Money talks, and right now it’s talking shit.
My family and I are no strangers to BS in the press. We’ve learned to brush it off. Lies make good headlines, good headlines make great covers, great covers sell magazines. But when I heard about this full-page ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal denying the Armenian genocide, I couldn’t just brush it off.
The ad was paid for by Turkic Platform. I won’t list the group’s website, as I don’t want to give them the traffic, but basically they say that not as many people died as historians say, and that the Armenians were to blame.
For the Wall Street Journal to publish something like this is reckless, upsetting and dangerous. It’s one thing when a shitty tabloid profits from a made-up scandal, but for a trusted publication like WSJ to profit from genocide—it’s shameful and unacceptable. Why is it that every time we take one step forward, we take two steps back?
Gawker asked the Wall Street Journal why they would run an ad like this. Their response was: “We accept a wide range of advertisements, including those with provocative viewpoints. While we review ad copy for issues of taste, the varied and divergent views expressed belong to the advertisers.”
Advocating the denial of a genocide by the country responsible for it—that’s not publishing a “provocative viewpoint,” that’s spreading lies. It’s totally morally irresponsible and, most of all, it’s dangerous. If this had been an ad denying the Holocaust, or pushing some 9/11 conspiracy theory, would it have made it to print?
Many historians believe that if Turkey had been held responsible for the Armenian genocide, and reprimanded for what they did, the Holocaust may not have happened. In 1939, a week before the Nazi invasion of Poland, Hitler said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” We do. We must. We must talk about it until it is recognized by our government because when we deny our past, we endanger our future. When we allow ourselves to be silenced by money, by fear and by power, we teach our children that truth is irrelevant. We have to be responsible for the message we pass on to our children. We have to honor the TRUTH in our history so that we protect their future. We have to do better than this.
