GOODY TWO SHOES: James Taranto Outs Himself
The Stiletto counts herself as one of James Taranto’s legion of fans, despite the six or eight issues about which we profoundly disagree. He happened to write about one of them in today’s OpinionJournal.
The Stiletto wondered about Taranto’s stance on the Armenian Genocide, since on several occasions he expressed support of Turkey joining the European Union – despite the government's remorseless stonewalling about owning up to the 20th century’s first crime against humanity. Plus, he once mentioned that, "Family lore has it that our ancestors [Sephardic Jews] were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition and made their way to southern Italy, where they picked up the name. In the 16th century they were kicked out of Italy too, finally settling in Turkey, whence our father came."
Well, she need wonder no more, as today he outed himself as a genocide denier in a stunningly hypocritical article replete with intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice. About the new law passed by the French parliament that makes it a crime to deny that the Turks tried to wipe the Armenians off the face of the earth in 1915 (punishable by a year’s imprisonment and a €45,000 fine - the same as for denying the Nazi Holocaust) - Taranto writes:
We have no opinion on whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide or not, and if we did have an opinion, we'd tell you we didn't, for the simple reason that we wish to avoid getting grief from either Turks or Armenians.
Having "no opinion" on whether the wholesale slaughter of Armenians in 1915 (one of many such episodes of mass murder perpetrated by Turks, going back to the 1850s) is an established historical fact is akin to having "no opinion" on whether the Nazis killed six million Jews - or even one. Hitler himself used the Armenian Genocide as the blueprint for the Final Solution.
Further, the term "genocide" was coined to describe the deliberate series of actions taken by the Ottoman Turks and the Nazi Germans to systematically eradicate Armenians and Jews. Therefore, the Turks were directly responsibile for the Armenian Genocide, and indirectly responsible for the Nazi Holocaust.
Taranto continues:
We do have an opinion, though, on the French proposal to criminalize the Turkish viewpoint. It's a very bad one.
We come at this issue, of course, from an American perspective: We don't think any idea, no matter how odious or false, should be against the law. But we can understand why Europeans feel constrained to criminalize Holocaust denial and other forms of anti-Semitic speech. Anti-Semitism is a dangerous part of the European psyche, and if Europeans think it necessary to resort to extraordinary means to suppress it, who are we to argue?
He can "understand" why a ban on anti-Semitic speech is necessary, but not a similar ban on speech that perpetuates the suffering of the Armenian people by denying their grievous losses.
He must also "understand" Turkey’s Article 301, which makes it a crime to "insult Turkishness" by speaking or writing about the Armenian Genocide, because he did not characterize it as a "Turkey of an Idea" when it was enacted in June 2005.
The Stiletto does not believe in criminalizing speech – whether that speech is anti-Semitic, insults Turkishness or is odious in any other way. She also agrees with Nat Hentoff that it is wrong to punish odious speech with additional hate crime laws, an alarming trend in the US.
Turkish novelist – and newly minted Nobel Laureate – Orhan Pamuk ran afoul of Article 301 and was threatened with imprisonment, along with 60 other writers to date. France’s effort to stifle speech on the Genocide is particularly ironic, considering that courageous Turks like Pamuk are risking their freedom – and their lives – to fight for the right to speak out on this shameful chapter in their country’s history.
Fearless opinion slinger that he is, Taranto will gladly risk "getting grief" from neo-Nazis or Islamofascists by rightly condemning violence against Jews, but balks at arousing Turkish ire over the Armenian Genocide - even though he writes from the safety of the US, where he is not subject to free speech restrictions, or threatened with loss of livelihood or of his very life.
The bottom line is, you won’t get an argument from Taranto if you criminalize speech that denies the Holocaust or acknowledges the Armenian Genocide. It’s only criminalizing speech that denies the Armenian Genocide that he has a problem with. Hitler famously asked, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" If Taranto's double standard on free speech prevailed, no one could.
Trackbacks
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March 2, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
Asmahan Mansour, an 11-year-old Muslim girl, was ejected from a soccer game for refusing to take off her headscarf. According to Quebec Soccer Federation rules, the hijab violated a no-headgear rule and was enforced by the referee – also Muslim – for safety reasons. The girl was given the choice of removing the hijab or removing herself from the field. Her mother, Maria Mansour, told CBC Radio that “it's not right at all to not allow a Muslim girl who's proud of her religion to play soccer, a sport she loves so much." Apparently she does not ... -
February 10, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
Let’s not mince words. It was a teenager who pumped three bullets into Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, 53, at the entrance to the offices of Agos, the bilingual Armenian-Turkish weekly newspaper he founded in 1996. But Dink’s execution is a direct consequence of the policies of the Turkish government concerning the Armenian Genocide, and what Amnesty International terms "a pattern of judicial harassment against him for peacefully expressing his dissenting opinion." For more than nine decades, successive Turkish governments have denied that Ottoman Turks carried out a systematic – nearly successful – genocidal plan to exterminate Armenians. The official ... -
February 6, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
In the latest progress report on the status of Turkey’s petition to join the 25-nation bloc, the European Union (EU) insisted that Turkey must do more to prevent torture of Kurds, respect the rights of non-Muslim religious minorities and protect freedom of expression. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn noted that the pace of necessary reforms in Turkey had slowed since last year’s progress report was issued, and specifically cited the "infamous" Article 301 of Turkey’s Penal Code, which makes it a crime to "insult" Turkish identity. With genocide denial an apparently inextricable component of Turkish identity, any writer, ...
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