Antwan Hampton
What’s That Atrocity?
Ethnic cleansing, as I have come to understand it based upon Naimark’s Fires
of Hatred, is the violent and forced removal of a racial or religious group
by a nation. Naimark makes the important distinction between ethnic cleansing
and genocide in the first chapter of this book. Throughout Fires of Hatred
the differences and similarities between genocide and ethnic cleansing begin to
reveal themselves. In the first three chapters, in fact, we see ethnic
cleansing of different magnitudes, with different methods and different
philosophies behind them. In the end, though, it always ends in death, discord
and despair. These chapters go over the genocide of the Armenians and Greeks in
Anatolia, the Holocaust in Germany and the persecution of the Chechens-Ingush
and Crimean Tatars in the Soviet Union. These three events are, in a sense, the
pioneers of crimes against humanity in the 20th century.
The Armenian genocide (a moniker that is, to this day, not accepted in
Turkey) truly opened the door to ethnic cleansing and genocide in the 20th
century. Due to it being one of the earliest modern examples of genocide and
ethnic cleansing it took years, decades, for it to be noted and recognized as a
genocide and a crime against humanity. The event that actually put the Armenian
genocide on the map, and subject of Chapter 2 in Fires of Hatred, is the
Holocaust.
In a lot of ways, the Armenian
Genocide and the Holocaust are very similar. Of course, both have the three
components necessary for a genocide: nationalism, bureaucracy and a flashpoint.
In Anatolia, the Young Turks were trying to establish a self-determinant
nation. The dominant group wanted their nation to fit their needs and their
rules. That basis helped build their sense of nationalism. The Ottoman Empire,
which establishes the bureaucracy, also added to the nationalism. The Ottoman
Empire was dominated by Muslims and Armenians and Greeks were typically
Christian, and those groups opposed Ottoman rule in Anatolia, angering the
Young Turks and bolstering their sense of exclusivity. The flashpoint in the
Armenian genocide is arguable. There were rising tensions stemming from the beginning
of Ottoman rule in Anatolia, but the Armenians actions to have themselves guaranteed
the rights of minorities. The Ottomans saw this as a betrayal, since the
Armenians sought help from Russia. The Holocaust shared the gradual, yet
sudden, start that characterizes the Armenian genocide. The anti-Semitism that
defines the Holocaust had been stirring for years before the start of the
deportations and the killing. The point at which it escalated to murders in the
street and gassing is not completely clear. The beginning of World War II marks
a strong turning point in Jewish treatment in Germany. At that point they had
another reason to hate the Jews, on top of their loss in World War I, they claimed
the war was brought on by the Jews, according to Naimark. The war also caused
enough disarray to make it difficult for international powers to do anything
about the killing of Jews, or even notice it. The bureaucracy in this context
was Nazi Germany and the Nazi party itself created nationalism by promoting the
belief in the Aryan race with propaganda.
The Soviet persecution of Crimean Tatars and Chechens-Ingush was also
fueled by the war. Aside from feelings of Russian nationalism, they use the war
as an excuse to expel Crimean Tatars and Chechens-Ingush from the Soviet
borders, claiming that they could possibly be betrayers. The other factor that
Naimark mentions is the feelings of Soviet nationalism and their desire to
maintain the dominance of the Serbian and Russian ethnicities.
While these three events differ in their execution, in some ways, their
reasoning and the results are very similar. All three are examples of genocide,
or ethnic cleansing, and have the traits to earn their title.
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