Reaction in Russophone blobosphere and the Reactionary Mentality

Well… it looks like my entry noticing the uncanny simirarity between HHK and Nazi insignia and also mentioning Garegin Nzhdeh has caught the attention of Armenian Nazi bloggers (I don’t want to call them “fascists”, though some of the things that they’re saying are quite disturbing and outright fascist).  In the last 24 hours I have been accused of many things: 1) of comparing Nzhdeh to Nietzsche (hmm… where?), 2) of being a pro-American sycophant, 3) of being a Jew, 4) “Safarov” of our nation, 4) of being uneducated, 5) and many-many-many other things.

These are at most 5-7 people.  They take turns agreeing with other, and seemingly dream of a society were everybody would agree with each other, where questioning of Nzhdeh’s works would be strictly forbidden under a penalty of death, where it will be forbidden not to hate everyone who is of Turkish descent.  They also take turns competing as to who will reach the farthest in the Right-wing extremism.

Among these entries you will find proposals to canonize Nzhdeh (i.e. to make him a saint) and to sanctify his works, so that nobody will have the right to criticise or even question his disturbingly Racist ideas.  There are also proposals to kill me, to strangle me, to shit on me, to shoot me and to just simply ignore me.  The most radical of these comments come from Narine (she must be the 100 year old lady with AK-47; from angel-xiligan), then there is ahousekeeper (the one with a marine smiley) and also from Pigh (Tigran K.). 

These discourses and comments are not just simply blog entries.  They are reflexive of the general modus operandi of the broader political discourse in Armenia today.  If you say something against the sanctified paradigm, you will get death threats, which are not just empty words: journalists are being killed or beaten, intellectuals are being threatened, there are very strict Statist taboos on cultural and artistic expression.  You are not allowed not only to step out of the box of “The Normal” “Նորմալ”, but you are not allowed to even think outside of it.  There’s an obvious hypocrisy and opportunism when Armenian right-wing condemn Hrant Dink’s murder – a man who was a courageous speaker, a Parrhesiastes,  in the face of one of the most restrictive regimes near Europe.  But why point fingers and not look at ourselves?  If you choose to step outside of the Rabiz culture your life in Armenia will get tough – gone are the vibrant days when Yerevan and Armenia as a whole was sporting free-thought, free-artistry, free mentality — when culture was not state-controlled, when culture was boiling and people were properly political.  Today you have to be Normal, in order to survive in Armenia: and “normal” means living within the narrowly defined margins within which only the underclass Rabiz and middle-class pseudo-liberal is permitted, while all other alternatives proposing Respect, People-Power, Intellectualism and Solidarity are violently excluded.

Pigh says “Как таковой оппозиции у нас нет, кто есть, себя дискредитировал,а свежей независимой массы не наблюдается.
Власть я тоже не люблю. Ка уже выразился где-то, имею счастье работать в сельских местностях Армении и напрямую вижу,что творится вне Еревана. Это ужасно,ужасен беспредел некоторых олигархов и местных царьков,ужасен уровень коррупции,ужасен цинизм по отношению к народу и ужасен народ,который за 5000 драм или мешок муки с благодарностью избирает этих мразей. Что делать? Не знаю,честно не знаю.. Бороться? С кем? Как?
Для себя я выбрал другой путь,самому пробиваться по жизни и помогать,как только возможно,нашему народу”  Well, maybe in principle we and many other people want the same thing, but where do you get the arrogance to discredit other people’s oppinions regarding the methods of achieving the better conditions of life. It is this exclusionist logic of violently silencing everyone who slightly disagrees with you (so similar to the way that the dominant politicians work) – that will not get us anywhere.  Armenia would benefit a great deal if it heard some of the alternative (and not oppositionist) voices that are coming from within even the poorest strata of our society.   

Sooner or later these people who pride themselves as “Nazis” will need to understand that Armenia is not exclusively their country.  That they are not the only people who are patriots; that other forms of patriotism, which are not necessarily Nzhdeh-esque racist, also exist; that to love your country, to be a good Christian and a good family-man, does not necessarily translate into voting for the fascist HHK or the Nazi Dashnaks; that it is precisely your narrow-minded mentality that is sinking the country into oblivion and poses a very real national-security threat.  Many people are departing from Armenia leaving a brain-drain behind not primarily because of the economic conditions, but precisely because of this fascist and exclusivist atmosphere that is prevalent in our society.  And until it stops, even dual citizenships won’t help to repopulate it – it will keep degenerating into barbarism like with Afghanistan’s Taliban, until the Last Man on his way out will switch off the light.  All I can do at this stage is to ask you, and even to beg you, to Think Deeper!!! 

Ultimately, the Fascist is not at the top, who must be deposed, but he is within us.  The first Revolution that must take place is within the Individual – within each and every one of us.  Until that day when each one of us supersedes the slave mentality encoded into us by the powers that be.  Until that day the soil in Armenia will keep crumbling and the Little Mher will not come back!!!        

As Tigran “Pigh”  himself declares on his “Nothing else matters” blog, he is a National-Socialist a “Nazi” (but not a fascist) and he intends to vote for Dashnaks 2 times in a row (though from his previous entries I though that he is a type who would vote for Henchanks or Marxists or even ՀԿԿ).  And as typical of the general atmosphere of Armenian politics today, Pigh goes on to review the individuals in opposition basing his analysis on the extent of their charisma (something that, as Max Weber argued, is typical of dictatorial societies), rather then as an intellectually engaged analysis of their proposals (though, I have to say there is, indeed, little to review on intellectual level).  For instance, he criticises Shavarsh Kocharian for highlighting El Presidente’s illegitimacy in the European Parliament – Pigh does not contest the illegitimacy of El Presidente, but he says “Стыдно!!!” – Why???  Why not bring out the dirt, the paradoxes and the contradictions, and confront them and deal with them??? Is it because Savarsh’s actions are discounting Armenia’s brand-name and marketing potential??  If Pigh’s argument is not an example of Hypocrisy, then I don’t know what is.  I’m not a big fan of Shavarsh Kocharian either, but there are other more serious reasons pertaining to his proposals and thinking.
  
And so, it is because of the dominance of these Nazi discourses in Armenian politics, which establish themselves by discursive force of threat and thuggish swearing, physical violence, populist demagoguery, taboo, reductionism, aesthetized fantasies of the Ideal, technocratic thinking about policies, and by forbidding Alternative forces to voice themselves, that contemporary Armenian political thought is still grounded in the 19th century terrains of Herd Mentality.  This is how the questions of “Who is going to lead us?” gain a wider circulations and popular purchase, over the questions of “How can we lead ourselves?” and, “How can people take charge of their collective destiny?”

I’m not a Fascist and I believe in Kuhn’s concept of “Open Society” (obviously not is Soros’ interpretation of it).  What I don’t believe in is fascist restrictions and bans, so here are their comments;  Enjoy!
http://pigh.livejournal.com/11192.html
http://angel-xiligan.livejournal.com/77343.html

Not surprisingly, all of these Reactionary comments are in the Russophone blogosphere.  The Armenian blogosphere and its politics seems to be reflexive of exactly the type of Russian nationalist Imperialist framing which is in Russia’s and West’s best interests (we saw the same pattern unfolding in Ukraine).  This is how it works:
1) If you are blogging in English then you are a pro-Western, weak, sissy, sly, oppositionist, Jew-influenced Liberal. 
2) If you are blogging in Russian then you are pro-Russian, righteous, truthful, God-fearing Conservative who Knows that everything in Armenia is just perfect and as it should be (apart from minor problems) and that Armenia is on the right track (culminating with EU accession and a society where everybody agrees with each other).

I still like some of the blogs in Armenian.  Though I might not necessarily agree with their views, I’m still open to thought-provoking content and I listen and learn rather then send death-threats.  But if I had a choice, I would be blogging in Latin, Esperanto or Katharevutha (ancient) Greek, or maybe just in Ancient Armenia but then Mokhnavotnuks (Մոխնավոտնուկները) from the Russophone blogosphere might notice my spelling and grammatical “mistakes” in my writing and call me “uneducated” again.    

This is how the cookie crumbles…

Garegin Nzhdeh himself once said «Ամեն ազգում տականք կա, բայց հայ ազգի տականքին ոչ մի այլ տականք չի հասնի»։ (Every nation has its own scum, but Armenian national scum will not compare with the scum of any other nations.) Those taboo-imposing տականք KaGeBesniks, who think they know it all, immediately spring to mind.  In light of the Reactionary nature of the responses to my posting and the extent of its Reactionism, as well as the level of its discourse’s modus operandi, I have to say that on that one Garegin Nzhdeh might have been right…