Denying The Horrible Facts Of History

The Stiletto ^ | March 2, 2007 | The Stiletto

[theothercheek]

When The Stiletto was watching Hannity & Colmes the other day, one of the segments concerned the hateful, hysterical blog comments by posters lamenting the failure of the Taliban suicide bomber who reportedly tried to assassinate Vice President Dick Cheney outside the Bagram air force base in Afghanistan.

Citing New York Congressman Charles Rangel’s 2005 remark that the Iraq War “is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed” and Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman’s comparison of global warming denial to Holocaust denial, one of the guest pundits denounced the over-the-top propensity of the far left to equate people with whom they disagree as being “as bad as people who are denying the horribly facts of history for evil purposes” (see transcript).

Equating the Holocaust with something several orders of magnitude less depraved than a crime against humanity has a diminishing effect on the Holocaust – but at least by using it as a benchmark of evil, Rangel, Goodman and others are acknowledging that it really happened.

Ironically, the comment on Hannity & Colmes descrying this tactic was made by none other than Armenian Genocide denier James Taranto, who himself denied the horrible facts of the Ottoman Turks’ systematic plan to annihilate a hated Christian minority in one of his columns.

Using a classic tactic of Genocide deniers, Taranto wrote: “We have no opinion on whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide or not …” thus diminishing the reality of the Armenian Genocide to oblivion.

According to Wikipedia: “Denialists often argue from ignorance, approaching the subject without acknowledging eyewitness records or previously made studies, or previous conclusions, and claim falsehood based on lack of direct evidence.” The Stiletto couldn’t have put it better herself.

And in a development involving one of Taranto’s Genocide-denier colleagues at OpinionJournal, as of yesterday Tunku Varadarajan moved to The Wall Street Journal's newsroom as an assistant managing editor, after more than six years writing opinion pieces. His new colleagues seem none too happy, according to New York Observer:

“He’s not just a guy who writes about the arts,” one Journal staffer said. “He writes opinionated, right-wing columns … It’s hard to see how the news pages benefit from someone like that.” …

“The people that move tend to be the ones that share the extreme right-wing views of the editorial page,” a Journal news staffer said. “Once they move, it’s hard to go back to the news side and claim to be unbiased. You’ve already shown your colors.”

"Right wing" is in the eye of the beholder, but time and again Varadarajan has shown his colors as a Genocide denier and Turkish apologist and it’s hard to see how the news pages will benefit from his unwavering pro-Turkish bias at a time when nationalists are stealthily and steadily gaining control of all branches of government, imperiling the Armenian minority to the greatest degree since 1915. Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was only the first victim; there will be many more, if his assassination in Istanbul in January scuttles Turkey’s EU bid for good and all.

For his part, Varadarajan expects “no difficulties” in his new assignment “except those associated with my own learning process.” The Stiletto hopes his learning process includes putting his reflexive and relentless pro-Turkishness aside after years of indulging his biases with abandon:

It is Turkey's misfortune - and the misfortune of Turkish-Americans - that there exists in the U.S. a range of Armenian and Greek organizations that dedicate themselves to damaging Turkey's reputation.

The Stiletto would like to teach Varadarajan a few things to reduce the steepness of his learning curve:

† It is the misfortune of Armenians who lived in Ottoman Turkey that they were nearly annihilated.

† It is the misfortune of Armenians in modern Turkey that a prominent Armenian journalist can get gunned down in the street like a dog for insisting that the Turks acknowledge the Genocide.

† And it is the misfortune of Armenians in the Diaspora that Turks, Turkish Americans, Turkish apologists and Moonies continue to deny this horrible fact of history (third item, The Daily Blade, February 23, 2007).

NOTE: This is the third item in a feature called, "The Daily Blade," in case I did not put all the links in correctly and you need to go back to the source to access a relevant article.