History

Quoting Professor Stefan Ihrig’s Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, pages 77-79:

And then there was the journalist Hans Barth, a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Rome, who first published an anti-Armenian article in the journal Zukunft and then shortly afterward the book Turk Defend Yourself (1898). Both were motivated by what he understood as “anti-Turkish agitation” in the German press. His book went through many editions (and a recent Turkish version dates from 2003).⁶³

Herein this “Dr.” Barth justified massacres of the Armenians, peddled anti-Semitic stereotypes, attacked the Christian religion, and exhibited essentialist racism (including such claims as that Africans can never be Christians).⁶⁴

At first glance Barth’s may appear to have been a fringe discourse, with its coarsely yelled hate, but its racialist arguments and even much of its style would become part of the mainstream and be faithfully replicated in public (newspaper) discourse for three decades to come.⁶⁵

Already the very first sentence of Barth’s book contained its whole theme: the Armenians and Greeks had been incited against the “noble and tolerant” Turks, who had then reacted, which in turn had, in Europe, led to calls for a crusade.⁶⁶

In many variations and from many sources Barth printed one disparaging remark and anti-Armenian claim after the other: that the Christians of the Ottoman Empire were culturally inferior to the non-Christians, that everyone who had contact with the Armenians learned to hate them, that they sucked the life out of the Turks, that they held all the main property and capital, and that they were merchants and traders of the most superior abilities—and, as he insinuated throughout the book, that they were even worse than the Jews.⁶⁷

Not surprisingly, Barth also reproduced, more than once, (now familiar) anti-Armenian clichés: “A Greek betrays two Jews, an Armenian two Greeks.” Like the Post newspaper at the time of the horrors (as we saw in Chapter 2), he approvingly reproduced passages on the Armenians from Alfred Körte’s popular travel book: the Armenians were so devious that not even a contract with them helped; every kind of fraud was a sport to them; and Armenian merchants were “leeches,” who filled up on the blood of their victims and then moved on to the next town.⁶⁸

Barth was mainly writing against Lepsius and his Armenia and Europe, which he called a “Lepsiade,” “part missionary tractate, part pulp fiction.”⁶⁹ To this “absurd concoction” Barth had mainly one thing to say: “Requiescat in pace” (Latin, rest in peace).⁷⁰ There was nothing, he wrote, more “unjust, stupid, and disgusting” in modern history than the sympathy in Europe for the Armenians—a sentiment later expressed by Hitler in similar words.⁷¹

Not surprisingly, for Barth the massacres of 1894–1896 were simply unjustified rebellions that had been justly suppressed. And of course it was all the fault of the other Great Powers—including the Americans (this was still rather a novelty in German anti-Armenian discourse, which had thus far largely ignored America’s rôle in the Middle East).⁷²

Barth also quoted what Ambassador Saurma had supposedly told the Constantinople correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, a colleague of Barth’s: that the Turks were within their rights to act as they did in 1894–1896; that the idea of Armenian reforms was neither justified nor executable; and, moreover, that the Armenians “had literally plundered Turkey for centuries” with “their ruthless and unashamed manner of acquisition.” They were, according to Saurma, “usurers and dishonest.”⁷³ Claims that, Barth implied, made killing them justifiable.

Throughout the book Barth spoke against the impossible and “stupid” idea of wanting a state for the spread-out and small Armenian minority.⁷⁴ “They would have done better to be content to fleece the poor, thoroughly honest, and diligent Turkish farmer and to settle as parasites in the fur of the pashas, as it has been from time immemorial.”⁷⁵

And in the now clearly established anti-Semitic images, for Barth, such a nonsensical Armenian state would be “an Eden populated only by usurers, brokers, bankers, and grocers.”⁷⁶

The Armenian uprising of 1894–1896, he claimed, was as ludicrous as if the “Frankfurt Jewry had, with the help of bombs, tried to carry out a putsch, transform the cathedral into a synagogue, and then crown Mr. Rothschild as King of New Jerusalem” in the Frankfurt town hall.⁷⁷ How could Armenian bankers have ever fallen for such schemes? Barth asked.

In his vision they had become so rich, spoiled, and carefree that it seemed like a good way to pamper their own vanity. In another telling analogy, he dismissed the idea of an Armenian state as just as absurd as the idea of “Israel wanting to raise the walls of Zion again.”⁷⁸

As we already saw in our discussion of the German antireform discourse, for Barth (and for some of the texts he cites, often the Berliner Tageblatt), any notions of liberty and (human) rights were dismissed as “the poison of freedom” when applied to the Armenians.⁷⁹

Here, the generally antidemocratic—as well as anti-American—tendencies of German nationalism at the time came to the fore. Robert College in Constantinople, the American college that was the precursor of today’s prestigious Bosporus University, was presented as a school for terrorists, a “bomb institute.”⁸⁰

Pro-Armenian writers were distraught that Barth’s theses found a ready ear in the German press and were widely and often quoted and reprinted.⁸¹ Even fifteen years later, in 1913, Barth’s book was still the subject of debate between him and the German pro-Armenian scene—along with a new article by him justifying the 1890s massacres, this time in the official weekly of the military, the Militärwochenblatt.⁸²

This fact alone—that the official weekly of the German army would print Barth’s justifications—was not a good omen for the coming war.

(Emphasis added. On a very minor note, it was appropriate that I was listening to this when I first read these paragraphs.)

Colonel Aleksandar Protogerov, commander of the 3rd Brigade of the 11th “Macedonia” Division, together with his comrade Todor Aleksandrov, took control of the region of Štip in Eastern Macedonia. At the end of October he ordered extermination of 120 wounded and sick Serbian prisoners of war from the town hospital: they were killed in a village near Štip by both units of 11th Division and comitadjis under the command of voyvoda Ivan Yanev Bŭrlev.⁵³

Similar killings took place in other parts of Macedonia, such as the village of Resan, where [the Central Powers] massacred 28; the town of Kruševo, where comitadjis cut throat to 13, or Topolčani near Bitola, where regular units slaughtered 30 Serbian soldiers;⁵⁴ and in Kosovo, for example near Priština, where [Central Powers] cavalry troops killed 500 Serbian prisoners, or on the banks of the Drim, where 195 were killed and their bodies thrown into the river.⁵⁵ Crimes were committed in many other places.

It was a war, someone might say; and, remembering the experience from the Balkan Wars, we may claim that what [Central Powers] regular troops and comitadjis did to Serbian prisoners was probably an act of revenge or something “normal” in times of war.

But some important factors tell us that the reality was not that simple: first of all, the [Central Powers] soldiers interrogated by the Swiss criminologist R. A. Reiss admitted that they had received specific orders from their superior officers to kill Serbian prisoners,⁵⁶ and — this may be crucial — not only soldiers but also civilians were the target of massacres.

Here we can clearly see that at the moment of invasion the intention to eradicate every aspect of Serbian influence in the region, primarily by killing the Serbian and pro‐Serbian elements, had already existed as a precise plan in the Bulgarian army and comitadji bands.

Regular troops took control of the region, but comitadjis were appointed mayors and prefects, and they retained control of the whole police structure.⁵⁷ Every major town was controlled by a comitadji leader (voyvoda),⁵⁸ whose power became absolute and legitimized through a new administrative system in Macedonia; they operated strictly in order to eliminate Serbian presence in their territories.

It was not a difficult task, because in the towns — like in most of Serbian Macedonia — the Slavic population was not entirely Serbian or pro‐Serbian, and this meant that comitadjis in the towns had to eliminate the Serbian administrative structure — if still there, because most officials had withdrawn with the army to Albania or to Greece — composed predominantly of Serbs from pre‐Balkan wars Serbia who had the duty to pursue and oversee the Serbianization of the region (teachers, priests, officials, etc.) — and all elements who collaborated with them.

For the same reason destructions and mass murders took place in many villages where the population was Serbian or loyal to Serbian authorities,⁵⁹ concentrated in the area between Veles, Prilep and Brod (region of Poreče). The destructions looked like punitive expeditions against previously defined targets, where [Central Powers] regular troops and comitadjis arrived with the clear intention (and probably orders or, if not, at least freedom of action) to destroy and kill.

On 14 November Bulgarian units of the 7th “Rila” Division and [Ottoman Imperialists] of the village of Crnilište entered the villages of Dolgovac and Kostinci near Prilep. Together they pillaged houses and slaughtered people who were still inside or who tried to escape, including children and women, at least more than 70 of them;⁶⁰ then they gathered the remaining 200 Serb civilians in the place called “Samakovo” and slaughtered them with no mercy, “rushing with their bloody knives from person to person”.⁶¹

The same happened in the village of Bogomila near Veles, where all Serb inhabitants where massacred and their homes destroyed; women were raped and tortured before they were killed.⁶² Massacres were committed in many other places in that Macedonian area, as R. A. Reiss reported from one of his sources:

In the village of Bogomil they killed 95 persons, of whom just 20 were men and the others were children and women; […] in the village of Gostirachna 65 persons, of whom 10 men and the rest women and children; in Strovie 80 persons, of whom only 15 were men […]; in Dolgavatz 280 persons, of whom 20 men older than 50 years and all the rest women and children; in Kostentzi 60 persons, of whom only 8 men; in Brod […], on the 12th/25th of December 1915, 105 persons were killed […] and the day later other 100 on the way to Dobrech; in Stounje, 18 persons.⁶³

It was calculated that in the early period of occupation more than 2,000 Serb civilians were killed by [Central Powers] regular troops and comitadjis in the area between Veles, Prilep and Brod alone, and that tens of Serb‐inhabited villages were razed to the ground;⁶⁴ but many other civilians shared the same fate, especially in the towns, which were the target of the “cleansing” of the Serbian element by the comitadjis.

[…]

A special commission composed of Colonel Kalkadzhiev, Major Ilkov, Second Lieutenant Yurukov and Sergeant Vitanov, all of the 42nd Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division “Sofia”, and Second Lieutenant Simonov and Sergeant Erchikov of the 5th Place Regiment,⁷⁵ was set up in the town with the sole duty to select prisoners and decide which from the deported groups should be executed immediately.

Mass executions of Serbs were committed in a nearby place called “Duboka Dolina” and the victims were buried in mass graves; we do not know much about how the commission decided who should be executed, but thanks to Reiss and other researches we know that by the end of April 1916 about 2,000–3,000 civilians had been killed in that place.⁷⁶ For this reason Surdulica was nicknamed the “slaughterhouse of Serbs”.⁷⁷

(Emphasis added.)

The Central Powers’ occupation of Serbia bears a striking resemblance to the Axis occupation of Poland. Even when the Central Powers occupied Poland, they did not pursue a goal of annihilating Polish culture (although a few officials did consider the option).

At the end of the war the Inter‐allied Commission in Serbia affirmed that the nature of those murders was clearly political, because the [Central Powers] had wanted to eliminate the Serbian élite in order to deprive the common people of their leadership;⁷⁸ and at the same time to carry out the process of Bulgarization, erasing any evidence of Serbian culture in Macedonia and, especially, in the Morava region.

The forced introduction of the Bulgarian church and clergy was the first step in building a new Bulgarian culture instead of Serbian, because ecclesiastic institutions were centres spreading national spirit; in Balkan societies they were more powerful than any other cultural or educational institution, especially considering that in countries like Serbia more than eighty percent of the population were illiterate and lived in the countryside often without contact with any other culture except the one promoted by the church.

Serbian language was forbidden everywhere, schoolteachers were brought from [the Central Powers], Serbian books were taken from libraries, schools and private collections, and publicly destroyed⁷⁹ (but the most important of them were sent to [the Tsardom of] Bulgaria, along with sacred icons and treasures looted from Serbian monasteries and churches).⁸⁰

[…]

The methods of Bulgarization, such as the exclusive use of Bulgarian, Bulgarian schools and ecclesiastical institutions, were reaffirmed, and the violence of this process explicitly formulated: “To implement Bulgarization in this region it is necessary to destroy all myths, pillars and all elements of Serbdom and it is necessary that on their ruins should only remain the Bulgarian ones.”

One can also liken the Central Powers’ occupation of Serbia to the Zionist occupation of Palestine. As the Inter‐allied Commission put it: The conditions in which the internees in the camps lived were so bad that one could think that their extermination was the main goal.

Although the Central Powers were less annihilatory towards the population in western and northern Serbia, they were still unafraid to resort to extreme measures there:

In order to keep subdued 1,375,000 people estimated to populate the Austro‐Hungarian occupation zone in Serbia with the relatively small and weak contingent of occupation troops, severe preventive measures were undertaken against civilians: deportation (internment), disarmament and hostage‐taking.

Starting in 1979 and continuing for 33 years, she meticulously recorded television broadcasts around the clock, amassing a staggering collection of 70,000 VHS tapes containing over 400,000 hours of footage.

Stokes' motivation stemmed from a deep distrust of mainstream media and a belief in the importance of preserving unfiltered information. She lived through a time of significant social and political change, and she recognized that television news played a powerful role in shaping public opinion. By capturing this footage, she sought to create a resource that would allow people to critically examine how events were portrayed and to form their own conclusions.

Stokes' archive is remarkable for its comprehensiveness. She recorded not only major news events but also everyday programming, capturing the cultural and social trends of the time. This makes her collection an invaluable resource for researchers, historians, and anyone interested in understanding the evolution of television and its impact on society.

After her death in 2012, Stokes' collection was donated to the Internet Archive, which is currently working to digitize the tapes and make them available online. This massive undertaking will ensure that Stokes' legacy of preserving history is accessible to all.

In the photo, French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier shakes hands with Benito Mussolini, with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the background.

At the same time , throughout 1938, right-wing and nationalist deputies in France demanded a ban on the French Communist Party. And more than 400 newspapers, picking up on the theses of Mein Kampf, spoke of communists as conductors of foreign influence in the country and a conspiracy of world Jewry.

Benjamin Lay would not break bread with a slaver, and he would flat out leave and never speak with them again.

Lay invited a married couple's son to his home, making them panic all day of their missing child, and then revealed to them the boy is safe, but this is the experience of their young Black girl slave's parents from having their daughter stolen and enslaved.

Lay protested in September 1738 at the Quaker Meeting House of Burlington, New Jersey, during the Philadelphia area's biggest Quaker annual meeting event, throwing off his coat, revealing a military uniform and a large, gleaming sword. This was a drastic statement in an event filled with absolute pacifist Quakers. Lay decried the evils of slavery and hypocrisy of the audience who practiced it. Lay produced a thick book, inside of which was hidden a bladder filled with red dye made from pokeberry juice. With a dramatic flourish, he impaled the book with the sword, and fake blood ran down his arm, which he spurted on the slave keepers all around him. Outrage and clamor filled the meeting house, and several men grabbed Lay and carried him bodily from the building.

A year before Lay's death, a resolution was passed in the Philadelphia yearly meeting that would discipline and eventually disown slave owners from membership in the Society of Friends. Lay was able to pass away in peace knowing the seeds of the political movement he pushed, almost alone for his entire life while he was mocked and ridiculed, bore fruit.

Be like Lay, even if revolutionary change doesn't come within your lifetime. Be the one to sow the seeds of the death of bourgeois society. Be militant. ✊

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5702291

Look at the very first thing that Kissinger says to Pinochet’s Foreign Minister—literally the very first thing [that] he says to him when the meeting starts. Yes, the Foreign Minister comes in, he says, ‘I want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk to you’, and Kissinger’s first statement is, ‘Well, I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but human rights. The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there were not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.’

He would have celebrated his 76th birthday today. As chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and one of its national leaders, Hampton's life was marked by unwavering dedication to the cause of racial equality and social justice. Tragically, Fred Hampton met his demise at the hands of Chicago law enforcement officers when he was just 21 years old. His death has been characterized as a premeditated execution, leaving behind an indelible mark on our collective history.