had "made it illegal to say there was no genocide." The
French National Assembly approved the law last fall. "We realize that
if we don't do something, we will soon have no rights," he said. "We
are fighting for freedom of speech." When asked about his views
on the Armenian genocide, he said, "Honestly, I'm not a historian,
but historians say there is no genocide."
In recent years, Turkish writers who have referred to genocide have
faced reprisal. A legal claim against the novelist Elif Shafak was
dropped last fall, but she cut short a six-city US tour promoting
her sixth novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.
Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, was also sued
by a nationalist group for referring to genocide in a Swiss interview,
and in January, Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor who had challenged the
official Turkish version of the genocide, was fatally shot as he left
his office in Istanbul.
A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said passing out pamphlets violated
the company's no-solicitation policy: "They were asked to stop passing
out leaflets. They refused. They were jeering the author.
They were asked to sit down and they refused." That was when the
police were called, she said.
Ahnert said she had appeared on college campuses and at a literary
festival in Florida with no problems. "This is something I hope I
don't have to look forward to," she said. (NYT via IHT, May 3)
Now let's see, how many people deserve to be dissed in this sorry
episode? Let's count.
1. Erdem Sahin and his fellow revisionist hoodlums. (Of course!) But
also:
2. The French, whose absurd law criminzalizing denial of the genocide
only paradoxically vindicates the deniers by making them free-speech
martyrs.
3. Barnes & Noble, whose "no soliciting" policy also bottlenecks
free speech. The hypetrophy of their mall-like "bookstores" has made
B&N the equivalent of the town square in this corporate-dominated
age, and they should be made to take some responsibility for
that. Handing out leaflets (even vile genocide-denying leaflets) is
First Amendment-protected activity, and when B&N dominates intellectual
space to the degree that it does in New York, the Bill of Rights must
have some force of law on its turf. However, it should also be noted
that as soon as Sahin and his pals started to shout down Ahnert,
they violated her free speech rights, and crossed the line from
dissent to mere thuggery.
4. The New York Times, whose account of the incident states:
Many historians say that the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the
death of more than one million people around 1915 in a campaign
intended to eliminate the Armenian population throughout what is
now Turkey.
Would they use such appallingly neutral language about the Nazi
Holocaust? Of course not.
Why is that?
http://ww4report.com/node/3761