Speech spoken in public places and through the lips of people of public importance often acquires the role of a special impulse, a hint that it is already possible. For example, one can use a vocabulary of any number of swears and humiliation, ignore various small and big taboos, and raise the level of permissiveness.

And although in extremely tense situations the spoken word is a weapon, at some point, it can become its own weapon.

Writer, publicist, President of the PEN Armenia center Armen Ohanyan thinks that the aggressive speech that abounded in the virtual world was also a mitigating factor, as people were able to openly express what was accumulated inside them and avoid a civil war. Words remained words, they did not turn into deeds.

He said that words of peace are first of all directed to internal peace. And now is the time for care, respect, healing and unity.

After the war and especially before the elections, hate speech was heard from the highest tribunes and on the air. Can the calls to burn, to destroy those who think otherwise (let’s say Turks, traitors, enemies of the nation, etc.) be considered an element of a fascist mentality?

It seems to me that the opposite happened. The election let all the genies out of their bottles. Nationalism is not new to us, we have been talking about Stalinist nationalism since the 1960s. It is just now that it has reached its peak.

And if we look at the situation from the other side, we will see that there has never been such a level of silence in Armenia, when anyone can say what they want. It can curse at both the authorities and the opposition.

Of course, this torrent of swearing at first impression is very frightening, but we see that it is also calming, because people let out what they had to say. Figuratively speaking, the accumulated poison, pus, bile and oil came out.

The post-election developments show that all that came out in words and that is why it did not turn into action. Peace has descended on the people.

And our fears that this could not continue, that the political forces could slaughter each other and break each other’s necks, that there was a danger of a civil war, were in fact alleviated. We can not say that the danger disappeared, but it also eased due to the fact that people could swear freely.

The swearing is kept in the virtual field and doesn’t pass into reality, doesn’t turn into a civil war. What should have been blood is now a war of emojis with angry smileys or hearts.

I don’t think any manifestation of speaking out is scary. It is another matter that red lines should be drawn against hate speech and the legislative regulations should work.

But personally, I am not in favor of legislative regulations, as they are extremely sharp. Today you shut the mouths of some people to mitigate the possible clashes of tomorrow, but in reality, those words don’t disappear. People instill that hatred.

It is worse when you have something to say but do not have the opportunity to say what you think.

And abysses open …

Now we have seen that a part of our society thinks one thing and the other a radically different thing. That is, the ideas are not homogeneous. And it is always good when society is differentiated, there is pluralism, disagreement.

Even when the difference is very sharp, it is still better than putting everyone in the same line and moving forward.

Is such speaking out unconditionally good, or was it directed in any case, creating the illusion of chaos and decline? Especially in the media.

It is the speech of all our times, which has now been legitimized and seen at all levels, from the lowest to the highest.

Today, society is also coming out of that dichotomy of the mud and the elite, the villagers and the citizens, the Armenians and the people of Karabakh.

All these divisions have existed for a long time, they are not new. It was a very long conversation, which was constantly muttered and now it came out and overflowed.

In a sense, the war was also a process of falsification, the collapse of myth. Society suddenly found itself in a very difficult situation against the background of the collapse of its national ideals, ideas, dreams, myths. And it began to express itself.

Of course, it is difficult to say how much that swearing was directed and subjected to media manipulations, but that speech has always been there. And it is very good that it is visible now. I positively assess the moment of its appearance.

And it is also worth looking at swearing lightly, after all, it is a part of the richness of our language.

Swearing at parents, especially mothers, was at least taboo in public. And not now?

But let’s see who says that (for example, I did not swear at anyone). There are people next to us who will not allow it under any circumstances. Whoever says that, let him ask himself, why have I reached the state that I can say those words in public places?

All these questions should be addressed to the people who welcomed or provoked that speech. And they remained incomprehensible…

But still, I would not cling only to words.

In fact, we are a post-war traumatized and ghettoized society that has begun to build its independence from the Karabakh movement, and suddenly that movement at some point changed course and became problematic.

At what moment did it happen, why was the conditional division between the neo-Nazis and the defenders of rights, these are ideological questions. But the fact remains that as a result of that division, we found ourselves in such isolation and left alone for so long that it was no longer possible for us to coexist with our neighbors in the region.

Of course, it is not only our fault, it is clear that the enemy had planned the war well and implemented his project developed for decades at the right time.

In order to overcome the trauma, I think there should be a comprehensive relief policy, which we do not have at the moment.

Let us take into account that as a society, as a people, we did not have the opportunity to mourn the death of our children, to go through all the stages of mourning until reconciliation. The people are deprived of that opportunity.

Now everyone is talking about peace, and it is first of all a talk about inner peace. Not to reconcile with the neighbors at once, but to be peaceful inside the country.

That people rediscover the hope of living and creating in Armenia. And this is possible only when the solidarity agendas really start working.

What are those?

Care, respect for each individual, family. Solidarity is that we are very different, but we are all in the same boat.

Many differences must be in harmony with each other because those who find common ground with one another will continue to find common ground.

Intellectuals who register and support, stone or protest together claim to be elites but are rather reminiscent of the Soviet past. Doesn’t that hinder the idea of solidarity in a broad sense?

Levon Ter-Petrosyan had said that a Sartre in France could change a lot, where are those people in Armenia?

I also ask, where should those people come from? I do not know why the so-called intellectual is constantly abused, which, yes, is an idea with Soviet inertia and still sits in us.

When we say elite, we probably mean people who can be internationally influential.

We do not have such an intelligentsia, ours is just a speech addressed to the internal audience (and not to the whole audience, but to the fragmented part).

Do we have an Armenian who will say something that will be interesting to the Chinese, the Persians, the French, the Russians, that is, everyone?

We have had a destructive period, when the ignorance of society was not intentional and directed, but dictated by some political agenda. In other words, there was an idea that uneducated people seem to be easily manageable, you can deceive them however you want. But as experience has shown, it is not so at all.

People whose skin and dignity are being affected may swallow the insult at first but will wait for the opportunity to respond.

I do not imagine how six hundred thousand people who made a choice can be called Turks. Not to mention the words of mud.

By saying that, the forces themselves are marginalizing themselves, they are standing in a hostile position, and after that, there is no dialogue.

Of course, both anger and rage can be justified, but when it turns into incomprehensible delusional hysteria, there is nothing you can do about it. It is already a clinical case.

The media and individual journalists are happy to spread the texts with that vocabulary.

The journalistic community should also strengthen the mechanisms of self-regulation. In the end, journalists harm their field first of all, because in that way the journalist’s reputation and public rating fall.

In the eyes of the people, they become a collection of scribblers for sale.

If you engage in any ideological struggle, then from point X you no longer understand what you are doing, you get so involved in the game that you hurt yourself.

And you have to step back a little and understand what you did wrong. I don’t only mean in the media field.

I think now is the time for that. And it is a wonderful chance to at least see our internal issues (let’s not discuss foreign policy challenges now).

Society must go through a process of internal consolidation, cleansing and healing.

Interview by Nune Hakhverdyan