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The Great Crime: How an American Diplomat Resisted the Armenian Genocide

105 points by lermontov 10y ago

ASpring 10y ago
On this topic, I highly recommend Samantha Power's book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" which details the United States inability to respond promptly to the many cases of genocide over the past century.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  I love how that book blames America for failing to respond to many genocides committed far away from its borders - what other great power has ever done so, unless it was for their benefit? As a non-American, we are fucking lucky that America not only doesn't extord us for loot (as any other empire would) but actually spends so much energy, lives and money keeping protecting us. I am personally really happy that Putin knows there will be consequences if he rolls west.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    One could argue that the Roman Empire endured as long as it did because the pax Romana was preferable to the tribal warfare it displaced, even though the Romans may not have particularly cared about security of any given group within their sphere of influence. I'd argue that as the world shrinks long-term consequences manifest over shorter absolute timescales.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Have you read the book? If not I recommend against flippant responses. It’s a careful detailed history of several genocides, one per chapter. It’s a harrowing book, and reading each chapter would leave me depressed for a couple days. I couldn’t read more than about one chapter per month.
    - conistonwater 10y ago
      The comment is ambiguous, it's not really clear if it's actually meant to be flippant or not. If you read it literally, the meaning is directly the opposite and still makes sense.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    Why are you (and others) so negative about feedback? We can't get better at something unless we realize why we aren't doing it well. > what other great power has ever done so, unless it was for their benefit? Right, it's for their benefit. Not just morally, but economically and geo-politically. Which is why we want to make sure we can stop the problem rather than watching the tragedy unfold as we powerlessly flail against ourselves. (ie, waiting until we label something a genocide before trying to help.) > As a non-American, we are fucking lucky that America not only doesn't extord us for loot They're generally happier to gain a stronger position than to be up a few bucks. It's long-term thinking. > I am personally really happy that Putin knows there will be consequences if he rolls west. Ditto, but these days I believe less and less than the USA would do anything. Or at least until it's too late.
  - ASpring 10y ago
    Great point. Exactly what the book tackles. The US did not often intervene in the past because there was no direct benefit to do so. Powers argues that this is changing. The international condemnation and uproar from citizens has political consequences for those in power and thus is enough to generate action.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    > America not only doesn't extord us for loot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America
- favorited 10y ago
  For those who aren't familiar, Samantha Power was (until recently) US Ambassador to the UN. Before that, she was an journalist, author, and activist.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
  https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-cautionary-tale-of-samantha-power/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-cautionary-t... is a great article of how even when you come I to a place of power, preventing genocide is much harder than it appears.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
“nothing but good feeling between Mohammadean and Christian, and the Turks and Armenians appeared to be on friendly terms … Who could have then foreseen, amid those peaceful surroundings … what is probably the most terrible tragedy that has ever befallen any people in the history of the world?” As Chernomyrdin famously said, "it was never like this, and here we go again". I mean, Bosnia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Lebanon, Syria, and we're definitely going to see more and more of "good feeling between Mohammadean and Christian" in the coming years in many places around the world. It just doesn't work, no it does not, just no, don't even ask. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKI-tD0L18A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKI-tD0L18A
- mkaziz 10y ago
  I think the lesson is how easy it is for humans to split into groups and start slaughtering each other, and that we need incredible amounts of education to guard against that.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    I think the lesson is, while we do need incredible amounts of education to guard against slaughtering each other, we're not going to get it. I mean, yes, you can have 50 years of prosperity before 10 years of genocide, but would you bet on continous stability of your society? As an American you might. Rest of the world is not so lucky. If religious/etnhic conflicts are possible in your locale due to population mix, they WILL happen. Will you risk it? Unfortunately, the solution is homogenousness. We would like to have different solutions, but we don't have them.
    - mkaziz 10y ago
      Disagree. If you as a Muslim live as a Muslim surrounded by Muslims, you're eventually going to otherize the Christians living across the border. If OTOH your neighbour is a Christian and your cousin is married to a Christian, you're going to feel a whole lot more charitable towards Christians when push comes to shove. Fact of the matter is, we're prone to split into groups. If you homogenize, then before long, you'll be a Catholic othering the Protestant, or if you homogenize those even, you'll be a Lutheran othering some other denomination. Your best bet is to use diversity and multiculturalism to teach tolerance to the point that tolerance is institutionalized in your society.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
BTW > If... your cousin is married to a Christian If she is female then your religion tells you to murder her. That's in the books. That's sad but true. You can route around that for some time, but even moderate Muslim are pretty strict on this. They're not going to kill her all right, but definitely excommunicate from their society.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mkaziz 10y ago
  > If she is female then your religion tells you to murder her. That's in the books. That's sad but true. That's a crazy bit of misinformation right there.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I thought so too, but then I looked it up. Surah al-Mai-dah verse 5 states that "lawful in marriage are chaste women form among the believers and chaste women from among those who were given the Scripture before you..." This, giving Muslim men permission to wed Jewish and Christian women, has been interpreted by Islamic jurists as implying by omission that Muslim women may not wed Jewish or Christian men. It was believed that such husbands would impart their religion to their children, and may pressure their wives to convert away from Islam. Since Islam has no central governing authority, adherents largely rely upon the religious scholarship of their own imam, or upon those known to them to have a thorough understanding of Islamic religious interpretations. Some such scholars declared interfaith marriage by a Muslim woman to be equivalent to apostasy. The consensus opinion, however is that interfaith marriages are never acceptable outside of Muslim-establishment countries, as without the support of a Muslim community, both parents are required to reinforce the faith in their children. The punishment for apostasy in the Islamic world ranges from death to no punishment at all. Under Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools, female apostates are executed, whereas Hanafi and Shi'a will imprison her indefinitely, until such time as she reverts to Islamic orthodoxy. As a result, I must agree that it is possible that a woman in an interfaith marriage may be executed for it, with no other reason necessary, under recognized interpretations of Sharia law. This is, of course, independent of those who may murder women in interfaith marriages under color of religion, outside of the purview of recognized Islamic judges of Sharia law. I believe such "honor killing" murders are in fact based upon the underlying tribal culture and not upon its majority religion. As such, if you're not from Pakistan, Sudan, or Saudi Arabia, no one will recommend that a Muslim woman be murdered for marrying a non-Muslim. However, it is likely that everyone she knows will constantly be telling her to get a divorce or will be shunning her until she does.
eveningcoffee 10y ago
I think we are obliged to speak more about this genocide http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html
WillyOnWheels 10y ago
The Azerbaijan president often tweets about 'The fake Armenian genocde' (and before I get a ton of downvotes again, I use the quotation marks because I don't agree with his view') https://twitter.com/presidentaz/status/507430784710361088 https://twitter.com/presidentaz/status/507430784710361088
- hospes 10y ago
  Report tweets like that. I hope if enough people do that it can make some difference.
  - WillyOnWheels 10y ago
    I don't think reporting him helps. Denying the Armenian genocide is one of his main past times, on twitter and off twitter. He is also the world's expert (and only expert) on the fabled Azerbaijan genocide. I'm not Azerbaijanian or Armenian, I can't imagine devoting so much of my life to hating another ethnic group.
  - KON_Air 10y ago
    American criterias on how to divide Ottoman Empire cause Armenians to "totally-not-genocidie" local populations to secure Greater-whatever-its-supposed-to-be-Armenia. Retaliation is genocidiasfsdfsf (as in both sides are equally guilty)
hospes 10y ago
Thanks for sharing this. Leslie Davis was truly a great diplomat and an incredible human being. Until Genocides are not widely recognized and stopped. Those who commit them are not punished, they are going to happen again, as they did during 20th century. Hitler used Armenian Genocide to convince others that atrocities committed by Nazis are going to be forgotten. Hitler's quote: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" It is a shame that US did not officially recognize Armenian Genocide yet, even though most of the civilized world did and most of the US State legislatures did. Germany was one of the main allies of Ottoman Empire when Armenian Genocide occurred and they only recognized Armenian Genocide of 1915 in 2016. 101 years after it happened. Edit: Typos.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Unfortunately Hitler was right. Germans undoubtedly did not suffer anything for the genocide, instead they were made "a showcase of communism"/"a showcase of capitalism" on differend sides of the border, and then allowed to merge as the most powerful country of the EU. Another genocide-prone nation, Japan, is the richest in its own domain and feels just great. It seems that losing WWII was the way to go, with losers more prosperous and happy than the winners, except for the USA. Makes this lesson twofold strong.
- avenoir 10y ago
  > It is a shame that US did not officially recognize Armenian Genocide yet, even though most of the civilized world did and most of the US State legislatures did. The real shame, in my opinion, is that Israel hasn't recognized the genocide yet. And I say this as a survivor of Azeri Pogroms of the 1990 and a descendant of the Armenian Genocide survivor whose entire family was murdered by Young Turks. It's actually disgusting not shameful and I don't care how much they try to blame Geopolitics for this.
  - compsciphd 10y ago
    http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Knesset-committee-recognizes-Armenian-genocide-463081 http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Knes... It's not like Israel ignores it. But yes, geopolitics plays a role and it is embarrassing as many in Israel agree. compare to this in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_resolution_on_Armenian_Genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_resolution_on_Ar...
Xeoncross 10y ago
Both Muslim and Jewish culture have a strong dislike for Christians for different historical reasons. However, only the Muslims have commandment/permission in their religion (the Quran) to kill Christians. Neither Jews or Christians have this permission to kill others. http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.h...
- scarmig 10y ago
  This verse I found particularly shocking: "And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." What a bloody, violent book. We definitely need to ban it, and all its followers, am I right?
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    Nowp. Just don't grant them residence.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    You probably should have mentioned that this verse is from the Bible, not some other book.
    - scarmig 10y ago
      Probably. Was hoping the last line would make it obvious that it's from the Bible and not the Koran.
- dang 10y ago
  Religious flamewar is not welcome on Hacker News. Please don't do this again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564571 and marked it off-topic.
uppercasenut 10y ago
It happened. Duh! But IMO either side would have done the same if given the chance. There was/is no love lost between "Turks" and Orthodox Christians. Back then it was sort of a land grab: clean the area of x population and you may claim it as part of soon to be new country. In a part of the Balkans the world powers had decided to divide the border based on population. If, say, Vermont speaks "Canadian" then it becomes part of Canada. What happened? Mass killings over the border areas by the stronger army. Greece even exchanged Muslim Greek people (by blood) for random Christians from Turkey. By their definition, once you became a Muslim you were no longer a Greek.
- dang 10y ago
  It's an abuse of HN to use it primarily for political or ideological battle. We've banned this account. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564313 and marked it off-topic.
throwaway00052 10y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if this was posted and eagerly upvoted as a historical example of how we supposedly should behave in defiance of unjust authority in the age of President Trump. But the article in question is principally about a genocide of Armenian Christians perpetrated by Turkish Muslims. Doesn't this episode from not-too-distant history demonstrate, for example, the danger of mass, unchecked Muslim immigration to this and every other Western nation, or that diversity, contrary to what is so often asserted, is not a strength but rather is a weakness, one that contributed to the downfall of the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian empires?
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  the existence of ethnic cleansing is an argument for ethnic cleansing? past atrocities are reason to turn away refugees of current atrocities? sir or madam, i do believe you've got your brain in backward.
  - throwaway00052 10y ago
    The existence of ethnic cleansing is a compelling argument against diversity being a strength, and past atrocities, especially those afflicting Christians of European descent, serve to demonstrate why Christians of European descent should not allow themselves to be displaced and dispossessed through mass immigration, lest they suffer a fate similar to that of the Armenians.
    - WillyOnWheels 10y ago
      Holy hay, I've never heard of anyone blame the Armenian genocide on immigration. The Ottomans suffered military losses in the Balkans, and kept losing territory to the Russians. The Three Pashas massacred the Armenians to try to stay in power.
    - pasquinelli 10y ago
      "The existence of ethnic cleansing is a compelling argument against diversity being a strength" no, it's a compelling reminder to fight racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and the rest, like the deadly diseases they are. the atrocities of the past are their result.

105 points by lermontov 10y ago

On this topic, I highly recommend Samantha Power's book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" which details the United States inability to respond promptly to the many cases of genocide over the past century.

tomjen3 10y ago
I love how that book blames America for failing to respond to many genocides committed far away from its borders - what other great power has ever done so, unless it was for their benefit? As a non-American, we are fucking lucky that America not only doesn't extord us for loot (as any other empire would) but actually spends so much energy, lives and money keeping protecting us. I am personally really happy that Putin knows there will be consequences if he rolls west.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  One could argue that the Roman Empire endured as long as it did because the pax Romana was preferable to the tribal warfare it displaced, even though the Romans may not have particularly cared about security of any given group within their sphere of influence. I'd argue that as the world shrinks long-term consequences manifest over shorter absolute timescales.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Have you read the book? If not I recommend against flippant responses. It’s a careful detailed history of several genocides, one per chapter. It’s a harrowing book, and reading each chapter would leave me depressed for a couple days. I couldn’t read more than about one chapter per month.
  - conistonwater 10y ago
    The comment is ambiguous, it's not really clear if it's actually meant to be flippant or not. If you read it literally, the meaning is directly the opposite and still makes sense.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  Why are you (and others) so negative about feedback? We can't get better at something unless we realize why we aren't doing it well. > what other great power has ever done so, unless it was for their benefit? Right, it's for their benefit. Not just morally, but economically and geo-politically. Which is why we want to make sure we can stop the problem rather than watching the tragedy unfold as we powerlessly flail against ourselves. (ie, waiting until we label something a genocide before trying to help.) > As a non-American, we are fucking lucky that America not only doesn't extord us for loot They're generally happier to gain a stronger position than to be up a few bucks. It's long-term thinking. > I am personally really happy that Putin knows there will be consequences if he rolls west. Ditto, but these days I believe less and less than the USA would do anything. Or at least until it's too late.
- ASpring 10y ago
  Great point. Exactly what the book tackles. The US did not often intervene in the past because there was no direct benefit to do so. Powers argues that this is changing. The international condemnation and uproar from citizens has political consequences for those in power and thus is enough to generate action.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  > America not only doesn't extord us for loot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America
favorited 10y ago
For those who aren't familiar, Samantha Power was (until recently) US Ambassador to the UN. Before that, she was an journalist, author, and activist.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-cautionary-tale-of-samantha-power/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-cautionary-t... is a great article of how even when you come I to a place of power, preventing genocide is much harder than it appears.

guard-of-terra 10y ago

“nothing but good feeling between Mohammadean and Christian, and the Turks and Armenians appeared to be on friendly terms … Who could have then foreseen, amid those peaceful surroundings … what is probably the most terrible tragedy that has ever befallen any people in the history of the world?” As Chernomyrdin famously said, "it was never like this, and here we go again". I mean, Bosnia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Lebanon, Syria, and we're definitely going to see more and more of "good feeling between Mohammadean and Christian" in the coming years in many places around the world. It just doesn't work, no it does not, just no, don't even ask. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKI-tD0L18A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKI-tD0L18A

mkaziz 10y ago
I think the lesson is how easy it is for humans to split into groups and start slaughtering each other, and that we need incredible amounts of education to guard against that.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  I think the lesson is, while we do need incredible amounts of education to guard against slaughtering each other, we're not going to get it. I mean, yes, you can have 50 years of prosperity before 10 years of genocide, but would you bet on continous stability of your society? As an American you might. Rest of the world is not so lucky. If religious/etnhic conflicts are possible in your locale due to population mix, they WILL happen. Will you risk it? Unfortunately, the solution is homogenousness. We would like to have different solutions, but we don't have them.
  - mkaziz 10y ago
    Disagree. If you as a Muslim live as a Muslim surrounded by Muslims, you're eventually going to otherize the Christians living across the border. If OTOH your neighbour is a Christian and your cousin is married to a Christian, you're going to feel a whole lot more charitable towards Christians when push comes to shove. Fact of the matter is, we're prone to split into groups. If you homogenize, then before long, you'll be a Catholic othering the Protestant, or if you homogenize those even, you'll be a Lutheran othering some other denomination. Your best bet is to use diversity and multiculturalism to teach tolerance to the point that tolerance is institutionalized in your society.

guard-of-terra 10y ago

BTW > If... your cousin is married to a Christian If she is female then your religion tells you to murder her. That's in the books. That's sad but true. You can route around that for some time, but even moderate Muslim are pretty strict on this. They're not going to kill her all right, but definitely excommunicate from their society.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mkaziz 10y ago
> If she is female then your religion tells you to murder her. That's in the books. That's sad but true. That's a crazy bit of misinformation right there.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I thought so too, but then I looked it up. Surah al-Mai-dah verse 5 states that "lawful in marriage are chaste women form among the believers and chaste women from among those who were given the Scripture before you..." This, giving Muslim men permission to wed Jewish and Christian women, has been interpreted by Islamic jurists as implying by omission that Muslim women may not wed Jewish or Christian men. It was believed that such husbands would impart their religion to their children, and may pressure their wives to convert away from Islam. Since Islam has no central governing authority, adherents largely rely upon the religious scholarship of their own imam, or upon those known to them to have a thorough understanding of Islamic religious interpretations. Some such scholars declared interfaith marriage by a Muslim woman to be equivalent to apostasy. The consensus opinion, however is that interfaith marriages are never acceptable outside of Muslim-establishment countries, as without the support of a Muslim community, both parents are required to reinforce the faith in their children. The punishment for apostasy in the Islamic world ranges from death to no punishment at all. Under Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools, female apostates are executed, whereas Hanafi and Shi'a will imprison her indefinitely, until such time as she reverts to Islamic orthodoxy. As a result, I must agree that it is possible that a woman in an interfaith marriage may be executed for it, with no other reason necessary, under recognized interpretations of Sharia law. This is, of course, independent of those who may murder women in interfaith marriages under color of religion, outside of the purview of recognized Islamic judges of Sharia law. I believe such "honor killing" murders are in fact based upon the underlying tribal culture and not upon its majority religion. As such, if you're not from Pakistan, Sudan, or Saudi Arabia, no one will recommend that a Muslim woman be murdered for marrying a non-Muslim. However, it is likely that everyone she knows will constantly be telling her to get a divorce or will be shunning her until she does.

eveningcoffee 10y ago

I think we are obliged to speak more about this genocide http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html

WillyOnWheels 10y ago

The Azerbaijan president often tweets about 'The fake Armenian genocde' (and before I get a ton of downvotes again, I use the quotation marks because I don't agree with his view') https://twitter.com/presidentaz/status/507430784710361088 https://twitter.com/presidentaz/status/507430784710361088

hospes 10y ago
Report tweets like that. I hope if enough people do that it can make some difference.
- WillyOnWheels 10y ago
  I don't think reporting him helps. Denying the Armenian genocide is one of his main past times, on twitter and off twitter. He is also the world's expert (and only expert) on the fabled Azerbaijan genocide. I'm not Azerbaijanian or Armenian, I can't imagine devoting so much of my life to hating another ethnic group.
- KON_Air 10y ago
  American criterias on how to divide Ottoman Empire cause Armenians to "totally-not-genocidie" local populations to secure Greater-whatever-its-supposed-to-be-Armenia. Retaliation is genocidiasfsdfsf (as in both sides are equally guilty)

hospes 10y ago

Thanks for sharing this. Leslie Davis was truly a great diplomat and an incredible human being. Until Genocides are not widely recognized and stopped. Those who commit them are not punished, they are going to happen again, as they did during 20th century. Hitler used Armenian Genocide to convince others that atrocities committed by Nazis are going to be forgotten. Hitler's quote: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" It is a shame that US did not officially recognize Armenian Genocide yet, even though most of the civilized world did and most of the US State legislatures did. Germany was one of the main allies of Ottoman Empire when Armenian Genocide occurred and they only recognized Armenian Genocide of 1915 in 2016. 101 years after it happened. Edit: Typos.

guard-of-terra 10y ago
Unfortunately Hitler was right. Germans undoubtedly did not suffer anything for the genocide, instead they were made "a showcase of communism"/"a showcase of capitalism" on differend sides of the border, and then allowed to merge as the most powerful country of the EU. Another genocide-prone nation, Japan, is the richest in its own domain and feels just great. It seems that losing WWII was the way to go, with losers more prosperous and happy than the winners, except for the USA. Makes this lesson twofold strong.
avenoir 10y ago
> It is a shame that US did not officially recognize Armenian Genocide yet, even though most of the civilized world did and most of the US State legislatures did. The real shame, in my opinion, is that Israel hasn't recognized the genocide yet. And I say this as a survivor of Azeri Pogroms of the 1990 and a descendant of the Armenian Genocide survivor whose entire family was murdered by Young Turks. It's actually disgusting not shameful and I don't care how much they try to blame Geopolitics for this.
- compsciphd 10y ago
  http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Knesset-committee-recognizes-Armenian-genocide-463081 http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Knes... It's not like Israel ignores it. But yes, geopolitics plays a role and it is embarrassing as many in Israel agree. compare to this in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_resolution_on_Armenian_Genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_resolution_on_Ar...

Xeoncross 10y ago

Both Muslim and Jewish culture have a strong dislike for Christians for different historical reasons. However, only the Muslims have commandment/permission in their religion (the Quran) to kill Christians. Neither Jews or Christians have this permission to kill others. http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.h...

scarmig 10y ago
This verse I found particularly shocking: "And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." What a bloody, violent book. We definitely need to ban it, and all its followers, am I right?
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Nowp. Just don't grant them residence.
- DanBC 10y ago
  You probably should have mentioned that this verse is from the Bible, not some other book.
  - scarmig 10y ago
    Probably. Was hoping the last line would make it obvious that it's from the Bible and not the Koran.
dang 10y ago
Religious flamewar is not welcome on Hacker News. Please don't do this again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564571 and marked it off-topic.

uppercasenut 10y ago

It happened. Duh! But IMO either side would have done the same if given the chance. There was/is no love lost between "Turks" and Orthodox Christians. Back then it was sort of a land grab: clean the area of x population and you may claim it as part of soon to be new country. In a part of the Balkans the world powers had decided to divide the border based on population. If, say, Vermont speaks "Canadian" then it becomes part of Canada. What happened? Mass killings over the border areas by the stronger army. Greece even exchanged Muslim Greek people (by blood) for random Christians from Turkey. By their definition, once you became a Muslim you were no longer a Greek.

dang 10y ago
It's an abuse of HN to use it primarily for political or ideological battle. We've banned this account. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564313 and marked it off-topic.

throwaway00052 10y ago

It wouldn't surprise me if this was posted and eagerly upvoted as a historical example of how we supposedly should behave in defiance of unjust authority in the age of President Trump. But the article in question is principally about a genocide of Armenian Christians perpetrated by Turkish Muslims. Doesn't this episode from not-too-distant history demonstrate, for example, the danger of mass, unchecked Muslim immigration to this and every other Western nation, or that diversity, contrary to what is so often asserted, is not a strength but rather is a weakness, one that contributed to the downfall of the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian empires?

pasquinelli 10y ago
the existence of ethnic cleansing is an argument for ethnic cleansing? past atrocities are reason to turn away refugees of current atrocities? sir or madam, i do believe you've got your brain in backward.
- throwaway00052 10y ago
  The existence of ethnic cleansing is a compelling argument against diversity being a strength, and past atrocities, especially those afflicting Christians of European descent, serve to demonstrate why Christians of European descent should not allow themselves to be displaced and dispossessed through mass immigration, lest they suffer a fate similar to that of the Armenians.
  - WillyOnWheels 10y ago
    Holy hay, I've never heard of anyone blame the Armenian genocide on immigration. The Ottomans suffered military losses in the Balkans, and kept losing territory to the Russians. The Three Pashas massacred the Armenians to try to stay in power.
  - pasquinelli 10y ago
    "The existence of ethnic cleansing is a compelling argument against diversity being a strength" no, it's a compelling reminder to fight racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and the rest, like the deadly diseases they are. the atrocities of the past are their result.