(www.wchinews.com/photos/wchinews/5158425269/in/photolist..)
by Brittany Jones
Nationalism, Racism, and Control are terms
that can kill. In the book Fires of
Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe by Norman M. Naimark
gives detailed historic facts on how those three terms have contributed to the
ethnic cleansing of many groups of people.
I chose to focus of the first three chapters and give a summary of what
Naimark focused on along with the key aspects of the text.
The
Armenians and Greeks of Anatolia the breakdown of this chapter focuses on
the removal of Armenians from Turkey to Syria. This deportation came from the
fall of the Ottoman Empire. Under the
Ottoman Empire Armenians who practiced Christianity and Jews were considered
second class citizens in comparison to the Muslim Turks. They were taxed high, and unable to obtain
high places in government, and definitely not allowed in the Military. Those who converted to Islam were looked at
as more willing to conform, whereas the Armenians and Jews were expected, and
they did, to follow the laws and they would remain “safe.” The genocide in Turkey happened when Armenians
started to rebel by breaking the “informal contract,” losing their protection
by Islamic forces. In 1894 a group of
Armenians refused taxes which basically caused the uproar and eventual genocide
of their people. Turkey sees the attack on the Armenians costing them a total
of some 200,000 deaths as not genocide, but a punishment for the breaking of
the “contract.” Using punishment as the excuse because they were not intending
on exterminating the group, but instead teaching a lesson. Similar
things happened to the Greeks they were preyed upon by the Turks, to remove
them.
Things to
note from this text:
- · Turkish ( Young Turks) people targeted and massacred Armenian and Greek people to remove them from “their” land completely, or they would have to accept being less of a citizen.
- · Genocide to these people based on superiority and numbers.
- · Three key words that sum up these genocides and acts of ethnic cleansing: Racism, Nationalism, and Control.
- · Both Armenians and Greeks were on this land before Turkish Muslims
- · Christians looked down on.
- · Turkey does not recognize these acts of violence as genocide, instead a punishment for not conforming to their ideas.
The Nazi Attack on the Jews focuses on the well-known tragedy of
the German Nazi’s attack on the Jews in Germany before and during WWII. The progression of the Holocaust as it is
more commonly known was not an overnight thing. During Hitler’s rise in Germany
he started to implant the idea that Jews were these vile, secondary beings over
a time span. Starting with the notion of
deporting Jewish people to Palestine to form a “pure” European nation. Jews were villianized and propaganda was used
against them to make them look like unhealthy race that was impure, and would
rape German women and pollute the German blood lines. The original thought was
to just get them out, then the idea of labeling them, and placing those who didn’t
go to Palestine in “ghettos” and depriving them of healthy living, and placing
special laws into act for the Jews. The
Nazi’s eventually came to the conclusion of complete extermination or genocide
of the race: gassing them beginning in 1941, gathering Jews in groups and
shooting them with guns, and the infamous concentration camps. Even went as far
to blame Jews for WWII.
Things to note from the text:
- · Nazi’s target Jewish people because of their race.
- · Slow progression of genocide.
- · Propaganda used to fuel hate.
- · Nationalism, racism and control all key points.
- · Larger group taking over smaller group.
In Soviet Deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars
another case of the superiority complex arises. In Soviet Russia Stalin went
down the Hitler path and wanted to create and autonomous state he wanted the
deportation of millions of Jews, Germans (ironic), Muslims (Ironic), Chinese
and Koreans and any other none Russian race.
These deportations were popularly sent to Kazakhstan and Western
Siberia. Stalin wanted to draw ethnic lines and ethnic groupings in Russia. In terms of the Chechens-Ingush they were
deported from their homelands forcibly to Kazakhstan and in one severe case a
group of them in a farm community burned to death. Many of them died in transit of the
deportation. With the Crimean Tatars
they endured similar travesties. Being deported
in the same fashion the Crimean Tatars too were forcibly removed and denied
access to their homelands and not being allowed to return under the basis that
they would unite with the Germans. The
Tatars history was rewritten and false events listed, monuments destroyed and
their lives tarnished. These people were
removed under the pretenses of eliminating the race not by genocide but by
ethnic cleansing making it so that they forget their history and cultures and
in the end they will disappear.
Things to note from the text:
- · Stalin wanted autonomous nation within Soviet Russia.
- · Ethnic cleansing by deliberately removing culture and people from their homelands.
- · German paranoia
- · Acts of violence
- · Used nationalism, racism, and control to execute operation.
- · Did not focus on one specific group but instead attempted to eliminate others to maintain the control of another.
It is clear that
nationalism, racism and control are not only the basis for many acts of ethnic
cleansing, but they are the justifications as well. Ethnic cleansing does not necessarily mean
the physical killing of an ethnic group, but the complete elimination of them
in terms of culture as well as people.
Genocide is closely related to ethnic cleansing and those three terms
are the fire to this murderous act. All three
of these instances where people were removed, and killed because of their race
are all due to those three terms. Ethnic
cleansing is a recurring act in history of the world, and as long as one group
deems itself as superior, others will suffer and disappear in efforts to main
the supposed superior entity. These three chapters that Naimark wrote are
examples that showcase overtime the acts of ethnic cleansing and give examples
to nationalism, racism and control. In
all three instances we see these three terms as the key contributors to the
removal of culture. And if one were to
continue to scroll throw history you will see that the recurring theme over and
over again.
http://www.cilicia.com/Ethniccleansing.htm , http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/
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