The False Politics of Revisionism

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Revisionism is not only an instrument of historical denial or a process of strategic grandstanding and deception; it is a concerted attack against the inner solidarity of a people. At the substantive level, revisionism is an inverted assault against the historic basis of collective identity-building: to challenge the present it seeks to erode the credibility of the recent past. It operates as a calculated process of narrative construction that is an exercise in the mocking and devaluing the collective will of a people. More to the point, the revisionism in Armenia, and in the broader region, is a form of alternative reality-construction that seeks to disrupt a national ethos. It is the bread and butter of an illegitimate elite that endeavors to proliferate a certain political pathology of misery as the reigning value system. It is the greed of a failed and discredited grouping of political operatives endeavoring to rehabilitate and extol the faux values of a bankrupt doctrine of the past. At its very heart, not only is revisionism intellectually dishonest, it is intellectually insulting. It is the mantra of a once-oligarchic class who now frolic in Armenia’s political landscape as the orphans of Russian duplicity. In no uncertain terms, revisionism is the byproduct of the deprived Soviet legacy and the underdeveloped Post-Soviet system: it is the creed of the modern despot.  

The Velvet Revolution was the sovereign act of the Armenian people against the arbitrary authority of an illegitimate political elite. It was the collective voice and will of the Armenian people, suppressed for decades, reclaiming its right to political action. The Velvet Revolution was an act of defiance against corruption, inequality, injustice and oppression. It was a watershed moment in the modern history of the Armenian people: a defining act of the post-Independence generation. Whatever political developments that came after the Velvet, whatever criticisms, disagreements, rage, frustration, or disappointment that came after, and whatever transpired in the domain of governance, elections, public support, or the uneven course of democratic development, none of it negates that moment in time, that one month in 2018, when hundreds of thousands of people rose up against arbitrary rule and changed history. 

Questioning, challenging, critiquing, or rejecting any and all developments after the Velvet Revolution is not an act of revisionism. Pondering whether the Velvet Revolution was a good or bad thing, whether it was worth it or not, and whether Armenia would have been better off or not without it, are not acts of revisionism. What is revisionist, however, is the process of altering historical developments, facts, and processes to construct a post-facto narrative. What is revisionist are claims that deny the reality of the Velvet, that deny the agency, will, and sovereign act of the Armenian people. What is revisionist is the conspiratorial storytelling and myth-construction that the Velvet was some foreign implanted movement, that it was some hidden operation of trickery against a stupid but well-intentioned people that miraculously managed to deceive an entire people to act against its own interests. Indeed, revisionism is not only intellectually dishonest, but to an entire people, it is intellectually insulting. But this isn’t the first time that Armenian society has been subjected to revisionism: it has observed and been subjected to the vile revisionism of the Aliyev regime in Baku for some time.    

For the Aliyev regime, black is white, dark is light, hot is cold, and up is down. There is no substantive historical truth, but rather, a revisionist recreation of an alternative reality that defines the regime’s projected reality. Armenian civilization never existed, it was the Caucasian Albanians. Heydar Aliyev did not lose the First Karabakh War, it was “anti-national sentiments” and a failed military leadership. The current Republic of Armenia is actually founded on territories that were taken from the Azerbaijani people, thus justifying the concept of Western Azerbaijan. It’s not simply about distorting history, but rather, revising the very foundations of what constitutes reality: it is a post-facto creation of that which did not exist. Revisionism, as a political tool, is the despot’s desperate need to disrupt the continuity of truth, and in order to do that, it must go back and revise the very foundations of the event or phenomena at hand. Thus, modern Azerbaijani revisionists prostrate themselves at the altar of anti-Armenianness. Why then, in a similar fashion, do anti-democracy forces in Armenia follow a similar model: prostrating at the altar of revisionism.  

Contrary to the pathology of post-truth narratives, the Velvet Revolution produced a politics based on compromise, calculation and collectivity. Unlike the ethos of the revisionists, who espouse absolute politics, illusory claims and exploitation of social cleavages, the Velvet rested its laurels on the doctrine of citizen agency, electoral legitimacy and civil rights. Only the second autonomous act of the Armenian people since Independence (all elections from 1996 to 2018 have been an exercise in robbing the authentic will of the people), the Velvet was the founding moment of Armenian democracy. In essence, this was the nativity of the Armenian state as a sovereign entity, for sovereignty can only be based on the people. It is here that we come full circle and better understand the aim of the revisionists: revise the core so that you can challenge the present, or rather, recreate the past so that you can question the continuity of truth. The sole aim of the revisionists is to collapse the new democratic culture that the Velvet birthed, and in order for them to do that, they must follow a simple formula: discredit that birth through revisionism, and thus claim illegitimate that which was born. In this context, altering the historical truth that defines the Velvet Revolution is not, in any sense, a case of interpretive analysis of history. It is, by its very design, an assault against Armenian democracy and the sovereign act of its people.

Revisionism seeks to construct a theoretical matrix of cynicism and distrust, sustained by a near- obsessive mythologization of their imaginary powers of prophecizing: the fatalistic collapse of Armenia. And this collapse has become its doctrine, a pseudo-ideology of fearmongering, and in essence, the source of its hope. For revisionists, Armenia must fail. A successful, safe, peaceful, democratic Armenia stands as a direct challenge to their narrative. This covert, and at times overt, cheerleading of Velvet Armenia’s collapse has bred a culture of inchoate radicalization. What has followed is the fanaticization of the political Armenian, where casual calls for the killing, hanging, raping, or torturing of elected officials and political leaders is normalized in the narratives, discourse and public posts of online pundits and Diasporan keyboard warriors. It is as though a distorted moral logic is at work, some perverse version of their inner Hannah Ardent: out of pity, and out of love for humanity, be inhumane. 

And it is here where we see that for the revisionists there is zero tolerance for the reality of the Armenian condition: Armenian society has no agency and no integrity; it is, above everything, a victim of history, a helpless victim of the present, and as such, it must be a subjugated victim of the future. In any and all iterations, for the revisionists, victimhood is the predominant ontological core. Why? Because only victims need saving. Thus, Armenia needs to be saved from itself and its will to power: it must be saved from the cruelty of choice. Armenians cannot choose to deny victimhood, for revisionism demands fatalism. We are doomed without a savior… so agency, choice and sovereignty are an illusion, a lie superimposed on a simple people who don’t know any better. This is the mantra of the modern Armenian revisionist.

And so Armenia’s democratic, yet imperfect leadership, regardless of the fact that they represent the choice and will of the Armenian people, must be severed as gangrened limbs in order to “save” the people. A certain pathological imagery of cruelty has become the postulate of this savior class. But what this is about, above and beyond anything, is not saving Armenia, but rather, saving themselves as a failed and discredited political class. It is the expression of visceral rage against their own political impotence. So what better way to masquerade ideological poverty, political failure and lack of credibility than by superimposing an artificial culture war based on jingoistic purism. An unintelligible rigorism of virtue to cloak their lack of political legitimacy beneath the veneer of dishonest nationalism.

How are the revisionists trying to do this? By rehabilitating the failed political system of the last three decades. Armenia was truly sovereign under the pre-Velvet regimes, and not under the current Western-funded puppets. Claims of corruption and systemic abuse of power were exaggerations and half-truths fed to the Armenian people to turn them against their pragmatic leaders. The likes of Kocharyan and Sargsyan, and the cadre of oligarchic elite, were war heroes and standard bearers of the strong Armenian state, unlike the post-Velvet system that sold Armenia to the globalists. 

Between the conspiratorial and the nonsensical, the revisionists have been clinging to the primitivism of anti-democratic politics, while lacing their arguments with pseudo-theological and jingoistic ideas as substitutes for rational public discourse. This epistemic community of Diasporan dinosaurs and Hayastantsi robber-barons are seeking to construct a nostalgia for pre-Velvet Armenia, as if Armenian society is too stupid to understand that the harsh reality after the Velvet does not change the facts of the Velvet. But the most unique thing about all revisionists, from autocratic capitals to the halls of the Kremlin to the “akumbs” of the Prelacy Churches to the ugly mansions of former oligarchs, is straightforward: they, themselves, don’t believe in the lies that they spew. Revisionism is not about building something, but rather, about tearing something down, and as long as Velvet Armenia stands, as long as the Armenian people exercise their choice, and as long as sovereignty strengthens, the visceral rage of the revisionists will increase. Why? Because they are not seeking the truth… they are enraged at it.       

Opinion