Not So Crafty

looking in his posts for a secret message (perhaps in the form of an acrostic) revealing that he’s just been playing an joke on his readers.
Look closely.

As funny as Mr. Larison’s misunderstanding is, I can’t blame him; the parody was pretty poorly done.

Come to think of it, maybe this is a double fakeout and Larison was also joking. Unfortunately, he left no acrostic clues.

It was originally my belief that because of the dearth of anti-Armenian sentiment and attendant denialism in the west, what I wrote would come off as bizarre and inexplicable, like Razib’s derogatory remarks toward Finns (not quite as obviously a joke, but that was part of the fun). However, now Barbara Lerner’s “moral case” seems a lot like it only intended to sound respectable. It’s true she doesn’t go out on a limb with references to Kevorkian, but I had my jaw open at comparisons to Palestinians. She also seems rather ignorant of history if she didn’t think the Nazis were worried about partisans/communists and that their extermination of jews was tied into this. I wonder what she thinks of Rwanda and Serbia, where the victims were even more capable of resistance?

Part of the spark for this was a discussion I’ve been engaged in with a Holocaust revisionist. Though I am understandably less familiar with the literature, it is my strong impression that most holocaust denialism seems motivated by anti-semitism rather than a genuine search for historical truth. The lack of hatred for other victims of genocide is why we do not see the same sort of denialism for them, not because of the relative plausibility of various genocides. I do not mean to say that every denier must be motivated by hate, there will always be strange people who say absurd things for seemingly no reason (I am thinking of Lerner here, though she may have connections to the Turkish government I am unaware of). However, it is my contention that without it there would be almost no denialism and you would pretty much have to go looking for it rather than seeing it pop up all over the internet.

Barbara Lerner has been shilling for the Turkish government in the pages of the National Review on a regular basis since, at very latest, 1997*. Although there’s no proof of anything nefarious, there just has to be something there of which we’re not aware. At first it seemed reasonable (to me, at least) to believe that she was simply motivated by a desire to protect Israel by defending its key semi-ally in the region, but now that the Muslim chauvinist AKP party has been in power for five full years, with a concomitant weakening of its relations with Israel, it’s unclear just what is motivating her to do this.

Perhaps indeed she is getting a little baksheesh on the side, like our good old friends Heath Lowry and Stanford Shaw.

*Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, this was right about the same time NR began to slide into the abyss at full throttle. The unworthy inheritors of the journal of Kirk, EvKL, Burnham, and Meyer just can’t seem to pull themselves away from Star Trek fantasies and pop music long enough to finish a coherent thought.

Daniel: The first four letters of each paragraph spell out “J-O-K-E.” He made references to acrostics in the text as a way of bringing this to people’s attention, although I don’t think I would have noticed if TGGP (who is also the author of the post, apparently) had not brought it to my attention. His follow-up comments at the original post also make it clear that he is actually pro-Armenian. But as I said, it was poorly done, and I don’t blame you for being confused.

Oh, I see he has posted a second time in this thread! I get it now - it was supposed to be a parody of anti-Semitism/Holocaust denial. Still not that funny, but I’m not confused by it any more.

You don’t really have to apologize. When a joke does not induce laughter, the burden of responsibility should be on the teller.

I would also like to correct the statement I made about a “holocaust revisionist”. He has stated that he would more accurately be called a “armchair revisionist sympathizer”, but since he’s not the easily offendable type I felt free to use that stronger term.