This is a good read, thank you for shining light on the topic. I’m an Armenian who happens to have made good friends with Jews, so I sometimes feel put-off and alienated by Armenian antisemitism. I have a couple theories.
First, many Armenians have had friendly contact with Arabs, due to living in Lebanon or Syria, and this friendship has permeated in Armenian culture to the point that being anti-Israel or anti-Jew sometimes comes naturally.
Second, there’s envy involved. While European antisemitism was often envy at Jewish financial success, Armenian antisemitism is often envy at Jewish political success. People often ask why Jews have been more successful than Armenians at creating an advanced and powerful state post-genocide, and the comfortable answer for Armenians (which requires no admittance of failure on the part of Armenians) is to say that Jews are conniving people who got their success by lobbying America and other shenanigans.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Israel helped Azerbaijan in the war, and that a lot of Israelis anecdotally favored the Azeri side. If they wanted to be friends with Armenians they could have done it but they chose not to.
As you hint in your first sentence, any Armenian who joins a show called Young Turks has to be a bit unhinged, or totally ignorant of everything. I find it hard to believe the latter.
There used to be a brilliant blog here in Hungary called “Our Hated Enemies.” Obviously the whole thing leaned into xenophobia and racism, but it did it in an insanely funny way. There was a post about Jews where the core joke was that it was actually describing Armenians… ancient people, middleman minority, their own quarter in Jerusalem, their own Holocaust, diaspora, etc.
Another smaller thing that came to mind is that Hungary’s Arrow Cross leader, the one who really got the Holocaust going locally, Ferenc Szálasi, was half Armenian (Salossian). Not an excuse, just an interesting detail that might relate to the topic.
A lot of good points have already been made in the comments, and of course the issue is complex, but I think the core lies where you mention that both are middleman minorities.
People often like to avoid this topic, even though it’s pretty obvious. Both in Hungary and elsewhere, it comes up that “anti-migrant sentiment” can sometimes be strongest among groups that are themselves on the margins of society. I’d put it like this: everyone in the fabric of society wants to occupy a certain slot, and when a new competitor enters, it creates competition and resentment. If you compare stereotypical Jewish and Armenian occupations, the overlap is strikingly large. From there, you just need to add a bit of strong ethnocentrism and the situation practically writes itself.
As an Armenian and a Jew this was a great read thank you! When was in Beirut I was talking to an Armenian Lebanese woman and my friend was translating. My friend introduced me as both Armenian and Jewish and added that it made a good pairing. Then the woman said something that made my friend laugh nervously. Afterwards she said the Armenian Lebanese woman disagreed that Jews and Armenians went well together because it was Jews who committed the genocide. 😞
Oh yeah. And then on the flip side I made a documentary about Armenians in “karabakh” (we call it by our ancient name Artsakh). When the area got ethnically cleansed in 2023 and the Azeris took over there WAS NOT ONE PEEP from any non Armenians I knew. It was so disheartening and frustrating. A lot of Armenians try to lend their voice to pro Palestine stuff but there’s not reciprocating from the left wing groups. Nobody is calling to boycott and protest Aliyev or other Azeri things.
I noticed during the 2020 Armenia Azerbaijan war and later expulsion of Armenians from Artsakh that there is a vocal contingent of pro Israel pundits who are pretty anti Armenian and would often justify any Azerbaijani crimes against Armenians by saying most of them are anti semites and therefore had it coming, which is of course itself a type of racism. Michael Doran is a pretty good example of this phenomenon since he constantly accuses people who disagree with Israel of being antisemitic but has also criticized Armenians in ways that would probably be considered antisemitic if said about Jews. That’s not an endorsement of Kasparian or denial of Armenian antisemitism but as far as I can see, Israel has inflicted more physical harm on Armenia via its support for Azerbaijan than Armenian antisemites have on Israel.
I understand why Armenians would be angry at Israel for its support of Azerbaijan. But laying the blame for Armenia's loss on Israel, let alone the Jews, is a cope. It was Azerbaijan that launched the offensive. It was Turkey that provided Azerbaijan with decisive military backing. It was Russia, the regional power broker with peacekeepers in the area (and Armenia's supposed protector), that allowed the war to happen. And it was Armenia itself that partnered with Russia and Iran, neither of which came to its aid. In fact, Russia also sold weapons to Azerbaijan. All of this is not to excuse the plight of the Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, but perspective is in order. Israeli drones played a major role in the latest war, but Israel did not expel Armenians and is not the hegemon of the Caucasus.
I'm not familiar with Michael Doran. If he said that Armenians "had it coming," then he should be condemned. That being said, besides the small community of Azeri Jews, most Israelis and Jews are not focused on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, let alone anti-Armenian. Israel's support for Azerbaijan is primarily based on geopolitics, particularly its role as an oil supplier and neighbor to Iran. Again, I can understand why Armenians would be critical of Israel for pursuing its self-interest. But it's a far cry from criticism to "the goyim are waking the fuck up."
You’re a strong writer and analyst, so I took a chance on reading a whole column about, as you call her, a non-entity. The minority vs minority question is a complex and fascinating one— and just plain sad phenomenon. Her paranoiac view of Jews is certainly exposed by her ‘understanding’ of the conflict with Azerbaijan. We can only hope that Armenian goyim wake up to how little the Arabs and even fellow Orthodox Christians in Russia care about them.
I agree it’s extremely unfair to solely blame Israel for Azerbaijan’s actions in Karabakh. Even though Israel provided critical assistance to Azerbaijan (Harop loitering munitions and LORA missiles), the decisive ally for Azerbaijan has always been Turkey. Moreover, it looks like Russia worked out some under the table agreement with Azerbaijan that facilitated their offensive. Not to mention the Azerbaijanis are people with agency too so ultimately the blame rests with them for whatever atrocities their forces committed. Ana and Cenk also seem pretty obsessed with Israel in a way that makes it impossible for me to take them seriously. My point isn’t to delegitimize Israel it’s really to criticize people who simultaneously hold Israel up as this paragon of western liberalism but also claim Israel has the right to dispense with those liberal values whenever they’re inconvenient while refusing to give that freedom of action to any other polity like Armenia.
Israel should be subject to criticism like any other nation. Even when it comes to anti-Israel obsessives like the Young Turks, I'm reluctant to use the label "antisemitism" unless it's clearly warranted. Ana Kasparian posting that the "goyim are waking the fuck up" makes it clearly warranted.
But I'd add that legitimate criticism of Israel's role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (or any other conflict) can also blend in with antisemitic or simply garbage conspiratorial narratives. For example, in an interview between Tucker Carlson and Kasparian, Tucker concluded (with Ana's affirmation) that "Israel supplied weapons to Azerbaijan to kill the Christians." The implication isn't simply that Israel was engaged in amoral Realpolitik, but that Israel—and Jews more broadly—hate and conspire against Christians, which is central to Tucker's Groyper-lite agenda.
I can’t comment on the whole, or even the thrust of, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Israel political relations. But I agree with you that Michael Doran, who is not Jewish, has been harshly, unfairly critical of Armenians in the Karabakh conflict.
The ADL, under Abraham Foxman, lobbied against recognition of the Armenian genocide. Israel also supplies weapons to Azerbaijan, which it then used to cleanse Armenians from Karabakh.
Oh no some Armenians are mean online. Meanwhile Israel allies with Armenia’s historical enemy, Azerbaijan, providing a lot of its modern weaponry which they use to expel hundreds of thousands of Armenians from their historical(maybe even 3,000 years old) homeland of Artsakh a few years ago.
I don’t necessarily blame Israel for this. Israel acted in its own interest by allying with Azerbaijan which has oil instead of Armenia which has nothing. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war and Armenians lost decisively. Armenia has nothing to offer to anyone and so has no friends. If Azerbaijan wants, they can annihilate Armenia in a few days using the weapons sold by their good friends Turkey and Israel.
Naturally this will lead to dread, fear, and resentment amongst Armenians who really have no good options. Armenia as country has no power and Armenians as diaspora can barely get other countries to recognize their greatest catastrophe as a genocide. Their most influential person is Kim Kardashian. So I say just ignore some meanness online by a completely defeated people. As a non-Armenian, non-Israeli, Israelis expectation that they can just do whatever they want, and (in this case) indirectly screw over another nation and not expect any criticism is just plain ridiculous.
The Young Turks has 6.53 million YouTube subscribers. Dan Bilzerian has 2 million followers on X. So no, I’m not reacting to “some meanness online by a completely defeated people.” I’m reacting to very influential people spouting the kind of rhetoric that has led to violence against their own ethnicity, and being oblivious to the sad irony in that.
Posting that “The goyim are waking the fuck up” isn’t criticism of Israel. Doing the Happy Merchant hand rub isn’t criticism of Israel. If you read this post and think I’m not sympathetic to the Armenians, then read it again. I clearly am. But Israel’s indirect role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict doesn’t give Ana Kasparian license to echo the same tropes that were used against her murdered ancestors.
fergit the rotten ratty mitwit Kasparian, here's a fabulously talented Armenian zinger who adores us joos, whom I ADORE! (may he RIP but his musique lives on! ;-)....
It doesn't explain other antisemitism forms but with ultra-progressives there is surely a dominant element of "Jews are white/settlers" - there are those within Kasparian's political tendency who say equally antisemitic things while being themselves Jewish!
Presumably if Armenia's conflicts were not regarded as peripheral there would be an equivalent phenomenon of writing them up as asking for it on similar grounds...
This is a good read, thank you for shining light on the topic. I’m an Armenian who happens to have made good friends with Jews, so I sometimes feel put-off and alienated by Armenian antisemitism. I have a couple theories.
First, many Armenians have had friendly contact with Arabs, due to living in Lebanon or Syria, and this friendship has permeated in Armenian culture to the point that being anti-Israel or anti-Jew sometimes comes naturally.
Second, there’s envy involved. While European antisemitism was often envy at Jewish financial success, Armenian antisemitism is often envy at Jewish political success. People often ask why Jews have been more successful than Armenians at creating an advanced and powerful state post-genocide, and the comfortable answer for Armenians (which requires no admittance of failure on the part of Armenians) is to say that Jews are conniving people who got their success by lobbying America and other shenanigans.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Israel helped Azerbaijan in the war, and that a lot of Israelis anecdotally favored the Azeri side. If they wanted to be friends with Armenians they could have done it but they chose not to.
As you hint in your first sentence, any Armenian who joins a show called Young Turks has to be a bit unhinged, or totally ignorant of everything. I find it hard to believe the latter.
Having had the displeasure of hearing her speak on a variety of topics, it's clear she's both unhinged and ignorant.
She is, but she's just following the money. She sells her own people out for a paycheck. Her hatred of Jews is misdirected hatred of herself.
Interesting essay - I had actually been wondering at this minority-vs-minority phenomenon recently in relation to Nassim Taleb as well.
There used to be a brilliant blog here in Hungary called “Our Hated Enemies.” Obviously the whole thing leaned into xenophobia and racism, but it did it in an insanely funny way. There was a post about Jews where the core joke was that it was actually describing Armenians… ancient people, middleman minority, their own quarter in Jerusalem, their own Holocaust, diaspora, etc.
Another smaller thing that came to mind is that Hungary’s Arrow Cross leader, the one who really got the Holocaust going locally, Ferenc Szálasi, was half Armenian (Salossian). Not an excuse, just an interesting detail that might relate to the topic.
A lot of good points have already been made in the comments, and of course the issue is complex, but I think the core lies where you mention that both are middleman minorities.
People often like to avoid this topic, even though it’s pretty obvious. Both in Hungary and elsewhere, it comes up that “anti-migrant sentiment” can sometimes be strongest among groups that are themselves on the margins of society. I’d put it like this: everyone in the fabric of society wants to occupy a certain slot, and when a new competitor enters, it creates competition and resentment. If you compare stereotypical Jewish and Armenian occupations, the overlap is strikingly large. From there, you just need to add a bit of strong ethnocentrism and the situation practically writes itself.
As an Armenian and a Jew this was a great read thank you! When was in Beirut I was talking to an Armenian Lebanese woman and my friend was translating. My friend introduced me as both Armenian and Jewish and added that it made a good pairing. Then the woman said something that made my friend laugh nervously. Afterwards she said the Armenian Lebanese woman disagreed that Jews and Armenians went well together because it was Jews who committed the genocide. 😞
Thank you. You're the ideal reader for it! About that story, yikes.
Oh yeah. And then on the flip side I made a documentary about Armenians in “karabakh” (we call it by our ancient name Artsakh). When the area got ethnically cleansed in 2023 and the Azeris took over there WAS NOT ONE PEEP from any non Armenians I knew. It was so disheartening and frustrating. A lot of Armenians try to lend their voice to pro Palestine stuff but there’s not reciprocating from the left wing groups. Nobody is calling to boycott and protest Aliyev or other Azeri things.
For Kasparian to join a podcast called The Young Turks makes her a self-hating Armenian in addition to being antisemitic.
I noticed during the 2020 Armenia Azerbaijan war and later expulsion of Armenians from Artsakh that there is a vocal contingent of pro Israel pundits who are pretty anti Armenian and would often justify any Azerbaijani crimes against Armenians by saying most of them are anti semites and therefore had it coming, which is of course itself a type of racism. Michael Doran is a pretty good example of this phenomenon since he constantly accuses people who disagree with Israel of being antisemitic but has also criticized Armenians in ways that would probably be considered antisemitic if said about Jews. That’s not an endorsement of Kasparian or denial of Armenian antisemitism but as far as I can see, Israel has inflicted more physical harm on Armenia via its support for Azerbaijan than Armenian antisemites have on Israel.
I understand why Armenians would be angry at Israel for its support of Azerbaijan. But laying the blame for Armenia's loss on Israel, let alone the Jews, is a cope. It was Azerbaijan that launched the offensive. It was Turkey that provided Azerbaijan with decisive military backing. It was Russia, the regional power broker with peacekeepers in the area (and Armenia's supposed protector), that allowed the war to happen. And it was Armenia itself that partnered with Russia and Iran, neither of which came to its aid. In fact, Russia also sold weapons to Azerbaijan. All of this is not to excuse the plight of the Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, but perspective is in order. Israeli drones played a major role in the latest war, but Israel did not expel Armenians and is not the hegemon of the Caucasus.
I'm not familiar with Michael Doran. If he said that Armenians "had it coming," then he should be condemned. That being said, besides the small community of Azeri Jews, most Israelis and Jews are not focused on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, let alone anti-Armenian. Israel's support for Azerbaijan is primarily based on geopolitics, particularly its role as an oil supplier and neighbor to Iran. Again, I can understand why Armenians would be critical of Israel for pursuing its self-interest. But it's a far cry from criticism to "the goyim are waking the fuck up."
You’re a strong writer and analyst, so I took a chance on reading a whole column about, as you call her, a non-entity. The minority vs minority question is a complex and fascinating one— and just plain sad phenomenon. Her paranoiac view of Jews is certainly exposed by her ‘understanding’ of the conflict with Azerbaijan. We can only hope that Armenian goyim wake up to how little the Arabs and even fellow Orthodox Christians in Russia care about them.
I agree it’s extremely unfair to solely blame Israel for Azerbaijan’s actions in Karabakh. Even though Israel provided critical assistance to Azerbaijan (Harop loitering munitions and LORA missiles), the decisive ally for Azerbaijan has always been Turkey. Moreover, it looks like Russia worked out some under the table agreement with Azerbaijan that facilitated their offensive. Not to mention the Azerbaijanis are people with agency too so ultimately the blame rests with them for whatever atrocities their forces committed. Ana and Cenk also seem pretty obsessed with Israel in a way that makes it impossible for me to take them seriously. My point isn’t to delegitimize Israel it’s really to criticize people who simultaneously hold Israel up as this paragon of western liberalism but also claim Israel has the right to dispense with those liberal values whenever they’re inconvenient while refusing to give that freedom of action to any other polity like Armenia.
Israel should be subject to criticism like any other nation. Even when it comes to anti-Israel obsessives like the Young Turks, I'm reluctant to use the label "antisemitism" unless it's clearly warranted. Ana Kasparian posting that the "goyim are waking the fuck up" makes it clearly warranted.
But I'd add that legitimate criticism of Israel's role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (or any other conflict) can also blend in with antisemitic or simply garbage conspiratorial narratives. For example, in an interview between Tucker Carlson and Kasparian, Tucker concluded (with Ana's affirmation) that "Israel supplied weapons to Azerbaijan to kill the Christians." The implication isn't simply that Israel was engaged in amoral Realpolitik, but that Israel—and Jews more broadly—hate and conspire against Christians, which is central to Tucker's Groyper-lite agenda.
I can’t comment on the whole, or even the thrust of, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Israel political relations. But I agree with you that Michael Doran, who is not Jewish, has been harshly, unfairly critical of Armenians in the Karabakh conflict.
The ADL, under Abraham Foxman, lobbied against recognition of the Armenian genocide. Israel also supplies weapons to Azerbaijan, which it then used to cleanse Armenians from Karabakh.
@Asmy she has the hat
I’m pretty sure she’s a dumb blonde bimbo in fancy dress and not much else.
Oh no some Armenians are mean online. Meanwhile Israel allies with Armenia’s historical enemy, Azerbaijan, providing a lot of its modern weaponry which they use to expel hundreds of thousands of Armenians from their historical(maybe even 3,000 years old) homeland of Artsakh a few years ago.
I don’t necessarily blame Israel for this. Israel acted in its own interest by allying with Azerbaijan which has oil instead of Armenia which has nothing. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war and Armenians lost decisively. Armenia has nothing to offer to anyone and so has no friends. If Azerbaijan wants, they can annihilate Armenia in a few days using the weapons sold by their good friends Turkey and Israel.
Naturally this will lead to dread, fear, and resentment amongst Armenians who really have no good options. Armenia as country has no power and Armenians as diaspora can barely get other countries to recognize their greatest catastrophe as a genocide. Their most influential person is Kim Kardashian. So I say just ignore some meanness online by a completely defeated people. As a non-Armenian, non-Israeli, Israelis expectation that they can just do whatever they want, and (in this case) indirectly screw over another nation and not expect any criticism is just plain ridiculous.
The Young Turks has 6.53 million YouTube subscribers. Dan Bilzerian has 2 million followers on X. So no, I’m not reacting to “some meanness online by a completely defeated people.” I’m reacting to very influential people spouting the kind of rhetoric that has led to violence against their own ethnicity, and being oblivious to the sad irony in that.
Posting that “The goyim are waking the fuck up” isn’t criticism of Israel. Doing the Happy Merchant hand rub isn’t criticism of Israel. If you read this post and think I’m not sympathetic to the Armenians, then read it again. I clearly am. But Israel’s indirect role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict doesn’t give Ana Kasparian license to echo the same tropes that were used against her murdered ancestors.
fergit the rotten ratty mitwit Kasparian, here's a fabulously talented Armenian zinger who adores us joos, whom I ADORE! (may he RIP but his musique lives on! ;-)....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll4AO2Z5wKs
bonus!
https://youtu.be/tGmUcMgpFSw?list=RDtGmUcMgpFSw
Theyre just the products of successful Fifth Generation Warfare. There is no cure but unplugging.
It doesn't explain other antisemitism forms but with ultra-progressives there is surely a dominant element of "Jews are white/settlers" - there are those within Kasparian's political tendency who say equally antisemitic things while being themselves Jewish!
Presumably if Armenia's conflicts were not regarded as peripheral there would be an equivalent phenomenon of writing them up as asking for it on similar grounds...
Third rate porn slag.
I suspect a large part of the cause here is attempts at over-assimilation, similar to what produces anti-Zionist Jews.