It’s a really sick time we live in when the Holocaust is considered a “contoversial subject” and denial of the atrocity is considered a valid alternative view. ~Philip Klein

Mr. Klein is right, but then it has already been a fairly sick time when the Armenian and Ukrainian genocides have been considered in certain scholarly and political circles to have been simply unfortunate episodes or perhaps even myths propagated by enemies of the revolution. 

This latest pandering to Muslim “sensibilities” in Britain is simply the application of the same politically motivated denialism that we see in the Armenian and Ukrainian cases to the one atrocity that has normally been deemed to be just about the only absolutely undeniable thing.  (Technically, virtually no one denies the events of the Armenian genocide, but they deny their significance, which amounts to the same thing.)  The twisted road by which we have reached the point where Pakistani Muslim schoolchildren in Britain would feel sufficiently offended by the history of WWII in Europe that a significant element of that history would have to be omitted is worthy of a series of posts at some point in the future.  All of this leaves in the background unmentioned the otherwise appalling ignorance of all British schoolchildren about world history outside of that sacred time of 1939-1945.  Those who would like to know “what happened to the Brits” might consider that many of “the Brits” today have no grasp of some of the most rudimentary elements of British history, nor, thanks to official multiculti nonsense, do they have any sense of what that history has to do with their identity as part of the British people. 

It might be worth noting that this is a lesson in the importance of political expediency for promoting knowledge about past atrocities: the Holocaust became widely, publicly known because it was useful to the Allies to make it so, while the stories of the Armenian and Ukrainian genocides have had no such powerful advocates for their publicity and remembrance.  As much as I don’t like it, what is remembered from the past is tied inextricably to those who have the power to authorise and enforce official memory.  When those who have the power are more concerned to address present needs (such as avoiding Muslim discontent, riots and attacks), a new, airbrushed, revised story will be told.  When there are no victors to publicise an enemy’s atrocities, or when the victors are unable, for whatever reason, to do this, atrocities are usually softened or erased or justified as part of a founding mythology.  Then begins the talk of “necessity” and idealism, and it always sounds the same, whether it is uttered by a Benny Morris or a Turkish nationalist. 

Because of post-WWI squabbling over the carcass of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were unsuccessful in holding most of the architects and agents of the genocide accountable.  The architects and agents of the Ukrainian genocide were heroes to people of a certain political persuasion, who might well have liked to expropriate a few kulaks in their part of the world, and were never going to be held accountable by their own government, which authorised what they were doing, nor by any other, which had no means of trying or punishing them.  Needless to say, the mass deaths of Germans following WWII are scarcely even remembered, since they are unique in having virtually no advocates for their memory and an unusual number of interested parties who would prefer to keep these events buried as much as possible.

Middle Eastern historians are, on the whole, very bad about repeating pro-Ottoman, pro-Turkish propaganda about the Armenian genocide, and only rarely does anyone bring up the genocide of the Ukrainians except as a tired debating point against people who use the Holocaust as a cudgel with which to beat political opponents.  The ‘wrong’ kind of people were doing the killing in those cases (Muslims, communists) and the ‘wrong’ kinds of people (Christians, Slavs) were the victims.  Given the decades of pervasive anti-Christian and increasingly pro-Islamic biases in U.S. and European education, teaching the Ottoman genocide against the Armenians seems not only counterintuitive but perverse (since “we” all “know” that Christians are always the oppressor, never the oppressed). 

Sympathisers with the Soviets and communism generally could never really acknowledge that Stalin’s policies towards the Ukraine were fundamentally no different in revolutionary and nationalist motivations and hideous effect from the Holocaust.  To his cheerleaders abroad, Stalin was a “liberal in a hurry,” and if a few kulak eggs got broken, well, that’s the cost of progress.  Admirers of that famed Ottoman “tolerance” and latter-day proponents of the liberalisation and reform of the Islamic world have all been too deeply invested in their respective myths to face up to the hideous realities of what the marriage of progressive politics, Ottomanism and Islam could and did create, despite ample evidence not only of mass killings and deportations but extensive evidence (detailed in A Shameful Act) of government direction and coordination of the entire enterprise.

At Taki’s Top Drawer, Taki remembers Sam Francis, and Dr. Gottfried writes on Ann Coulter and the always detestable SPLC.

At The American Conservative, Anatol Lieven makes the argument against fighting another Cold War with the Russians (and, naturally, I agree).

At Chronicles, Scott Richert writes about Islam in America:

As Dr. Siddiqui’s remarks indicate, the views of mainstream Muslims are far from the views of most non-Muslim Americans. How many non-Muslims in Rockford believe that the Constitution is a pure Islamic document, and that America would benefit from adopting sharia as the law of the land? How many non-Muslims believe that the definition of terrorism should be different for Muslims than for non-Muslims?

If the early poll numbers for Giuliani are to be believed, Emery is far from alone.  Apparently, the best way to show your pro-life credentials these days is to be willing to rain death and destruction upon the home of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East.  The blood of thousands of dead Iraqi and Lebanese civilians, it seems, can cover a multitude of aborted American babies. ~Scott Richert

“The Antichrist is the reduction of Christianity to an ideology, instead of a personal encounter with the Savior.” Any attempt to co-opt the Faith for the service of a particular ideology has about it the air of sulfur. ~Scott Richert

That neoconservative organizations can afford to help politicians such as Santorum revise their hierarchy of values just reinforces the argument that Solovyov made a century ago: “Days will come in Christianity in which they will try to reduce the salvific event to a mere series of values.” That reduction is long complete, and we have entered the next stage: the shedding of those “values” that individual “believers” no longer think—or, rather, “feel”—are necessary for salvation. ~Scott Richert

See Part I of Scott’s series here.

Trotsky lived on after Stalin, and to some extent is still alive today, not because young people want the world he wanted: a phantasm that not even he could define. What they want is to be him. ~Clive “Don’t Be Like Trotsky” James

Some clever observer could tie Clive James’ article with theories about the New Anger and the irascibility of bloggers and engage in some hyperean, Joe Klein/Jonah Goldberg-like declaration about extremism and “young bloggers” as a manifestation of romantic quasi-Trotskyism.  Someone else could make references to neocons and Schwartz miya, which might be more appropriate, but would still be a bit far-fetched, since no one to the right of Hugo Chavez admires Leon Trotsky, and even Chavez probably isn’t that interested(Chavez might wonder why anyone would admire the guy who lost).  One interesting thing that James did say in that article about the totalitarian impulse was this:

It is the trick of meeting contradiction by silencing whoever offers it. 

Certainly that part is familiar to many a prominent neoconservative.

So there is now some argument over whether vlogging (i.e., video-blogging) is worthless or not.  Is it as efficient as good, old-fashioned blogging?  Everyone seems to be saying, “Not really.”  Is it entertaining?  Everyone who has bothered to weigh in on this vital matter seems to be saying, “Yes.”  In the wake of the eruption of Ann Althouse, which Bob Wright explains in more detail here, could there have been any other answer? 

It is probably not the best time to point out, then, this incredibly tedious conversation between Bob Wright and Michael Kinsley in which they bat back and forth the merit of the anti-Mormon arguments of Linker and Weisberg, despite the fact that neither of them had read the Linker piece and only one of them had read Weisberg.  In twelve minutes, they managed to establish that 1) intolerance was bad; 2) more tolerance would be good; 3) neither of them had read the Linker piece; 4) neither of them knew very much in detail about Mormonism or any other religion (quoth Wright on Catholicism: “that second whatever thing, the pronouncement  they had about thirty years ago or so”).  If anyone wanted a chief exhibit for the anti-vlogging position, this section would have been it.  Personally, I enjoy watching “diavlogs,” as they are rather absurdly called, but there are times when they try the patience of the most faithful viewer.

If political fundraising success is measured in terms of exceeding expectations and building momentum for the future, John McCain’s campaign has not had any success in fundraising.  If barely doubling the fundraising of Bill Richardson was the goal all along, McCain should be very pleased with his whopping $12.5 million.  Even after very deliberately lowering expectations, his first quarter numbers seem low by the new standards of this cycle.  Four years ago, $12 million would have been respectable and competitive for a top-tier candidate, but now it makes McCain look strangely weak. 

It is interesting that Giuliani was able to bring in only $15 million, despite his much-vaunted “frontrunner” status, while Romney, who has to be seen by now as an incredibly overfunded joke candidate, has pulled in the largest amount on the GOP side.  Meanwhile, the other contenders are running their campaigns on a shoestring and gaining popularity that Romney has not been able to buy no matter how many heaps of cash he fritters away.

Ross let things go at that, but the difference, clearly, is that Goldberg — like a lot of people drawn to the conservative movement — is drawn to it specifically because a faux-Burkean fussy aversion to “new ideas” provides a decent cover for the fact that he lacks the capacity to grapple with actual ideas. ~Matt Yglesias

To recap: Reihan wrote a really interesting post, Goldberg harumphed about whippersnappers not knowing anything, Ross intervened on Reihan’s behalf, I unleashed my standard furious attack, Reihan said some nice things about me and other paleos, which prompted a much more obnoxious Goldberg post, a reply from Reihan, and a number of even morefurious attacks on Goldberg from me.  This debate then got tied in to Ross’ response to the Sullivan–Brooks spat (which was an entirely one-sided Sullivan conniption), leading to a Goldberg comment, Ross’ reply and Goldberg’s concluding remarks, which Yglesias roundly and rightly mocks.  It is hard not to agree with Yglesias’ observation, at least as far as Goldberg is concerned, since I said much the same thing last week, and especially since Goldberg’s mudstick act is consistent whether he is confronted with older ideas of a traditional conservative bent, relatively newer ideas from a Sam Francis, new potentially valuable ideas of the Ross-Reihan school or non-conservative ideas from anyone else.  He not only cannot discern between radically different, even opposed, ideas (thus, in his strange, strange world, crunchy cons are vaguely fascist and Ross and Reihan’s “Sam’s Club Republicans” are supposedly the same as Sam Francis’ MARs), but he also cannot engage with any of the proponents of these ideas without reaching for a heavy-handed smear or tendentious over-reading of someone’s position as a way of avoiding real debate and tarring his opponents as political untouchables or hopelessly naive loons.  I would instinctively like to think that many people in the “movement” are not like this, but a great many seem to love the Goldbergs and Hewitts of the world and relatively few see them for the faux-Burkeans that they are.

You know I just don’t get it. I can totally understand why you might think that it was a bad idea to go into Iraq in the first place, but I can not for the life of me, fathom how a civilized person can support the idea of us leaving that country at the present time, for what will most assuredly result in genocide. ~Glen Dean

Clark challenged Mr. Dean on this post, and Mr. Dean wrote back in the comments:

Clarke [sic], that post had to do with the irony of left wing opposition to the occupation in Iraq, not right wing. The differences in you and the lefties, is that you are not calling for us to enter into Sudan while simultaneously calling for us to leave Iraq. You don’t oppose intervention in Iraq while supporting intervention in a lot of other places.

Actually, it seems that Mr. Dean’s post had to do with calling people who support withdrawl from Iraq barbarians.  If he cannot fathom how a “civilized person” can advocate leaving Iraq, given the likelihood of what he calls genocide, he presumably cannot consider those who do advocate leaving Iraq to be civilised people.  Mr. Dean does go on to criticise the left for their Bush-hating and says:

They hate George Bush so much that they are willing to perpetuate our defeat in Iraq, thus bringing about genocide in that country.

It is really sick when you think about it.

This is the curious idea that ending your participation in the warthat has made a genocide at least a possibility is more morally objectionable than continuing your contribution to the potentially genocide-causing war, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.  If there is a danger of even larger-scale sectarian and ethnic warfare in Iraq, that would mean that those who opposed the war citing the ethnic and sectarian instability of the country would have been proven right, which means that their arguments for withdrawal might benefit from the same sort of insight that led the war opponents to anticipate the disaster the war supporters were unleashing.  

In the last resort, with nothing left, flinging accusations of enabling genocide has become something of a standard argument in pro-war circles.  This standard argument often, but not always, invokes Vietnam, or rather Cambodia in connection with Vietnam.  Bringing the war into Cambodia was necessary and right, as some would tell it, but the genocide that happened later was all the fault of people who wanted to end American involvement, even though it was bringing the war into Cambodia that set off the chain of events that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.  But, hey, stuff happens.  Mr. Dean assures Clark that he was not coming after those of us on the right for any signs of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” (how reassuring)–but he would still lump us in with all of the genocide-enablers, whereas those who have been hawks from day one are obviously deeply concerned about the plight of all the tens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have already died.  They’re civilised people, after all, not like those antiwar barbarians who eat uncooked meat and live in tents. 

Indeed, some crazy person, obviously boorish and uncivilised, might start throwing around the g-word in connection with our Iraq policy for the last 16 years, since arguably more people have died through sanctions and American wars against Iraq than have perished in that supposed “genocide” in Darfur.  But that would be crazy.  Unfortunately, those of us who have protested and opposed these sorts of interventionist policies all along are not as civilised as those who would like to perpetuate them, so we must simply grunt and howl in our heathen rage.      

*With apologies to Konstantinos Kavafis (a.k.a., Cavafy)