The Eight Stages of Genocide

On Sunday evening, Marash Girl sat in her living room listening to an academic (Alan Whitehorn) and a dramatist (Bianca Bagatourian) discuss Stanton's (Gregory H. Stanton, President, Genocide Watch) eight stages of genocide (To learn more, click http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html)

1. Classification
2. Symbolization
3. Dehumanization
4. Organization
5. Polarization
6. Preparation
7. Extermination
8.  Denial 

These experts concurred that actually Stage 8 existed in the pre-planning stages, before Stage 1.

In that she had learned (from her father and her work recording oral histories in the Armenian community of Watertown during the early 1970's) much about the Armenian Genocide, Marash Girl was getting sicker and sicker, literally, as she listened. She wanted to know where on their list they would place the action taken in the City of Marash, Ottoman Empire by the Turkish Government when all Armenian households were asked to give up their weapons (each household was to turn in at least one gun or the members of the household would be placed in a Turkish prison): if the Armenian household had no weapon(s) to turn in, they were either placed in prison or, given the circumstances, forced to purchase a weapon to turn in to the authorities in order to avoid being placed in prison; when the Armenian(s) handed over the weapon(s) -- recently purchased to avoid being placed in prison -- the turning in of the weapon(s) was confirmation to the Turkish government that, in fact, the Armenians had these weapons in their possession because they had been plotting to overturn the Turkish government.

No humor here, but certainly the expression fits:  "Spit up and you hit your moustache; spit down and you hit your beard."  Marash Girl wonders if the expression was heard throughout Kumbet in those terrible days, early in the 20th Century . . . 

(See Marash Girl's earlier blogpost on Armenian sayings.)