941) Frank Chalk: Chalked Up to Ineptitude

The reason why the so-called "genocide scholars" are unqualified to make judgments of history is that almost none are historians. What do we say about the rare exceptions whose specialty happens to be history?

Let's review what is expected of a genuine historian:

Historians should love the truth. A historian has a duty to try to write only the truth. Before historians write they must look at all relevant sources. They must examine their own prejudices, then do all they can to insure that those prejudices do not overwhelm the truth. Only then should they write history. The historians creed must be, "Consider all the sides of an issue; reject your own prejudices. Only then can you hope to find the truth."

(For the rest of this excellent description by Prof. Justin McCarthy, a real historian, tune in to his "The First Shot.")

The typical "genocide scholar" takes to real history as a duck takes to oil. These agenda-ridden false scholars establish their conclusion first, and then try to fit the evidence around their thesis. Because their adherence to the genocide cause (and only selective examples, mind you; the hypocrites ignore the vast number of inhumanity's historical examples that aren't "sexy" enough, or when the victims are not, in their minds, deserving enough) supersedes the truth, it does not matter to the "genocide scholar" whether the "evidence" comes from a corrupt source. If the "evidence" affirms what the "genocide scholar" has determined to be a genocide, then these honesty-challenged ideologues will welcome such "evidence" with open arms.

All the while, the world thinks of the "genocide scholar" as a noble pillar of truth, because who will argue that genocide is the worst crime against humanity? Anyone who is against genocide must be "good." Just like when the missionaries of the Ottoman Empire broke the Ninth Commandment (THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR) constantly, but folks accepted their statements as the Gospel Truth, because clergymen were not supposed to lie.

Professors Kurt Johassohn (left) and Frank Chalk


Our "genocide scholar" for examination here will be Prof. Frank Chalk, along with a small peek at his "partner," Kurt Jonassohn. (Retired, 1997; the two hooked up in 1978.) The latter at least may be partly excused for his own ineptitude, since his specialty, as with many other "genocide scholars," is in the area of Sociology. That is, Kurt Jonassohn makes no pretensions of being an expert in History, as does Frank Chalk.

(Mind you, this is not to say Frank Chalk gets everything wrong, historically. But if his historical chops are as bad as he is on record for exhibiting in regards to the "Armenian Genocide," then a truth-seeker would be foolish in accepting his other evaluations, at face value.)

Israel Charny (PBS, "The Armenian Genocide," 2006)


Frank Chalk is an Associate Professor of History (having received his doctorate in the University of Wisconsin) in Canada's Concordia University, and a founding co-director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS, founded 1986). He has also co-authored, along with Kurt Jonassohn, the book published in 1990, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. (The duo, while together, has taught a genocide course since 1980-81.) Professor Chalk has also served as President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (1999--2001), a post currently occupied by the famous non-scholar, Israel Charny. Chalk has also lent his presence to The Zoryan Institute’s Genocide and Human Rights Program, also in Canada (Toronto).

We can see Frank Chalk is a full-fledged member of the Genocide Club. As an article in The Canadian-Jewish News (see below) put it, genocides have constituted his (and Jonassohn's) "academic bread and butter."


His Partner's Own Ineptitude

As we've said, Kurt Jonassohn has a sort of excuse. He is only a sociologist, and as such, is "professionally" unqualified to make judgments of history. But let's have a taste of Kurt Jonassohn's truly embarrassing level of "scholarship."

In a 1993 paper Kurt Jonassohn has written, "DEFINING THE PERPETRATOR SEEKING PROOF OF INTENT," here is how he has established the all-important intent" factor:

A good part of the differing interpretations between the Turkish government and the Armenians of the events of 1915 hinges on the existence of written orders for the genocide.(6) While the Armenians produced such documents, the defenders of the Turkish position have tried to prove them to be forgeries.

His footnote 6 is: Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide." International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 18, no. 3 (August 1986): 311-360.

This source, of course, is Vahakn Dadrian's Greatest Embarrassment, the propagandist's effort to pathetically attempt to cast doubt on the fact that the Andonian works have been forged. Jonassohn's foolish partisanship is demonstrated by the fact that it isn't only "the defenders of the Turkish position" that have shown these papers to be the fakes that they are. Aside from the cold, hard logic it would take for any objective party to see how phony they are, even the British dismissed them for the 1919-21 Malta Tribunal process, as did the kangaroo court proceedings of Soghoman Tehlirian's 1921 trial in Berlin. (And these are far from the only examples; Aram Andonian himself confessed in 1937 that his work “was not a historical one, but rather one aiming at propaganda," decisively exposing his sham.) Jonassohn is so married to his cause and club, he is still trying to make it seem (as do Dadrian and Yves Ternon, the latter a member of Kurt Jonassohn's genocide institute's "Academic Advisory Board," shedding strong light on the "scholarly" worth of the institution) that the Andonian forgeries are genuine. By sinking so low, Kurt Jonassohn has done a fine job in obliterating whatever credibility he might have.

Kurt Jonassohn seems to be aware of the worthlessness of the Andonian papers to have gone on to further write: "What sometimes gets lost in this debate is the great volume of evidence favoring the Armenian position which makes the existence of written orders quite irrelevant." Here again, Kurt Jonassohn demonstrates himself to be a sorry scholar par non-excellence. Any real scholar who examines what Kurt Jonassohn calls "evidence" will be quick to discover that the hearsay, canards and personal opinions substituting for "evidence" can never take the place of actual facts. To get an idea, here's a quick rundown of what Prof. Dennis Papazian has offered as "the great volume of evidence," as has another Armenian propagandist.
Putting Chalk on the Blackboard


Before we examine what caliber of historian Frank Chalk represents, let's examine what appears to make him tick. As his retired colleague, Chalk's Jewish family came from Germany ("Concordia professors honoured for their work on genocide," The Canadian-Jewish News, July 13, 2000, Janice Arnold; hereinafter the "CJNews article"), so his genocide interests began as with most Holocaust-inspired "genocide scholars." As we learn from "Imagining the Unimaginable" (Concordia University Magazine, Sept. 2000, Julia Gedeon Matusky; hereinafter the "Concordia article"):

His first exposure to the effects of genocide came as a 10-year-old living in the Bronx, when his father invited a cousin to live with the family... He could not understand why for no apparent reason she would break down in tears. He asked his parents about her crying and they explained that she had lost her family in Auschwitz. 'Knowing her story sensitized me'."

This is the typical origin of the "genocide scholar." Almost always Jewish, the trauma of the Holocaust propels them to make a field of study of the area, usually under the excuse of "preventing future genocides." The sneaky Armenian genocide proponents understood what a great ally such genocide-obsessed people could be, as we all know the Holocaust is in a category of its own. (The Armenians knew criticizing the Holocaust isn't allowed... they craftily figured, why don't we try to put our "genocide" on the same level, and ride on Holocaust coattails?) Great Armenian wealth subsidized many of these "genocide institutes" and other related genocide organizations that began to spring up, beginning in the 1980s. (For example, the one million dollars reportedly promised by an Armenian to the U.S. Holocaust Museum). The Holocaust specialists, in turn, blindly supported the Armenian propagandists, perhaps because — as Prof. McCarthy has speculated — of an irrational fear that delegitimizing the Armenian story may also cast doubt on the Holocaust.

Regardless of whether an alleged genocide is real or not, much of the interest boils down to politics, frequently shortchanging the facts. It's a pity such an industry has been created of "genocide," as adherents are emotional, and the ideas are faith-based more than reality-based. it's also a pity the reasonable warning of Robert John (Hovhanes) (The Reporter, "America's Leading Armenian Newspaper," August 2, 1984) would hardly be heeded:

"The Armenian, the Jew or the African should not damage their development with a continual conditioning of hate; neither should spurious guilt be vented upon others. These negative preoccupations and obsessions are obstructing our evolution.”

(Regarding Dr. John's powerful statement, Chalk — in the CJNews article — addressed the student in his classes ethnically representing the perpetrators would not be vilified because "We do not demonize any people. The perpetrators are those who were in power at the time, not a whole group." While of course he wasn't going to berate a Turkish student in his classroom with charges that the Turk was responsible for a century-old genocide [that responsibility has been accepted by Fatma Gocek], is he blind to the fact that the very essence of the "Armenian Genocide" rests in perpetuating hatred? Look at the literature; the Turks as a whole are condemned as subhuman monsters. What happens to the "human rights" of these descendants of the accused, particularly when the politicized accusations have yet to be proven?)

In these articles, Chalk alludes to the two "big" genocides or (in the Armenian case) would-be genocides propelling the genocide industry; the Holocaust, and the "Armenian Genocide." For example, in the CJNews article, Chalk points to how his genocide class has attracted others, even though "We had expected most of the students to be Jewish, and maybe a few Armenians..."

To the credit of both Chalk and Jonassohn, they appear to have made an honest attempt to get into other historical events which might be defined as genocide, other than the "Big Political Two." Usually, agenda-ridden "genocide scholars" are primarily interested in these two, and pay lip service to runners-up, as Rwanda and Bosnia. But here we have talk of events going far back as Carthage, and one that was new to me (from the Concordia article):

" ...[T]he people of Melos refused to pay tribute to Athens, even though Athens warned that not doing so would result in death. The Athenians could not accept such resistance because it might encourage the people on other islands to do the same. Therefore, they killed all of the men of Melos, and enslaved the women and children and dispersed them so they ceased to exist as a people. 'It makes finding the Venus de Milo on Melos so ironic,' Chalk notes. 'This great symbol of ancient culture is actually a remnant of a civilization that perpetrated one of the earliest genocides in recorded history...'"

(What do you know. The Greek root of the word "genocide" then bears special significance. The idea for annihilation might well have originated with the Greeks themselves. Note that this was one of history's successful examples, where the people actually became a memory, essentially wiped out. But let's also keep in mind that modern Greeks are off the hook, as they bear negligible resemblance to ancient Greeks.)

(Some 85 years later, Alexander the Great and his Macedonians would use the idea on the Greeks themselves, when he cleaned out Thebes. [One source claims 6,000 murdered, 30,000 subjected to slavery, city razed.] Away from home, he gave it as badly to the island people of Tyre [one source claims 7,000 murdered, 30,000 enslaved]; remember, populations weren't that dense in days of antiquity, so these losses were catastrophic; as comparison, some estimates have it that the total population of Melos, before their "genocide," was only around 3,000. But the Greeks can still be proud for their pioneer work in "genocide"... after all, don't Greeks love to pass off Alexander as a Greek?)

Dr. Frank Chalk n 2004

Regardless, it's highly likely these "peripheral" genocides were mentioned in passing, and it is the "Big Political Two" that has received the main thrust in Chalk's classrooms, over the years. Even if Chalk has been more open-minded in paying note to less popular examples, the question is, has he gone far enough? Has he paid note to the ones everyone prefers to ignore, because the victims are politically seen in the West as aggressors, and other aggressors must maintain their political status as the poor, innocent victims? We'll get back to this critical point later, which blows the lid off the hateful hypocrisy of the genocide industry; "Genocide Club" members enjoy pointing to themselves as noble defenders of "human rights," but that concept becomes repulsively hollow when they also designate some humans to be more valuable than others.

The CJNews article informs us, "Their definition of genocide is broader than that contained in the United Nations Convention. It includes not only ethnocide but also 'one-sided mass killing' of political and social groups by a state or authority."

Of course, then we are getting into deeper trouble. By turning a few knobs there and pulling a few switches here, any conflict can be made to look like a "genocide." One problem with the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide is that the definition is already too broad. But if we are going to get into absurd territory, such as the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)'s allowance of only one person needing to be killed in order to define "genocide," then the whole concept becomes especially meaningless.

Note, however, that Chalk appears to be requiring that the perpetrators need to be a "state" or an "authority." The latter is troublesome, as the U.S. regiment that went berserk and one-sidedly massacred hundreds of Vietnemese civilians in My Lai might also be defined as an "authority." A massacre, however, is not the same as "genocide."

Yet in the Armenian example, the story is presented as a parallel to the Holocaust. Here, the Ottoman "state" is accused of behaving in Nazi-like fashion. Chalk also blames the state, in this example. For instance, in an October 1, 1999 letter Chalk wrote to a lawyer (by the name of Georges P. Hèbert, hereinafter, the "1999 letter"), Chalk clearly points the finger (we don't know which finger) to the "rulers of Turkey," after they began "inflcting" their "horrors" in April 1915. He also signed his name to the April 24, 1998 commemoration (hereinafter, the "1998 commemoration"), which proclaimed: "On April 24, 1915, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic, premeditated genocide of the Armenian people..."

Therefore, the burden of proof on the associate professor of history rests entirely on how he proves "intent," not according to his special definition of genocide, but according to the rules of the 1948 U.N. Convention. (Which also exempts political groups, differing from Chalk's own definition.) Will he be able to do so?

As we wind up this section examining Chalk's inner makings, the 2000 Concordia article informs us:

"Chalk, 63, acknowledges that the work occasionally gets to him. 'Sometimes I cry,' he admits. 'I’m reading a memoir or a book about a particular set of victims, and the tears are just pouring down onto the pages.' ... He says, 'I try not to lose my human feeling but to keep my eye on the goal of improving people’s lives. Therefore, it’s important to remain focused and analytical.'"

The requirement of a genuine historian is to examine all relevant data in a dispassionate manner, in order to reach scientific and impartial conclusions. How well has Frank Chalk succeeded in maintaining his objective focus and analysis? (In addition to the success of his "goal" in "improving people's lives"; he has done anything but improve the lives of people he has helped to unjustly defame.) Or has he allowed himself to become too emotionally involved? In short, has Frank Chalk allowed his genocide-sensitivity to supersede his duties as a professional historian?

The way to answer the above question is by analyzing the validity of what Chalk the Historian has presented as the historical facts.

One example of a Chalk "Fact"

Frank Chalk was part of a talk in which he criticized the role of the press, in failing to set off alarm bells with impending genocides. "[L]et me just say a word about reporters and genocide and history," Chalk began, going on to inform us that New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Walter Duranty "lied knowingly, and with malice and forethought about the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930’s." In fact, according to Chalk, Duranty got his Pulitzer Prize for this very dishonest coverage. (Perhaps not unlike this other Pulitzer Prize winning "genocide scholar.") Chalk then contrasted the lying reporter with "Malcolm Muggerige, who was then writing for the Manchester Guardian [and who] told the truth," but it was still "Walter Duranty succeeding in obfuscating an ongoing genocide that starved to death with intent, to destroy a part of the Ukrainian people, some 4-6 million Ukrainians."

(I confess only the barest knowledge of the Ukrainian episode; Stalin surely was no saint when it came to the treatment of Soviet folk. But if Chalk is charging the famine had "intent" behind it, he had better be prepared to back up his statement with more than his own emotions.)

So it sounds like we had a lying New York Times reporter who succeeded in drowning out the truthful voice of another reporter.

Chalk then ties this in with how reporters "played a very small role" in the case of several genocides, and the first example he provides is "the Armenian genocide of 1915."

This is the kind of sloppiness that serves as an indication regarding Chalk's scholarly methodology. Armenian propaganda loves to pound over our heads that newspapers reported the "Armenian Genocide" widely. (For example, Peter Balakian loves to brag that the New York Times presented 145 "genocide" articles in 1915, alone; the biased and wide scale press coverage is, in fact, frequently pointed to as "genocidal evidence" by industry adherents.) In the case of the "Armenian Genocide," the situation was the reverse: it's not that reporters failed to act as the "trip wires or the signalers" of genocide; they blindly accepted or even created fraudulent information and helped turn a nonexistent genocide into a genocide.

Curiously, in the 1999 letter, Chalk had this to say:

"Articles about the killings filled the pages of the American press, including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune." (He also confirmed this point in the 1998 commemoration: "The Armenian Genocide ... was reported regularly in newspapers across the U.S."

Isn't it interesting Chalk directly contradicted himself?

What's more interesting is that Chalk pays note to the fact that a journalist, and one from the prestigious New York Times at that, would be capable of falsifying the facts. isn't it possible then, that newspaper reports don't always make for a source of good history?

Particularly if the historian in Chalk bothered to examine those newspaper reports. Nearly all of them were derived from second, or third hand sources. This is what we would define as "hearsay."

According to "America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915," an Armenian Genocide propaganda book edited by Jay Winter, there was one and only one American journalist who journeyed into the Ottoman interior in 1915. That reporter was war correspondent George Schreiner.

George Schreiner's conclusion: No genocide.

So here we had a cavalcade of press articles falsely reporting on how bestial the Turks were, and how innocent the Armenians were, and nearly all of the reportage was based on hearsay or propagandistic sources. Newspapers had a field day providing these tales of atrocity, because their readers ate up such sensationalistic tellings... along with the fact that the prejudice against Turks was (similar to current times) hot and heavy in Western societies.

George Schreiner knew the truth, but the censors from his side disallowed him from getting the truth out. Even German newspapers disallowed the truth, because religious forces became powerful in Germany. (See link directly above.) What an interesting parallel to Chalk's example of Malcolm Muggerige, the reporter whose truth got drowned out by the other reportage that had been falsified.

Chalk, from his 1999 letter, providing "information on the relationship between the Armenian people of Turkey and the Turkish Government since 1915":

The United States would not enter the First World War until 1917 and American diplomats and missionaries, well represented in the cities, towns and villages of Turkey, were in a good position to observe the lethal events.

Frank Chalk is already showing us what kind of "historian" he is, by accepting the word of religious fanatics whose own prayers betrayed their Godly duty in vilifying the Muslim Turks. As for those diplomats, how many witnessed events firsthand? Almost all simply accepted the word of missionaries and Armenians. Is it possible these Westerners, planted in an alien land whose Muslim inhabitants were bloody barbarians (as the Western diplomats were raised to believe), could have been prejudiced? Few Muslims spoke English and other foreign languages... the "dragomans" (translators) were nearly always Armenian. Furthermore, could some of these diplomats have had ulterior motives, such as wishing to get the USA into the war, or in kicking the Turks out bag and baggage in order to establish a good Christian civilization? A responsible and truth-seeking historian must evaluate the validity of the sources, not simply accept their validity because the sources are in line with a pre-determined conclusion. If a historian wishes to affirm a pre-determined conclusion, then that person cannot be called a "historian." A more accurate word to describe such a person would be "propagandist."

The United States in 1915 was still a neutral power, pro-Allied in its economic policies and cultural loyalties, to be sure, but struggling to broker a truce between the Allied powers, on the one hand, and the Central Powers...

Thanks to relentless propaganda especially since the 19th century, the USA arguably had the most hostile anti-Turkish attitude, among the other Western powers. If the USA was struggling to broker a truce, that had nothing to do with regarding the Ottoman Empire fairly, and to suggest otherwise is to be highly disingenuous. (In other words, if the USA thought of the Central Powers, they thought strictly of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and not of the two other second-class citizens involved.) U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the preacher's son, made his prejudices clear when he declared, "There ain't going to be no Turkey."



"It took less than two weeks before the American press began to describe the planned and systematic destruction of Armenians by well-coordinated gangs of government-authorized and highly organized killers, operating in conjunction with the armed forces of Turkey."

Here is an excellent example of what an awfully irresponsible "historian" Frank Chalk is. A real historian can't make a statement to the effect of "government-authorized" and "in conjunction with the armed forces" if there is no factual evidence. If Chalk has accepted the propagandistic speculations of one such as Vahakn Dadrian, then Chalk has allowed himself to join the ranks of the propagandists... the kiss of death to any true scholar.

On 10 July 1915, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau cabled Washington summarizing the confidential observations of U.S. consular officials and missionaries all around the country, leaving no doubt that the slaughter was coordinated by the violently nationalistic Committee of Union and Progress, which controlled the Government of Turkey.

Yet Morgenthau himself is on record, in a communication to his government in March 1915, of depicting the Committee of Union and Progress as barely in control of the government. Wouldn't a true historian (that is, one who has bothered to scratch beneath the surface, something a propagandist would find counter-productive at best and abhorrent at worst) then ask, if there were things that went out of control, and if the government was not fully in control, then could the blame rest elsewhere? (Particularly if that same government was on record for trying to safeguard the lives of the Armenians, and for punishing those who committed crimes against the Armenians?) Morgenthau is also on record for being aware of the military reasons necessitating the Armenians' relocation. So in fact, did his boss Robert Lansing (U.S. Secretary of State, November 1916):

"I could see that [the Armenians'] well-known disloyalty to the Ottoman Government and the fact that the territory which they inhabited was within the zone of military operations constituted grounds more or less justifiable for compelling them to depart their homes."

Here is another excellent example of what an awfully irresponsible "historian" Frank Chalk is. Note that he calls this relocation policy a "slaughter," paying zero notice to the causes of Armenian deaths, "malnutrition, pestilence, and community retaliatory vendettas." (As Bruce Fein worded it.) If the idea was to slaughter the Armenians, the bulk could not have possibly survived. The very fact that Chalk chose to cite a conflicted source such as Morgenthau, when (well by the time Chalk had written his 1999 letter) Morgenthau's own words had already exposed Morgenthau for the liar he was, does not speak for Chalk's scholarly integrity.

(And to drive that last point home, let's recruit George Schreiner's warning, from his preface to “The Craft Sinister,” in criticism of Morgenthau, "It is to be hoped that the future historian will not give too much heed to the drivel one finds in the books of diplomatist-authors.” Schreiner would have been equally contemptuous of certain "future historian(s)" as Frank Chalk, who would prefer to pass off such drivel as actual history.)

"Canadian newspapers, too, published numerous reports on the murder of the Armenian people, now recognized as the first large genocide of the twentieth century. On 14 April 1916, La Presse published a report from Paris declaring that..."

"Paris"? Would that be the Paris from France, one of the countries hoping to wipe the Ottoman Empire off the face of the earth, via secret treaties (and later, through the Sèvres Treaty)? Is that the kind of source a self-respecting "historian" would point to? Particularly when the source is a newspaper, which Chalk knows so well can't always substitute for historical fact? (A newspaper story is only as good as its reporter. Chalk is aware even Pulitzer Prize winning reporters can falsify the facts.)

On 24 May 1915, the Allies warned Turkish officials that they would suffer dire consequences for what they called the "new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization."

A most hollow declaration, particularly since one of the Allies, Russia, was killing off Polish and Lithuanian Jews. (The Allies were exactly like the genocide scholars. They pointed to what they made out to be an example serving their political purposes, while ignoring one that was inconvenient — where the victims were completely innocent, in line with the real definition of genocide.) Once again, would a self-respecting "historian" point to a declaration issued by enemies with an enormous conflict-of-interest? Furthermore, did not the Allies seek to punish Ottoman officials (i.e., making good on their threat) via the "Nuremberg" of World War I, the Malta Tribunal? No facts were to be found. Every accused was let go at the end of a long process, lasting 1919-21.

Indeed, courts-martial organized by the new, pro-Allied Turkish government did get underway following the Allied victory of November 1918, but seven of the top leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress escaped.

How embarrassing. Only an amateur "historian" would offer such deceptive wording. The new Ottoman government (and a real historian would also make sure to use the word "Ottoman"; if Chalk were writing the history of the Soviet Union, would he point to the "Russian" government? The reason for this poor terminology is that some genocide scholars hope to establish a connection between modern Turkey, and the Ottoman regime that was overthrown by Turkey) was anything but "pro-Allied." (Other than in a "gun pointed to their heads" way.) The victorious Allies occupied the Ottoman Empire and dictated terms: "Unless you prosecute and punish the authors of Armenian deportations and massacres, the conditions of the impending peace will be very severe and harsh.," as Vahakn Dadrian tells us, further adding, "In part, to accommodate the victorious allies, successive postwar Turkish governments established courts martial in Istanbul, Turkey." Now, what self-respecting "historian" would point to such kangaroo courts as legitimate? It's really embarrassing. Would Chalk argue that had the Nazis defeated England and held war crimes trials against Churchill and Montgomery, such courts should be looked upon as legal? Even the British regarded the 1919-20 kangaroo courts as a travesty of justice, and rejected their findings for the Malta Tribunal.

Note, too, that Chalk is pointing to the escaped seven CUP leaders, already guilty in his non-analytical mind. I hope the "proof" that Chalk has of their guilt is not the Andonian forgeries, the same that his colleague, Kurt Jonassohn, amateurishly validated. Chalk is simply painting them all with a broad brush of guilt, and it's awful for him to do so, in pursuit of his agenda. Was Talat, so personally friendly to the Armenians as Guenter Lewy outlined in The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, guilty? Was Jemal Pasha, who did everything to save Armenians, guilty? Even the worst monsters, according to Dadrian, Doctors Shakir and Nazim, are bereft of factual evidence to demonstrate guilt. Of course, these men are dead and can't defend themselves, but they were at one time not names in a history book, but real human beings. Many have descendants today. How moral is it to declare that a person is guilty of a ruinous crime, if one does not have the evidence?

It was the Allies’ desire to build up their anti-Bolshevik alliance with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the next Turkish leader, which brought a halt to the process and many of the detained Turkish leaders were released on 21 November 1921 as part of an exchange agreement between the British and Mustafa Kemal.

The HMS Crysanthemum and the HMS Montreal quietly left port with the Turks released from Malta on October 25, as this press report had it. (The Myth of Terror)


(Our inept "historian" has once again stumbled with the facts; the accused were back on Turkish soil three weeks before his provided date. And it wasn't "many" but all who were released, around 59 who were left from a one-time high of 144.)

Chalk is ineptly blending the 1919-20 Ottoman kangaroo courts with the Malta Tribunal, in the same manner as Peter Balakian's "The Burning Tigris." (Balakian did so knowingly and deceptively; we can't be sure, with his level of ineptitude, whether Chalk knew any better.) What brought the Malta Tribunal to a halt was not an "anti-Bolshevik alliance." (It was actually the opposite, at this time: the Soviet Union and Turkey were friendly, and helping each other out.) Among the Allies, the British still regarded the Turks with great hostility; and the Turks far from held the Brits in good regard, what with their backing of the murderous invading Greeks. The British and the Turks actually came dangerously close to war after the Greeks had been booted out, and a safe haven of the British near Istanbul was threatened by the Turks. (That is, around a year after Malta had already been resolved). What ground the Malta Tribunal to a halt was that there was simply no "genocidal evidence." The British made a last ditch effort by getting their embassy in Washington to look into the U.S. archives, but the embassy reported back in July of 1921 that the Yanks' material was basically all useless; there simply was, as the embassy representative reported, "no concrete facts ... which could constitute satisfactory incriminating evidence."

It is also true that thousands of Armenians owed their lives to Turks who had helped them, among them officials who resigned in protest or were fired because they refused to participate in the deportations and killings of innocent men, women and children, but the memory of these heroes has been obliterated from the officially-sanctioned history of Turkey.

A point for Chalk in desisting from going for all-out demonization, Dadrian-style. Yet, what a true-blue propagandist! As if every Turkish historian who does not abide by Chalk's genocide thesis is a mindless drone of the state, and would be incapable of writing history independently, and accurately. The better question is: since such a pseudo-historian as Chalk has consulted nothing but Armenian propaganda (note the sources provided in this page to expose Chalk's ineptitude are mostly Armenian-friendly, and have nothing to do with "Turkish propaganda"), does he even have a clue regarding what Turkish historians have written? (I'll bet he hasn't even read Kamuran Gurun's "The Armenian File," the work that Dadrian reported turned around Bernard Lewis.) Chalk is only and shamefully repeating claims from the Armenian Genocide Propaganda Apparatus.

Unfortunately, Mustafa Kemal, who was privately very critical of the authors of the genocide in the previous Turkish government, felt compelled to defend their actions in public...

If Kemal was critical of the previous administration's officials, it was for reasons beyond the Armenians. What is this mysterious source exposing Kemal's "private" criticism? Armenian propaganda points to a fake 1926 interview, but Chalk must not give this one validity (finally joining the ranks of professional historians, with this one example), as Chalk specified that Kemal was not critical in public.

Chalk winds up his highly partisan letter by complaining that villages in Turkey have been getting Turkish names; one wonders if he is in danger of losing his grasp on reality. Any sovereign nation uses the right to call their property whatever they want, particularly if the occupants who provided the original names are no longer around. Is Chalk on a crusade to establish the original Indian names of towns in Canada and his own native USA? Chalk also points out that "in 1935, pressure was brought to bear upon the minorities to adopt Turkish sounding surnames." Since there appear to be a good number of Armenian-Turks with Armenian names that I keep encountering in Turkish newspaper reports, has Chalk asked himself how successful this "pressure" was? (Many of the Armenian-Turks who chose Turkish names can't escape the fact that Turkish ways have been intermingled with Armenians, after centuries of co-existence. Are there any substantial examples of Turkey trying to eradicate the identity of the Armenians? If that was Turkey's idea in 1935, there would be no distinctly Armenian community in Turkey today.)

Chalk keeps proving again and again how much he prefers information from biased and selective sources, certainly no mark of a genuine, impartial scholar.

Nationalist apologists first decide that the Turks are guilty, then look for evidence that will show they are correct. They are like a man in a closed room fighting against a stronger enemy. As the enemy advances the man picks up a book, a lamp, an ashtray, a chair — whatever he can find —and throws it in the vain hope of stopping the enemy's advance. But the enemy continues on. Eventually the man runs out of things to throw, and he is beaten. The enemy of the nationalist apologists is the truth.

Prof. Justin McCarthy

In a CTV News Net article ("Turkey Recalls Envoys Over Armenian Genocide," May 8, 2006), yet another mindless "Armenian Propaganda" repeating piece (with erroneous "facts" such as, "In 1985, the UN agency listed cases of genocide in the 20th century, among those 'the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916"), Chalk has been consulted as the "expert"; he tells us:

"There's no doubt that there was the intention to destroy the Armenian national group in the territory that was known as Turkey in 1915. "

He has no proof of intent, nor has history borne out his claim that Armenians were destroyed in what was known as the Ottoman Empire (not today's "Turkey" that is without the Arab lands the Armenians were transported to).

How could he make a statement like that, in good conscience, without observing genuine facts? His combination of prejudice and ineptitude is very, very sad. Perhaps he has become so genocide-sensitive, the facts really don't matter to him.

There were 1.5 million Ottoman-Armenians before the war, based on most "neutral" (that is, Western, and pro-Armenian) sources. The Ottoman census was 1.3 million. Arnold Toynbee, one year before he became a Wellington House propagandist, figured even less, around a million.

Frank Chalk signed his name to the 1998 commemoration, agreeing with the following: "More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile."

(We'll leave alone the fact that "starvation," when everyone else was starving, and "forced death marches," in a region of the country without mass transportation and where everyone who had to go from Point A to Point B needed to march [even the soldiers], would constitute "extermination." There is also a gigantic gap between even the isolated "direct killings" and "extermination." Once again, think, "My Lai.")

So if we concentrate on the second sentence of what's above, that means Frank Chalk agrees there were a million survivors.

If we subtract one million from the real population of around 1.5 million (Frank Chalk, not surprisingly and based on the calculation of what he signed his name to ["more than a million" plus a "million"], prefers to go with the propagandistic Armenian Patriarch's pre-war figure of 2.1 million, which the Patriarch actually revised to 1.85 million, privately presented to friends as Lepsius), we arrive at an Armenian mortality of some half-million. (Not "more than a million," as Chalk put his name to. Even the Patriarch broke down his fake 2.1 million figure as such, after war's end: 1,260,000 survivors, and 840,000 dead. Frank Chalk put his integrity on the line for a figure that even went beyond the Armenian Patriarch.)

So if two-thirds of the Armenians survived, there goes Frank Chalk's amateurish speculation that the Ottomans had "the intention to destroy the Armenian national group"; if such were the case, the number of survivors would have been "zero."

In 1921, according to the propagandistic Armenian Patriarch, nearly half (644,900) of the original Armenian population still remained in what was left of the Ottoman Empire [much in contradiction with Chalk's approval of the survivors having "fled into permanent exile"], especially after they had been given the right to do so from the lands they were relocated to, at 1918's end. That means if the Turks (not the Ottomans; by this time, these puppets of the Allies were a practical non-entity) had "the intention to destroy the Armenian national group," they were horribly unsuccessful. The Armenians who left after this point left on their own accord, as greener pastures were opened to them in sympathetic Christian countries, among other reasons. All Armenians who had left had the right to return within the next few years.

If Frank Chalk has shown himself to be one thing, it is this: Frank Chalk is no historian. No real historian would have allowed himself to ignore such ironclad facts, deriving mainly from Turk-unfriendly sources.

In sum, the Armenian tragedy of World War I falls miles short of genocide because it pivoted on Ottoman political-national security calculations, not on racial or religious hatred. Further, Armenian deaths were not specifically intended, but were the unfortunate fall-out of malnutrition, pestilence, and community retaliatory vendettas. Indeed, the Ottoman government prosecuted more than 1,400 for maltreatment of Armenians. Hitler, in contrast, prosecuted Germans for refusing to kill, maim, or maltreat Jews.

Bruce Fein, "Differences Are Overwhelming"

(Compare the last sentence with what Chalk told us earlier, that Ottoman officials who refused to follow the resettlement orders "resigned" or were "fired." If the orders were really to exterminate, then how could these officials have been let go without punishment? Would a criminal government that had implemented a "Final Solution" afford to allow the seeds of disloyalty to spread?)

Dr. Chalk was featured on the cover of Concordia's magazine

The Concordia article winds up by informing us: "Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn have attributed four basic sets of motives to the perpetrators of genocide throughout history."

Let's demonstrate their hypocrisy and even outright racism by filling in their sets with examples they very likely have never used:

Elimination of a threat: Their example: Carthage. My example: When the Armenians systematically destroyed over half a million of their fellow Ottomans while trying to establish a "Greater Armenia" in eastern Anatolia.

"...[T]he Armenians... traitorously turned Turkish cities over to the Russian invader; that they boasted of having raised an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned at least a hundred Turkish villages and exterminated their population." (Prof. John Dewey)

Economic gain: Their examples: Genghis Khan, New World Indians. My example: The near-complete liquidation of Azeri Turks in the Armenia of 1919-20.

"An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in 1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound." ("The Jewish Times," June 21, 1990.)

Creation of terror among surrounding peoples: Their example: Ancient Greeks (covered above, against the Melos). My example: The 1992 sneak attack on the Karabakh Azeris, backed by one billion dollars in Russian military aid and some manpower, massacring a good number in order to cause hundreds of thousands to flee in fright.

"The attackers killed most of the soldiers and volunteers defending the women and children. They then turned their guns on the terrified refugees. The few survivors later described what happened: ‘That’s when the real slaughter began,’ said Azer Hajiev, one of three soldiers to survive. ‘The Armenians just shot and shot. And then they came in and started carving up people with their bayonets and knives.’" (The Sunday Times, March 1,1992)

Fulfilment of an ideology, theory or belief system: Their example: "[T]he Armenian genocide in 1915 was aimed at creating a new kind of Turkish state. Its motive was to eliminate those people who were different from the ideal type of Turkic citizen." My example: The notions of Aryan-Armenian racial purity and superiority that were instrumental in the ethnic cleansing examples above. Anyone not fitting the Christian-Armenian mold had to go, including (for example, in the case of eastern Anatolia when the victims were fellow Ottomans) the Jews, Greeks, and even the Armenians who had converted to Islam.

Literally Tzeghagron means "to make a religion of one’s race." Patterned after the Nazi Youth It was also called Racial Patriots. Nejdeh wrote: "The Racial Religious believes in his racial blood as a deity. Race above everything and before everything. Race comes first. Everything is for the race." In the April 10, 1936, issue of Hairenik Weekly, Nejdeh stated: "Today Germany and Italy are strong because as a nation they live and breathe in terms of race." From Racial Patriots and Tzeghagrons, the name of the Dashnag youth group was later changed to Armenian Youth Federation, or the AYF, as it is currently known." (Arthur Derounian, 1949)

A "modern" example of the above racist ideology manifesting itself:

One man I met in September, Murat Shukarov, whose mother was an Armenian, maintained that even individuals who were only a quarter Azerbaijani and are not even Muslims were driven away in order to "purify" Karabakh of all traces of non-Armenianness. Shukarov is also now reported dead. ("A Town Betrayed; The Killing Ground in Karabakh," Thomas Goltz, The Washington Post, March 8, 1992)

Note how Chalk & Jonassohn's example of the "Armenian genocide" has the very big hole that nearly half of those who were "eliminated" still remained after the war. That is not an example of "elimination." The Armenians taking over Karabakh were, by contrast, perhaps 100% successful with their "elimination."

Chalk has made sure to work his "bread and butter" into many international conferences held by his genocide club over the years. Here is a 2003 example in Ireland; another is the 2002 one he attended in Spain, organized by the Universidad Complutense-Madrid, including the notorious Vahakn Dadrian. This one reported "Some 300 students from universities all over Spain attended and received academic credit." An excellent way to "bribe" unsuspecting patsies, in order to lure them in and soak them with the genocide industry's vile propaganda. (Note that in a more detailed look on the latter, as reported in armenianreporteronline.com, there were only two covered besides "The Big Political Two," Cambodia and Rwanda. How much time these other two got, we don't know... but I have a feeling they weren't the "popular" ones. There were also two other "tangential" ones, "The instances of Serbia, and East Timor." Isn't the former normally referred to as "Bosnia" or "Yugoslavia"?)

Have Chalk and his colleague, Jonassohn, included the above examples of Armenians as the villains in their book, talks or classes?

How often have they referred to Turks as victims in cases that (particularly with their wider definition) were genocidal? For example, have they ever seriously examined the case of the Ottoman Turks? The Balkan Turks? The Cypriot Turks? The Creatan Turks? The Crimean Turks? The Uyghur Turks? The Meskhetian Turks? (The 1992 "Washington Post" article excerpt from directly above referred to "75 families of Meshkhetian Turks" who were in Karabakh. One can bet they are no longer there, or perhaps anywhere.) Other Muslims as Circassians? Chechens? Abhazians? (I'm focusing on Turks and Muslims for a reason, but the fact is, there are many "Forgotten Genocides" that genocide scholars with their political agendas will never or rarely go near.)


During the European war, while people in England were raking up the Ottoman Turks' nomadic ancestry in order to account for their murder of 600,000 Armenians, 500,000 Turkish-speaking Central Asian nomads of the Kirghiz Kazak Confederacy were being exterminated — also under superior orders — by that "justest of mankind," the Russian muzhik. Men, women and children were shot down, or were put to death in a more horrible way by being robbed of their animals and equipment then being driven forth in winter time to perish in mountain or desert. A lucky few escaped across the Chinese frontier.

Arnold Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, p. 342.

Halide Edib, from whose 1930 book ("Turkey Faces West") this excerpt finds reference, adds (p. 143): "Professor Toynbee, in a footnote, admits that the numbers on both sides are conjectural. I want to add that this is not a solitary instance of Turks having suffered massacres and atrocities at the hands of other nations. But I will try as far as possible to avoid details of massacre, though I want just to add, as a passing remark, that the policy of the western Powers, and more especially of Russia, in leading the Turks and Armenians to fly at one another's throats after five long centuries of tolerable existence together, was really no more advantageous to the Armenians than it was to the Turks. I have cited the fact elsewhere that General Yudenich started to turn eastern Anatolia into a Russian colony from which Armenians were excluded — although Russia's pretext for occupying eastern Turkey was that of creating an Armenian state."

Have these hypocrites ever presented Israel as a villain? In the same manner as Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other honorable Jewish intellectuals who (in a December 4, 1948 letter to The New York Times) pointed to Menachem Begin as a "fascist" and a "terrorist," and for being involved in a terrible massacre of innocents that Begin and his Freedom party were proud of, inviting "all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin." Of course, this is not an isolated example of Israeli misbehavior over the years, and we won't get into their actions over "The Liberty," an American ship that President Lyndon Johnson ordered a news blackout on. (Not falling under the category of "genocide," but still shocking.) What of Ariel Sharon, who set up a secret death squad within the Israeli Defense Forces, known as "Unit 101," in 1953? Has Ariel Sharon made it to Clark's book about genocide?

If not, why not? Here's the reason:

These genocide scholars determine the villains and the victims based on a host of reasons having little to do with truth. They certainly have little to do with actual history, as we have seen through Frank Chalk's sorry example.

By irresponsibly presenting false information (as we have seen Chalk and Jonassohn do, at least in regards to the Armenian "Genocide"), in order to uphold their own agenda, contrary to the righteous reasons they present such as upholding human rights, or hoping to prevent future genocides, what they are in fact doing is spreading hatred. Hatred of those they have designated as the villains. When their villains serve as victims, they go to the other end of the spectrum and purposely withhold the information, or occasionally give grudging lip service.

So they not only perpetuate the hatred of those who are politically and/or financially too weak to protect themselves, they also protect the ones who are politically and financially strong; this latter group is always portrayed as the victims, taking advantage of the rewards that are bestowed upon a sympathy-seeking people. This is one of the reasons why the Republic of Armenia, while offering nothing whatsoever to the United States, has been the largest receiver of U.S. aid, per capita, after Israel.

Chalk was quoted as stating (in the CJNews article) that "We have set no scale of virtue or suffering." What he is trying to say is that all genocide sufferers are, in a sense, equal. He might believe that he is "genocidally democratic," but he has in fact been making the racist designation that one people are more worthy than another (by presenting false facts to bring up one group, and by ignoring real facts to keep down the other group). Contrary to the image of nobility that such "genocide scholars" as Chalk and Jonassohn prefer to portray, they are in fact, perpetrators of evil.

Does that mean Frank Chalk is an evil man? In his heart, he must believe in in the "good" that he is doing, the normal course for the faith-based idealist. There are many indications that he is a kind man, a sensitive man, and a compassionate man. He is also a highly intelligent man, and he has a Ph.D in history. It's hard to imagine that he could be so woefully ignorant of the irrefutable historical facts ripping his Armenian "genocide" thesis to shreds. So why is he not honorably revising his views, as a professional historian must, once better facts come along? Is it because he is too prejudiced against Turks? Is it because he knows he would be blackballed from the genocide industry, his "academic bread and butter," that the Armenians have helped to significantly finance? Perhaps he is afraid that he would be compared to David Irving, the fate that Bernard Lewis has frequently suffered, once Lewis performed his duty as a professional historian, as better facts came along. That is, perhaps he fears he will be lynched by the same evil genocide forces he has served so faithfully.

Your guess would not be worse than mine. But one thing is for certain: by perpetrating hatred all of these years, he and Jonassohn have certainly not been serving the Forces of Good.

A few closing comments. In the CJNews article, Chalk was quoted as having said that his classes do not trivialize the Holocaust (as a response to "Jews often resist any comparison between the Holocaust and other genocides," as the article's writer explained). When Chalk presents the Armenian "Genocide" as a parallel to the Holocaust (with Turks in the Nazis' role), and legitimizes an unproven genocide in the same breath with an actual one, he is not only trivializing the Holocaust, he is deeply disrespecting the memory of the millions of Jewish victims.

In the Concordia article, Chalk was quoted as saying, "We want them (his students) to feel empathy for the victims, but not to immerse themselves in what I would call the pornography of cadaver pictures," capping off with "We want them to think analytically."

TAT readers may have noticed that this site, with the main exception of the Armin Wegner page, has also consciously avoided plastering pages with pictures of dead Turks, which would be a distraction from useful knowledge and a cheap way of deriving sympathy. So chalk one up for Frank Chalk. But why should he care about wanting students to feel empathy? (It is as if he is on a mission to depict his examples of genocide as a simplified, comic book version of black hats and white hats. Few are as "clean" as the Nazi-Jewish example, and many conflicts have victims on both sides of the fence.) If he were on the level as an educator, his one and only concern should be the imparting of honest facts. Attempting to alter minds and emotions, particularly with the usage of false information, is the domain of a propagandist.

The Flip Side of Empathy

Frank Chalk desires his students to feel empathy for genocide victims. We are actually going beyond the concept of feeling mere sympathy; in order to feel empathy, you must identify with (in this case) the victim. You must, in a sense, BE the victim.

Frank Chalk might desire to evoke empathy, so that people will understand how bad genocide is, and maybe he thinks such enlightenment will help prevent future genocides... the noble goal of the genocide scholar, misquoting George Santanya as a mantra. Yet genocide prevention is a pipe dream, as we have seen with Rwanda and Bosnia. (The world still ignores the crimes of the Armenians in Karabakh.) One can have all the laws and the "morals" on the books one wants, but if a murderer is set upon murdering, there isn't much anyone can do to prevent it.

(Because genocide scholars are not tuned in to truth, we don't know what their real motivations are... but the seeking of empathy likely has less to do with nobility than with politics.)

What's more important is to consider the other side of the coin. If you're going to be made to feel like a victim, then what goes with that territory is that you're not going to think highly of your victimizer.

Frank Chalk can offer all the magician's patter he wants, such as not wishing to vilify the perpetrators, because it was the rulers, and not the people. He might take such a high road on the surface, but other politically motivated genocide advocates have no compunction about exploiting racism. For example, Vahakn Dadrian prefers to tell us "there was massive, popular participation in the atrocities," and that the "perpetrators deliberately used blunt instruments, thereby protracting the agony of dying."

In short, the Flip Side of Empathy (of genocide victims) is HATRED.

By spreading hatred, the genocide scholars are the worst kind of hypocrites, because they enjoy presenting the illusion that they are all for "human rights."

There is a scene in the 1967 film, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, where Sidney Poitier has crashed in the house of the sheriff, played by Rod Steiger, a lonely bachelor. During a bonding session, Steiger reveals the sad shape his life is in. After noting Poitier's expression, Steiger snaps out of it and declares that he doesn't need Poitier's pity.

On one hand, this is what we expect in our heroes. The "Gary Cooper"-style lone sufferer. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that such is an admirable way to behave, because American culture in particular has a victim's mentality. Now we look to blame others for everything.

(Crying works in order to get attention, as every baby knows. Silence does not.)

After the end of the First World War, the policy of Turkey was to sweep these ugly events under the rug. Not because, as Taner Akcam and Fatma Gocek insist, that a "genocidal state" hoped to cover up crimes. The reason was to prevent the Turkish people from feeling hatred against the murderous and traitorous Armenians and the Greeks.

In contrast, Armenian youth has been systematically corrupted, through Dashnak-directed parents and churches, with hatred of Turks. One reason why the Turks are woefully behind in this "genocide" war is because Turks are indifferent, and Armenians are driven. Hatred serves as a potent driving and unifying force.

If we have, on one hand, the "boo-hoo, feel sorry for me" type of people, and on the other hand we have the "strong and silent" type of people, whose voice is going to wind up getting heard?

More importantly, who winds up as the greater champion of "human rights"? Those who stress love and brotherhood, or those who stress hatred, demonization and division?

Halide Edib wrote in "Turkey Faces West." circa 1930:

The Armenian massacres not only roused bitter hatred against the Turks throughout the world, but were used as the basis of war propaganda by the Allied press. Naturally no one mentioned the Turkish massacres. In a way I am glad of that, for the exploitation of a people's sufferings to further a political end is both cynical and inhuman, and in the end is even hurtful to the martyred people themselves — theirs ceases to be a human tragedy. No people in the world, after all, be they Turkish, Armenian, or Greek, can be indicted as a whole. There is no such thing as a guilty nation.

Going back to Chalk's above statement, if he wants others to think analytically, the partisan scholar far from presents an inspiring role model to follow. He further elaborates on this point in the closing passage of the CJNews article:

Chalk is "able to carry on by keeping a professional detachment from his subject. 'I don't think the work we do is much different from that of the cancer specialist who is interested in a terrible disease."

Before the sanctimonious Frank Chalk can be thought of as a scientist with "professional detachment," similar to "the cancer specialist," he has a long, long way to go.


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The source site of this article gets revised often, as better
information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, and
the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing
the direct link as follows:

www.tallarmeniantale.com/GS-chalk.htm
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