Editor,
That the president of a Turkish student association feels compelled to profess nationalistic loyalty and deny the Armenian genocide almost a century after it took place indicates how massive and ubiquitous Turkey's propaganda machine really is.
As long as the Turkish nation keeps blaming the victims of this atrocious event, it will be unable to come to terms with its past. Una Sakoglu's letter in last week's Daily Lobo was a prime example of the use of selective memory to distort the facts for the sole purpose of promoting a nationalist cause.
Categorically denying the Armenian genocide is scandalous enough, but accusing these victims of being perpetrators of such crimes against those who massacred them reveals how shameless nationalism becomes in its attack against humanity. Paradoxically though, in their pathological denials of these crimes, revisionists needlessly become morally implicated in them.
That is what nationalism does to decent human beings.
As soon as one's ethnic and national attributes become the non plus ultra, other ethnic and cultural identities become ripe for extermination from the face of the Earth and the course of history - even if this means the loss of a 4,000-year-old culture.
"Successful" annihilation of memory into the black holes of history murders the victims again. Instead of clutching to nationalist excuses for acts of war, we would be wise to learn from the examples of Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal, who even after suffering inhumane treatment themselves, embraced and honored life by guarding the memory of those who died in the holocaust.
Joachim L. Oberst
UNM staff
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