Vive la France!

By Heraclitus

You have to love the French. Well, I do, anyway, and I'm serious. They've just passed a law making it illegal to deny the Turkish genocide perpetrated against the Armenians from 1915 to 1917. The American Congress can't even pass a resolution admitting that this historical fact did indeed take place, because they're too cowardly and beholden to Turkish commercial interests (what? the US Congress? craven and venal? really?)--although, to be fair, Presidents Clinton and Bush should really bear the majority of the blame. But the French government, albeit in slightly dodgy circumstances, has not only refused to play along with the lie, but has decided to make it illegal to tell it at all.

Obviously, some may be uncomfortable with this. Shouldn't freedom of speech include the freedom to lie? Well, first, it doesn't in France, so there's nothing untoward about this law in that regard. More importantly, it's obvious why such a lie is being told in the first place: because a fairly powerful nation-state has every reason to want it told and believed, and is throwing all of its weight behind the lie. This marks an obvious difference between this case and that of Holocaust denial (which is also illegal in France). No one with the power, political and financial, of the Turkish government is out there denying the Holocaust. Thus in the US, where such laws are obviously impossible, Holocaust denial is gaining no ground, while, to repeat, the US Congress can't even bring itself to get off its knees and tell the truth about the Armenian genocide.

I also have no problem with freedom of speech being restricted in the case of historical fact. I think that denying the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide is altogether different from trying to revive phlogiston theory. Scientific theories are already interpretations, and you can't outlaw an interpretation. It's entirely possible, though probably unlikely, that phlogiston theory could be revised and become the basis for a scientific revolution, or at least a significant scientific advance. If a revamped phlogiston theory can make more sense of the problems scientists are working on than the alternatives, it will prevail, and rightly so. But denying historical facts, like the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide (or the French Revolution or the founding of Rome), is simply a case of lying, and lying to advance obvious interests. So I think legislating on questions like these is fundamentally different from legislating other intellectual questions or opinions, even in the "hard" sciences.

Meanwhile, in a further blow the forces of reaction in Turkey, Orhan Pamuk has been awared the 2006 Noble Prize for Literature. Pamuk has faced legal persecution in Turkey for discussing the brutal subjection of both Armenians and Kurds by the Turkish government.