How Nikol Pashinyan Managed to Turn Us Into His Advocates – An Opinion

Lilit Bleyan writes on her Facebook page:

How did Nikol Pashinyan manage to turn us into his advocates?

How is it even possible that, in a country where tens of thousands of displaced Artsakh Armenians remain homeless, prisoners of war are still in captivity, the wounded and disabled are neglected, Artsakh has been physically erased, migration is surging, and social and economic problems are overwhelming—this is the issue we wake up to? The celibacy of clergymen? A tradition that dates back fifteen centuries is now the nation’s hottest topic.

Suddenly, everyone, from ministers and schoolteachers to doctors, artists, and government officials, feels an urgent need to weigh in on this.

A man responsible for the displacement of Armenians from Artsakh, for four wars and thousands of lives lost, wakes up every morning and feeds us his unhealthy ideas, and we debate it with energy and passion. He wraps his provocations in vulgarity, just to ensure that the entire conversation stays as filthy and degrading as possible.

Suddenly, many intellectuals - rather than opposing him - seem to echo the Azerbaijani media, aligning themselves with his rhetoric. They willingly jump into debates about the “failures” and “flaws” of our Church, and some even go so far as to justify Pashinyan’s vulgar language.

One of his aims in “feeding the discussion” is to drag everyone who engages with his agenda into his murky waters. Like a saboteur destroying every target in his path, he weakens his opponents one by one - yet somehow gains even more followers along the way. From time to time, he tosses a “spare-time toy” into our playground and watches as everyone - even those pretending to stay above it - reach for it, if only to inspect. And each time, they end up soiled, infected, and sick.

This is what ends up changing - we change as individuals, the quality of our discourse shifts, our perception of life and reality warps. Our public “body” mutates, finding itself time and again dragged into those filthy waters, taking yet another blow to its already battered immune system.

We have to come up with explanations for our involvement in all this. We need to become a little monstrous to withstand the monster.