Silverglate And The Freedom Of Genocide Denial
In a recently published piece for the Boston Globe ("Censoring History"), lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate (together with Norman S. Zalkind, see both on the image) tries to make a case for including the official Turkish view on the Armenian Genocide into Massachusetts schoolbooks. Here's a short excerpt that shows how the authors relativize the historical facticity of the Armenian Genocide in order to legitimize its denial:
Artyom has written a post on this article which is really worth reading:
The article suggests that Massachusett's Department of Education is currently "censoring history". But this case is not about the "censoring" or "uncensoring" of history. What is being attempted here is to include into American schoolbooks the voice of Turkey, a state that denies the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by its legal predecessor and censors those who speak freely about it.
To sum up, when Silverglate demands the "uncensoring" of history, what he really argues for is a step-by-step legitimization of the censoring of the historical truth. Or as Derek put it: He is twisting the first amendment.
The historical dispute involves interpreting what happened to the Armenian population of eastern Anatolia during and after World War I in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Though historians have documented death and deportation of large numbers of Armenians (as well as the deaths of many Turks), they disagree over whether what happened constitutes ''genocide," a term defined by international law as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. While many historians argue that it was the intent of the Turks to exterminate the Armenians as a people, others counter that such intent has not been firmly established and that the events more closely resemble a civil war than a genocidal campaign.This is a clear attempt to legitimize a well-known scheme summarized in my post "Patterns of Genocide Denial I" on a UCLA panel on "The People Who Cover Up Genocide". It is a scheme applied by the Turkish government within the framework of its campaign to deny the Armenian Genocide.
Artyom has written a post on this article which is really worth reading:
The piece needless to say looks more like a propaganda piece straight out of Ankara rather than a principled explanation of one's true beliefs regarding the subject. I wonder what Mr. Silverglate has to say if some Nazi sympathizers decide to bring a lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts for not teaching in a "fair and balanced" way the Holocaust without giving adequate treatment to the other side of the story.In his blog Media Nation, Dan Kennedy is critical of Silverglate's involvement in this case and refers to the above mentioned quote from the Boston Globe article:
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The question, then, is whether the historians on the it-wasn't-genocide wing of the dispute are conscientious scholars or a bunch of David Irvings.Conscientious scholars? Definitely not. What these remote-controlled historians do is present lies, put facts out of context and attempt to sound scholarly (remember the Heath Lowry affair?). Here's Artyom again:
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The credible historians that Silverglate means to cite are historians who have never done serious research on the subject but have been either instrumental in formulating the official Turkish propaganda line on the subject or have been rather eager to join the bandwagon by repeating that line parrot fashion, meanwhile leaving their brains and conscience out on the doormat. Needless to say beside putting out pamphlets and booklets these so called impartial historians have not produced a single credible work that has survived the grill of their peers in the worldwide academia, but have gained popular following in nowhere else but Turkey where they are showered by praise and just plain showered.Why is Harvey Silverglate providing legal and (un)moral assistance to a state-sponsored campaign to deny a genocide? For now, his words speak for themselves.
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The article suggests that Massachusett's Department of Education is currently "censoring history". But this case is not about the "censoring" or "uncensoring" of history. What is being attempted here is to include into American schoolbooks the voice of Turkey, a state that denies the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by its legal predecessor and censors those who speak freely about it.
To sum up, when Silverglate demands the "uncensoring" of history, what he really argues for is a step-by-step legitimization of the censoring of the historical truth. Or as Derek put it: He is twisting the first amendment.
posted by yessem at 10:35 PM
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