“Dehumanization is a language of threats and violence.
It makes the human being less sensitive and more imperturbable, apathetic and indifferent; it facilitates the killing and makes it look legitimate”.
The tactic of dehumanization subdues humanity, sensitivity, sympathy and receptivity to events.323 In this setting, people may actively pour scorn upon the dehumanized group and show willingness to commit atrocities against it.
The demonization, in its turn, stokes up the society’s fear of the unknown.
Demonization of the image is an instrument of propaganda used to shape public opinion and create deeply ingrained stereotypes about a person, group, state ideology or a concept.
The political dictionary defines the concept of demonization as portrayal of the subject as a being apt by its nature for immoral and antisocial behavior possessing some supernatural and sometimes magical powers to carry out its immoral role and appearing as a source of perils and troubles for others as well as inciting them to engage in an immoral conduct.324
The demonization suggests and lays down the response to one of the eternal questions: who is to blame? In a society ruled by an elite internally bound by mutual and collective responsibility and protection, the notions of demonizing and giving somebody away have become all but synonyms.325 It significantly facilitates removing from the agenda the ‘What to do?’ question and makes it possible to abdicate all responsibility for the situation at hand.
It is common to view the demonization as a weapon of both political and ideological strife between opponents. However, there are many factors attesting to the fact that it is used to mask the real problem, a red herring to divert attention, and betrays an internal lack of confidence and fear, primarily in respect of the inner circle, whose ire needs to be channeled away elsewhere against an “alien” foe, so as to retain their loyalty.
Seeking to apportion blame externally is typical of vulnerable groups who are not willing to face the problem and refute their personal role in causing it to happen.
Strictly speaking, it is an instrument of creating a climate of fear where people are demonized based on a specific characteristic: ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, physical capacity, etc. Its main goal is to plant fear, breed and fuel hatred and disdain for a specific category of persons; it also seeks to convince others that those who possess a specific set of traits that embody evil must be punished.
Demonization is intentional and deliberate shaping of a negative image based on cultivation of myths with injections of ‘real’ details (personal experience, reference to a first-hand account from a third person, description of details, indication of names, etc.).
This practice was widely used in Nazi Germany for the development of the racial theory. In Azerbaijan, the shaping of the Armenian image has been analogous with the infamous notions on the Jewish people.
A German children’s book dated 1936: Devil is the father of Jews. When God created the world, he created races: Indians, Negroes, Chinese, as well as vicious creatures called the Jews.326
Azerbaijani children’s book dated 2011: <…> a futureless nation with а dead morality, with a mixture of rubbish and waste flowing in their veins, a spiteful and despicable nation <…>. This restless nation, with the satanic blood running in their veins, has committed against us countless acts of terror.327
The recent decades spawned a panoply of writers, public and political figures, painters and journalists whose activities serve to demonize Armenians.
Here, several reasons can be isolated for using the instrument of demonization for instilling armenophobia.
There are several genres for demonizing Armenians:
“Confessions of Armenians themselves”. These are letters, diaries and literary works by fictitious persons describing the “atrocities”, containing confessions and revealing mechanisms of “anti-Azerbaijani” deeds:
Extracts from the book by Daud Heyriyan: <…> By the time Khachatur and I entered the basement where they kept them, our soldiers had already nailed the child’s elbows to the window frame. <…> Khachatur shoved into his mouth the severed breast of his dead mother. Next, I did to the 13-year-old Turk what his ancestors had done to our children. I scalped him and flayed his chest and belly. In the evening, we did the same to another three of the Turkic spawn. <…> On the next day, we went to church and prayed for those who fell in 1915 asking to cleanse our souls from the filth that we had seen the day before.328
Extracts from the diary of Armen Balasanyan: One feels differently in Ejmiadzin. We made an offering of doves at the sacrificial wall. I did it for my mother too. She is afraid of doing this; she has a bad heart. She cannot watch it as doves get smashed against the wall. This is our old custom of offering sacrifice. Before, I couldn’t watch the scene myself, but later I was explained that this must be done (if you are a man329).330
‘Personal involvement or eyewitness account’ of the episode described, with a reservation that no proof survived, and the report must be taken on trust:
“A few hours before us, poor refugees, who were the bulk of the city’s fleeing population, had walked through this forest path. Mutilated corpses were everywhere. Here and there, you could see severed heads. I saw cut-off female breasts. A pregnant woman was ripped open, with her unborn child placed next to her and with a severed male head inserted in the gaping cavity in her belly. My mother tried to cover up my eyes, so that I, a 10-year-old girl, could not see any of it”.331
‘Quoting the eyewitnesses’ who are not alive or who are impossible to contact, with written testimony “destroyed” by either their authors or holders:
“I was told the story of this girl from Shushi by a soldier of the national army who received treatment in the republican hospital in Baku in 1993. He told me that once, after a successful offensive, a girl of unspeakable beauty went to meet them <…>.332
“Guliyev told that a pair of innocent and harmless twin brothers had been taken hostage by Armenians. Then Armenians sent them off to Armenia, so that they could be brought up to become suicide attackers who would be sent to kill Azerbaijanis. And they said as much: “We need your children whom we will later send to war with you”. Later, we managed to ransom the twin brothers”.333
“Only on the next day, as I went down into the basement to put there some of the belongings of our new neighbors, I noticed behind the door several Armenian books and notebooks that had fallen out. <…> These damped notebooks proved to be the diaries of Armen Balasanyan, a person of my age, born in 1961. <…> Four notebooks, each 12 pages long, had to be translated into Azerbaijani or at least Russian. <…> In a month’s time, we could translate only a half of one notebook. <…> After a while, I couldn’t find the diaries on my desk. It transpired that my grief-stricken mother tore up and discarded the notebooks. I stood there looking into her eyes and didn’t know what to say. Was there really anything to be said?”334
The first timid steps towards disseminating the “horror stories” were made through forums and blogs. Later, they leaked into the mass media taking the form of interviews, references to named and unnamed sources, books and paintings on the ‘subject’. These stories were ultimately exported onto international platforms, the media and foreign television, while a member of the Azerbaijani parliament Ganira Pashayeva even ventured to read out extracts from a “book” by Zori Balayan presumably entitled “Revival of Our Spirit”335 from a rostrum at one of the PACE sessions.336