“The law whose purpose is to penalize negationist revisionism, voted before Christmas by the French parliament, does not propose to write history in the place of historians. And this for the simple reason that this history has been told and written, well written, for a long time,” French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy writes in an article published in The Huffington Post.
“This we have always known: that, beginning in 1915, the Armenians were the victims of a methodic attempt at annihilation,” the author writes. “In other words, this law has nothing to do with the will to establish a truth of state. No representative of the French National Assembly who voted for it saw himself as a substitute for historians or their work. Together, they only intended to recall this simple right, that of each of us not to be publicly attacked – and its corollary, the right to demand reparations for this particularly outrageous offense which is the insult to the memory of the dead. It is a question of law, not one of history.”
“Let us confront this specious line of argument with the wisdom of national representation. And may the senators complete the process by refusing to be intimidated by this little band of historians,” Bernard-Henri Lévy concludes.
