Imagine for a moment that Prime Minister Pashinyan makes a speech in the National Assembly claiming that there was no Armenian Genocide, that Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War behaved badly, exhibited pro-Russian attitudes, and the Ottoman government had to relocate them to other areas of the state. Perhaps it will be necessary to say such things within the framework of the “peace agenda.”
Would such a statement by the head of the RA cause universal outrage in Armenia today? I am certain it would not. Such a reaction might have occurred 10, 20, or 30 years ago, but not today. Now, one part of society would be angry, another part would be completely indifferent, and the third, the most aggressive and vocal part, would support Pashinyan with the following “arguments”: “Well, he is right, the truth has finally come out. We’ve been crying for 100 years, what have we gained? What about the Russians, the “dashnaks”, the “formers” ….. Don’t you see how well the new buses are working in Yerevan? If you don’t, then you are a “pizza-eater”, a Russian slave, and a fifth columnist…”
And since that opinion will be the loudest, those who are familiar with historical facts and are angered by their distortion will gradually fall silent. Or they will speak out, but they will be marginalized. This follows the pattern of the “spiral of silence” identified by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, where people conform to a prevailing opinion expressed in the most aggressive way, fearing to be seen as a “white crow”.
Why am I conducting this thought experiment? My goal is to illustrate how degraded we have become. For me, the behavior of our society after November 9, 2020, is an indicator of this deep, irreversible degeneration. People are ready to silently swallow the government’s lies about the negotiation process, the reasons for the defeat in the war, and the events that followed. Naturally, this degeneration didn’t happen in six years; it is a process spanning decades, with the state, political, and intellectual elites all at fault.
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Pashinyan (let’s give him credit in this matter) knows the main mass of RA citizens very well. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he (within the same agenda) one day claims that Armenia never existed, and that the territory we live in is land seized from Azerbaijan. Again, I’m sure it would be accepted as normal by that crowd.
Aram Abrahamyan
