History fascism and Germany's reawakened Armenian interest

The German Federal Parliament will vote this week, on 2 June, on a bill deciding that the events that took place in Turkey in 1915 were a genocide committed by "Turkey against the Armenians and Christian minorities."

Last year, since it was the 100th anniversary of the 1915 events, everyone expected that such irrational, conscienceless bills would come onto the agenda in many countries under the influence of Armenian lobbies. Turkey too had prepared itself greatly for this and was conducting its own campaigns against it with its own theses, though not with the same effect and reach. The expectation of the 100th year had set both sides in motion.

In the 100th year, the activities of the Armenian diaspora or lobbies did not have as much effect as expected. Apart from one or two countries, this campaign ended in disappointment for them. Even Obama again refused to approach the matter with the concept of "genocide," beyond the expression "great tragedy."

That such an important move should come in Germany in the 101st year, that is, this year, is, so to speak, a complete example of absurdity. From another angle it is also an example of Germany's late adaptation to everything.

Everyone knows that Germany's industrialization, its Enlightenment, even its colonialism came late compared to other European countries. It is therefore said to have tried to compensate for this lateness in industrialization and modernization with its idealism in philosophy. The performance of philosophical idealism that it put forth belatedly led to the production of very serious philosophical works and names.

However, how effective this idealism, which Marx described as "misery," was in the primary role Germany played in World Wars I and II, in which the greatest tragedies of the 20th century were lived, has always remained a matter of debate.

How should we understand Germany, which committed such great savagery in World War II especially that it could lay claim to the patent on genocide, opening today the pages of events of 101 years ago in an effort to make other nations partners in the accusation of genocide?

Germany, because of the genocide, has a heavy compensation that it must pay to Israel today through the Jews and whose obligations still continue. Today Germany's Middle East policy in particular, as a punishment for this crime, is entirely under an Israeli mortgage. Aside from the financial burden Germany has assumed under this compensation, it does not even raise its voice against any of the inhuman treatment that Israel inflicts on the Palestinians today. This portrays Germany as an extremely passive country in the face of the most basic humanitarian situations, a cold country that looks warmly on no humanitarian policy.

The same Germany, in today's world, has chosen to evade, by hook or by crook, the humanitarian responsibility that falls to its share from the human tragedy in Syria unfolding before our eyes. It is busy taking measures so that refugees who have taken shelter in Turkey to save their lives from Syria do not knock on its own doors.

Even without these refugees, if the entire Syrian people died on their own land under Assad's tyranny, Germany would not lift a finger.

Another tragedy being lived today is in Egypt. There, one of the darkest, bloodiest and most savage events in Egyptian history took place, in which three thousand people were killed in a square in a single day. We did not see a draft resolution from the German parliament condemning this event, questioning its country's relations with the perpetrators of this event. Moreover, Germany as a state continues its relations with Sisi, the perpetrator of this event, as if nothing had happened.

How credible can it be for Germany, which remains indifferent to today's genocides within a series of interest relations, to look for genocide and tragedy in an event that took place 101 years ago, and from there to write for itself a role of humanitarian responsibility?

How much light can such political agitation shed on history, or what benefit can it have for people today to understand one another better, live together in peace, and for the resolution of their problems?

The expression in the text of the bill to be voted on, which appears on the German Federal Parliament's website, in particular "the commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians and other Christian minorities killed before 1915," shows in a worrying way what kind of racist approach is displayed in Germany toward humanitarian questions. Moreover, the motion was prepared jointly by the Christian Union (CDU/CSU), the SPD and the Green party.

Can any ethical, moral sensitivity for genocides not to happen again come out of this mindset?

If our aim is for such things not to happen again, what could better show than the examples of Palestine, Syria and Egypt that we gave above that such proposals feed a greater indifference to the genocides being lived today?

Such a decision can never come from a humanitarian sensitivity.

It is unthinkable that such a draft decision or such a view of history could make any positive contribution today to humanity, peace, multiculturalism, the culture of living together.

When even in 1945 the US, which caused the death of 200 thousand people with the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was asked whether it owed the Japanese an apology for this event, Obama's answer was "this matter should be left to historians." A thoroughly brazen answer.

The conditions of 1915 and 1945 of course cannot be compared. To carry to historians a history in which one is truly guilty and a trial is possible, and to carry to parliaments and the arbitration of politicians an event for which a complete statute of limitations in the legal sense has taken place, is a complete example of blindness.

To consume or end today, by a political decision, the knowledge about what happened in a history like 1915, in which truly no one other than historians can take a role at this hour, is in a single word history fascism.

Which political conditions feed history fascism today is of course a matter of quite another weighing. We tried to do that too, deeply and broadly, in our book titled Tarihbozumu: Tarih Sosyolojisi (History Spoiling: Historical Sociology).