April 24th marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. It also marks the 7th year in a row that President Obama obstinately refuses to refer to the ethnic cleansing of 1.5 million Armenians as “genocide” – yes, even after a direct appeal from Kim Kardashian ~

Kardashian – who is Armenian on her father’s side – and the Pope have both called the killings a genocide.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the Armenian exterminist cataclysm – as one scholar refers to it, we again seem to have a conflict over competing realities. There are those of us who prefer to live in the real world and deal with facts, however difficult that may be at times. And there are those on the Left – including totalitarians of all stripes – who seem intent on inventing their own facts to create some magical alternative universe.
 
The word in dispute here is “genocide.” Unless you’re prone to historical revisionism, it’s difficult to deny that’s the appropriate noun to apply to the tragedy of the disappeared Armenians.
 

One hundred years ago, the Ottoman Turks – today’s Asia Minor Muslims – took advantage of the chaos during and immediately following World War I, to attempt to exterminate the Armenian – predominately Christian – peoples from their “empire.”

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century […]
 
During the night of April 23-24, 1915, Armenian political, religious, educational, and intellectual leaders in Istanbul were arrested, deported to the interior, and mercilessly put to death. Next, the Turkish government ordered the deportation of the Armenian people to “relocation centers” – actually to the barren deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. The Armenians were driven out brutally from the length and breadth of the empire. Secrecy, surprise, deception, torture, dehumanization, rape and pillage were all a part of the process.

At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000…. Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Source: Armenian National Committee of America

 
Pope Francis had the temerity to include the term “genocide” in his remarks memorializing the 1,500,000 dead earlier this week. This of course prompted protestations from the religion-of-perpetual-outrage, notably Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan: “I condemn the pope and would like to warn him not to make similar mistakes again.” 😯
 
Barack Hussein Obama seems to side with Erdogan. He’s avoided calling 1915 Armenian killings ‘genocide’ for the 7th year in a row.

 
Oddly enough…

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama did describe the killings of Armenians as “genocide” and said the US government had a responsibility to recognize it as such.

 
This was on Senator Obama’s campaign website in 2008 ~

“[T]he Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy. 😯 As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

[Yet another pack of lies from the prevaricator-in-chief.]
 
Obama and Erdogan, tyrants-of-a-feather, understand that history must be forgotten or erased to enable “progress” towards their authoritarian goals. Another despot with similar ambitions, Adolf Hitler was on the same page ~

For Hitler, who openly admired Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and saw himself as a “Father of the Nation,”, the Armenian massacre (the term genocide had not been coined yet) was proof that humankind is quick to forget, that one should not be held back by moral reservations. Totalitarianism bets everything on opportunism, cowardice, and amnesia. […]
 
In conversations with his minions, Hitler used to mention the following when explaining the “necessity” to exterminate the European Jews: “Who even remembers the Armenian annihilation nowadays?”

Source: FrontPage Mag

 
As all successful autocrats know, mass amnesia is much easier to induce if you refuse to call evil, “evil.” Or genocide, “genocide.”

 
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Related:
Here’s what happened during the Armenian genocide and why Turkey denies it
 
The Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today ~

Outside of Turkey, what is happening to the Christians of today from one end of the Muslim world to the other is a reflection of what happened to the Armenian Christians of yesterday. We can learn about the past by looking at the present. From Indonesia in the east to Morocco in the west, from Central Asia in the north, to sub-Sahara Africa—that is, throughout the entire Islamic world—Muslims are, to varying degrees, persecuting, killing, raping, enslaving, torturing and dislocating Christians.

 
Armenian Patriarch on Pope’s Genocide Remarks: ‘No One Can Expect to Silence the Pope’s Conscience’
 
What You Should Know About The Armenian Genocide ~ Captivating account from the granddaughter of genocide survivors.