Anti-armenian Bias - How It Wins

[hagopn]

For generations, ranging from about 45 to 15 depending on the region, we have had no independent state.

 

We have had no time to develop a national ideology of national strategy as an independent state with a strong domestic government and its necessary infrastructure.

 

Consequently, we also have had no time developing a coherent history independent of various forces.

 

We have been subjected to the worst nightmare of all; which is reliance on a diasporan and Soviet based academia, neither one of whom would ever hope to develop a truly independent Armenian ideology and historical study.

 

We have been taught to believe we have objectivity in the west and also in Moscow, but we are also now being indoctrinated into thinking that we have marginal nationalists in Armenia.

 

In other words, those who do not tow the line of the NATO and Stalinist version of Armenian history, they are to be branded nationalists. During Soviet times, you had outright persecution, suppression of ideas that were outside the Bolshevik perimeter. In the west, the diasporan is led to believe that his Armenians are more reliable and more independent. Nothing could be more insidiously deceptive and untrue. The pressure to conform is no less potent and severe in the west than it was in the Soviet era.

 

Of course, the word nationalist is used in the extremist sense. That alone is a powerful tool to suppress legitimate inquiry into Armenian history that might be considered “too pro-Armenian,” such as the glaring evidence that links Armenians and the Hatti (Hittites.)

 

Among a myriad other misinformation, we are told that Armenian was not the language spoken in the whole of Greater Armenia until the 2nd century. We are told that Armenia, aside from the brief interlude of the Artashesian dynasty, was at best a “client state” or “Byzantine or Parthian dominated region.”

 

Movses of Khoren’s more “nationalist” sounding narrative is discredited with venomous diatribe: i.e. Robert Thompson, most probably a CIA asset, labeled him an “audacious and mendacious faker.” Such language is hardly academic, yet Robert Thompson is considered a legitimate scholar, while truly great scholars such as Hakob Manandian and Artashes Matevossian are mostly ignored. Legitimate critiques on Movses of Khoren and other Armenian historians and chroniclers is ignored, and the most biased and mendacious diatribes are published with the Harvard label, the Oxford label and so on.

 

We are told that Armenians did not exist beyond the 2500 year mark. For a moment there, we were being told that no Armenian speech or a semblance of it existed in the region before the 2nd century b.c.. Yet, all the while we were told that such things are “impossible” to even reconsider, impossible to question. So much scholarship that supported the thesis that Armenians and Armenian related languages and ethnicities were there for 3 millennia before we are told Armenians came into the region from Thrace was to be ignored and still is to be ignored.

 

In fact, not only has this politically buried scholarship make the well-supported claim that Armenians and their ethnic cousins were indeed in that region for at least 4 and half millennia, but these Armenophone cultures thrived and established large empires that dominated the region. Such things would upset the US’ “Turkish ally” more than the genocide claim. Turkey mobilized an even more potent Esat Uras to document and disseminate to the world a revised version of Armenian history that takes Armenians out of Armenia as much as possible, and if you folks get a chance to read his Turkish version, you will find familiar theories, those that are now adopted in the Western academic circles.

 

The anti-Armenian bias will always win out until such a time when the Armenian Republic develops an influential cadre of scholars to first of all develop a serious study of all materials that deals with the topic. So far we have individual effort, some honest and diligent, some not so diligent although still honest, and yet others are attempts at opportunism.

 

However, the sins committed by the more emotionally driven elements in the pro-Armenian camp are dwarfed by the greater sin of the anti-Armenian camp and its utter zeal to conceal and suppress evidence and scholarship that would discredit its paradigm. The anti-Armenian paradigm lives on, selling its lackeys as our heroes, playing a game of deception that is elaborate and firmly executed.

 

The anti-Armenian bias will continue to win out especially due to the fact that our populations are incapable of believing anything grand in Armenian history. A subject people who have had little time as an independent entity in the last 7 to 10 centuries, depending on territory, are expected to be blinded when faced with a history that says Armenians had empires, large realms, powerful military force, a high culture that predated and was the possible progenitor of Greek and Mesopotamian civilization.

 

[hagopn]

Esat Uras Revisited:

 

In this book entitled Tarihte Ermeniler ve Ermeni meselesi http://books.google.com/books?id=m5EBAAAAM...Uras&pgis=1 we only see in the Turkish translation the intentions of the Turkish Historical Society.

 

The first time this was made evident was in Armen Ayvazyan's book entitled Հայաստանի պատմության լուսաբանումը ամերիկյան պատմագրության մեջ in which he makes the connections between even ethnically Armenian members of the US academia and the revisionist anti-Armenian theories conconted by the Turkish Historical Society under the leadership of Esat Uras.

 

While we are busy focusing on the distraction of the Big Carrot and Stick of genocide recognition, Armenian history is being chipped away from the past to the present. A chronologically reverse method of discrediting Armenian history.

 

In short, the genocide recognition drive in the US ahs become a worldwide disctraction to Armenians. Armenians have neglected to develop scholars in the fields of linguistics, philology, archeology, paleontology, and all discinplines necessary to research Armenia's past. Armenians have focused their entire attention on genocide studies.

 

There are very few qualified scholars who have mastery in ancient languages. The only specialsts of note with competency in cuneiform are deceased or are in service of foreign academia.

 

For example, there are at present only 2 scholars, one in training, who specialize in the Avesta and its various translations into Pahlavi (Middle Persian) and in its new edition of Din Debireh, which is a critical document that ellucidates first the Armenian origins of Zoroaster and also the religious discourse that went on in Armenia prior to Zoroaster's rejection and exile from Armenia. None of these scholars are in Armenia, and only one is accredited and is an honorary member of the New York Academy of Sciences due to his contribution to Iranian Studies.

 

As a result, Armenians are told by others what their ancient history has been, and without exception they are being victimized by politically charged bias. The increasingly developing paradigm in Armenian studies, both in the USSR and the West, have been that Armenians were a non-entity for the most part of their history except as client state, subjects, and minorities. The historical texts of Armenians are incresingly hyper-criticized and their narratives dimissed as hearsay and myth, and this is going on without the knowledge of the Armenian public or authorities. Genocide is the focus, and the total destruction of Armenian history is missed by all.

 

This has the effect of first weakening the claims on historic Armenian lands, and second it has the devastating effect of demoralizing the Armenian psyche.

 

It is rather alarming that there are very few who are cognizant of the fact that history is a long process, and the discredtation of any part of history will have detrimental consequences on the rest of the timeline in question. Without Armenian sstatehood, without Armenian presence in the remote past, in the midieval times, without the proper presentation of the devastating effects of Turkic incursions, the genocide case becomes weak and untenable.

Edited October 21, 2007 by hagopn

[LionHeart]

The anti-Armenian bias will continue to win out especially due to the fact that our populations are incapable of believing anything grand in Armenian history. A subject people who have had little time as an independent entity in the last 7 to 10 centuries, depending on territory, are expected to be blinded when faced with a history that says Armenians had empires, large realms, powerful military force, a high culture that predated and was the possible progenitor of Greek and Mesopotamian civilization.

 

hagopn, 200 years from now the paragraph above could be used by a pro-Turkish scholar as an evidence that Armenians have a weak, undeveloped national identity, and are nothing more than slaves, mentally and emotionally. Just like Ronald Suny distorts Joseph Emin's account of Armenians in 18th c. to pretty much say the same. And without real national identity, we are not entitled to a statehood. And should be happy with the small territory that we have. It only serves Turkish propaganda.

 

I reject the idea of a deep, long lasting psychological handicap applied in general to our nation. As I reject any negative generalization applied to our nation. It only serves as a harmful feedback for us. Any such psychological effect is individual and effemeral--Armenians in diaspora avoid the pro-Armenian theories due to societal pressure. You put such an Armenian in the republic long enough, and he will start thinking differently. It's all about the environment. We are a great nation, albeit with the some of the shortcomings of any other humans, but with a spirit and identity strong enough to create miracles.

 

I agree with the rest of your analysis.

[hagopn]

hagopn, 200 years from now the paragraph above could be used by a pro-Turkish scholar as an evidence that Armenians have a weak, undeveloped national identity, and are nothing more than slaves, mentally and emotionally. Just like Ronald Suny distorts Joseph Emin's account of Armenians in 18th c. to pretty much say the same. And without real national identity, we are not entitled to a statehood. And should be happy with the small territory that we have. It only serves Turkish propaganda.

 

I reject the idea of a deep, long lasting psychological handicap applied in general to our nation. As I reject any negative generalization applied to our nation. It only serves as a harmful feedback for us. Any such psychological effect is individual and effemeral--Armenians in diaspora avoid the pro-Armenian theories due to societal pressure. You put such an Armenian in the republic long enough, and he will start thinking differently. It's all about the environment. We are a great nation, albeit with the some of the shortcomings of any other humans, but with a spirit and identity strong enough to create miracles.

 

I agree with the rest of your analysis.

 

I disagree. These are generalizations that are unfortunately very true.

 

In the Armenian speaking world there is a different demography when it comes to bias than the English speaking sector. The English speaking Armenian world, at whom this English language post is targeted, is under the impression of a miniscule and insignificant identity created by Uras, Suny, Hewsen, Thompson and company. I put these "Armenologists" in the same roster as Uras due to the identical bias they dissiminate.

 

Some of these people under such influence give themselves license to attack an Armenian who they are trained to think of as a "nationalist." The license to attack is full of venom and disdain. It never fails to elicit this sort of poisonous response, for example, when I state Hittites and Armenians were the same ethnicity according to non-Armenian scholars as well. It would be folly to name any researcher of any caliber of Armenian background. The mere fact of the person having Armenian background is grounds to discredit his scholarship without ever giving it unbiased audience.

 

In the Armenian speaking world, the reverse is true, where you have naturally more general knowledge of Armenian material and direct access to materials, without the hindrance of translators and their selecctive politics. You also have exposure to much more nationalist rhetoric. Yet even there, now that you have a crippled economy and low wages, money from the west seems to buy minds in the Armenian speaking world as well.