My wife Carrie and I honeymooned in New Zealand the autumn after we were married in 2014. We drove through Christchurch from Aoraki en route to Kaikoura, and much of our experience in NZ left me with a deep sense of love and affection for the country and its peoples. Sharing as important and intimate an experience created a connection to NZ that I still feel to this day.
Even if we hadn't visited, I would still be sickened and grieved at the carnage that emerged out of Christchurch this past Friday, as 49 Muslims were massacred during Friday Prayer by white supremacist shooters who, in their manifesto (which I won't link to) and on their weapons (whose images I likewise won't link to), pointed toward Armenian--among other peoples--history and experience.
First and foremost, I hope that we all can center Muslims and their needs and voices at this time, just as we did for Jewish peoples after the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting last year. I have already privately taken steps towards that end in my own local community, and I hope that my words are not the words of commentary you read before reading those of a Muslim. Their grief and mourning matters the most right now, full stop.
But because a) the culprits of this latest mass shooting cited Armenian history on their weapons and in their manifesto, b) opponents of the well-being, safety, and security of Armenians are already cynically exploiting that to further their anti-Armenian worldviews, and c) being framed for terrible events has historically gone very, very badly for Armenians, I feel compelled to speak out.
For months now, I have noticed a surge in "interest" (I use that term very loosely) from prominent racist, far-right online figures in the Armenian Genocide as a historical narrative of a persecuted Christian population. The framing of the genocide in this context is, then almost always in religious, rather than ethnic or religious-ethnic, terms. To the far-right community that influenced the New Zealand shooters, Armenians were not victims of a genocide because of our ethnic and socio-economic status, we were the victims of a genocide purely for our religious status as Christians (even though not all Armenians are Christians!).
Disingenuously, such persons will often try to say they use this framing as something of as a catch-all to also include the genocides of Assyrian, Greek, and other Christian peoples in the Ottoman Empire around that era. However, the death tolls that are offered in doing so almost always include only the Armenian death toll of up to 1.5 million people. Including the death tolls of the Assyrian, Greek, etc. genocides would raise the death toll upwards of anywhere from several hundred thousand to nearly one million more people.
So this isn't about inclusion of other genocides (and, to be clear, I hope that people of Assyrian, Pontic, etc. descent likewise find some of the same recognition and restitution that we Armenians have been advocating for for decades). This is about framing an entire genocide as anti-Christian persecution at the hands of a Muslim-majority government--an overly simplistic framing that may fit Twitter's 280-character count, but which ignores the body of historical evidence and is pretty transparently meant to contribute to Islamophobia.
The people who treat the genocide like this are not allies, not friends, not partners in solidarity of Armenians. Their framing of our historical collective trauma appears to have directly contributed to a very violent ends while also potentially endangering Turkish and Artsakh Armenians, based on the reaction from Azeri government
officials.
Friends don't do that. Partners in solidarity don't do that. And it is ultimately indicative of the end goals of white supremacists like the Christchurch mosque shooters: because they are supremacists, by definition their people and only their people matter the most. Armenians and our stories are only pawns, collateral damage, and vaguely exotic Christian playthings to fetishize.
These bad-faith efforts from bad-faith actors have clearly done immeasurable and irreparable harm by trying to make genocide recognition and restitution about Islamophobia, and in so doing attempting to make Islam, not denial, the opponent of recognition. But Islam never was the opponent of recognition. My opponent has always been denial, and selectively editing out the non-religious causes of the genocide in the service of racist Islamophobia is itself a form of genocide denial.
I will not allow my family's survival of pogroms, jailings, and genocide to be exploited like this. I firmly believe that my own great-grandparents who survived the genocide would be appalled at the news of this week, and at how white racists are misusing their story of survival. And so while, again, I firmly believe in listening to Muslim voices and Muslim sorrow right now, I cannot in good conscience remain silent when my people and family are taken and made into something that we are not, never were, and God willing, never will be.
That there are murderers who think they were somehow acting on my behalf fills me with anger and sadness too deep for words. And my feelings of betrayal and rage at the racists guilty of attempting to co-opt my Armenian identity for their own racist, Islamophobic ends knows no bounds.
To my Muslim readers: I am so, so sorry. I offer you my prayers, presence, and solidarity in the coming days. Who you are, and the pain you are experiencing right now, matters. To be there for another, of a different background or identity is Christ-like. I am here for you.
To my Armenian readers: We are each others' families. We need to be there for another family right now, and to say that this was not, and won't ever be, done in our name. Our narratives matter greatly, and they belong only to us. Not to anybody else.
And to all y'all: We must be assiduous and zealous in our dismantling of white supremacy. It is a devilish, satanic poison that is toxic to individuals and systems alike. To simply write this off as a "sin" problem is a lazy cop out that cannot be permitted. We can, and must, do better. I pray that with God's help, we will.
Thanks for reading.