Bizarre crassness of anti-Azerbaijani hysteria
"Outrage-manufacturing" explained

ANALYTICS  29 October 2022 - 14:55

Gone are the days when Azerbaijan was excessively fastidious in calibrating the international pressure exerted against it whilst pursuing its rightful objectives. It has learned, over the years, that doing the right thing will always incur some cost, although that must not exceed that which is justified, if what is to be achieved is lawful, and provided there is a correlation between the resources at its command and the scale of the objective.

Post-September information warfare

As was the case during the course of the historic days of the Second Karabakh War, Baku is now, after the 12-14 September escalation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border, accused of all sorts of imaginable and unthinkable earthly sins, ranging from the claims of aggression to inhuman handling of enemy soldiers and their corpses. To say there is a global media conspiracy against Azerbaijan would be overstretching the mark and be a sign of weakness not befitting Baku’s mature perception of its worth and place in the world. Self-victimisation is what Armenia has historically excelled at, and it remains its daunting choice of weapon.

What is true is that, in the case of Azerbaijan, its daring ambition and implacable resolve to steamroller a sea-change geopolitical agenda, the foundations of which were laid down after the war of 2020, has met an anticipated reactionary backlash from Armenia and from those who see in Baku’s drive a dormant danger for their design in the South Caucasus. In the aftermath of the border escalation in the second week of September, two aspects have become clear to those keeping a beady eye on Baku-Yerevan dynamics.

Firstly, any flare-up of this kind, by virtue of the respective capabilities of the opposing sides, will give Baku extra leverage. Secondly, as a result, Armenia’s bargaining chips will be weakened, rendering its position highly vulnerable and forcing its hand into accepting Baku’s rightful demands.

Armenia has used this knife-edge position as grounds to garner some worldwide sympathy and achieved a discernible deal of success, albeit short of on-ground backing. Its traditional espousers have sprung to action, with the French President, in an interview with France 2 TV on 12 October, accusing Azerbaijan of unleashing a terrible war in 2020 and blaming it for the recent border escalation. Some other international players have seconded this deluded man.

As was the case during the 44-day war, members of a loose conglomerate, voicing anti-Azerbaijani hysteria are the usual suspects who are seasoned campaigners for the Armenian cause in political circles and world media. These are the ones who, in principle, have never cared a grain of sand about the accuracy and moral veracity of claims promulgated, but cherished the possibilities of snatching at a chance of doing their bidding when there was a window of opportunity. 

For instance, for someone like Jean-Christophe Buisson, Deputy Director of the French Le Figaro newspaper, one single unverified video circulated in the unregulated world of social media is sufficient to besmirch Azerbaijan’s humanitarian record with a diatribe of the self-assured moral pitch.

Accusations: spurious and facile

The current narrative against Azerbaijan is as predictable as it is tedious. Its bizarre crassness is what that defines its whole design. The central argument is that Azerbaijan violated Armenia’s territorial integrity during the September escalations. What is true, however, is that Baku showed no mercy and retaliated robustly, logically and unflinchingly, sending the enemy in terror to visit the nearest beleaguered water closet. This was a sign that Baku did not have an appetite for trifling or flexing puny muscles.

The accusation of aggression against Azerbaijan, coupled with hypocritical obeisance to Armenia’s own inglorious record of violating another nation’s territorial integrity for 30 years, has evolved into a shambolic form of posturing. Cherry-picking regurgitation of alleged military wrongdoings and a regular reiteration of patent lies and claims of dubious origin watermark most of the pieces falling under the rubric of anti-Azerbaijani hysteria.

Another streak of argumentation is that the West should not compromise its dignity as a great civilisation of exalted values and not sell its soul for Azerbaijani gas. Baku, unlike Moscow, has never weaponised its energy resources as a foreign policy tool, but merely utilised them as a legitimate means for the enhancement of its prosperity and geopolitical clout. The idea voiced by Macron in his interview has gained some traction in the Western media, and most failed to notice that Azerbaijan, as a nation pursuing an independent policy, has been deeply ethical in its dealings with the EU, fulfilling its obligations at a time when Russia has plunged the whole Continent into an energy crisis. 

It has long been Armenia’s policy to portray its confrontation with Azerbaijan as one wherein “a civilised ancient Christian nation” is pitted against “a rogue uncivilised Muslim country”. Not everyone was eager to buy this fatuous Islamophobic comparison, misinformed by factual error and prejudice, but some embraced it, for it confirms their current views. Baroness Cox, an 85-year -old cross-bench member of the UK House of Lords, for instance, known for her religious zeal, is a seasoned advocate of the Armenian cause and the propagator of this exact line. She illegally took delegations to the former Nagorno-Karabakh hundreds of times and her recent attempt in the upper house of the British legislature was foiled a couple of days ago.

This old formula has now slightly been altered, with Armenia also trying to present its troubles with Azerbaijan from the guise of "a democracy being subjected to unprovoked and unjustified aggression by a non-democracy". Does this ring a bell? It must. This is indeed an attempt to tap into the prevailing sentiments dominant in the uninformed West in light of the Ukrainian crisis.

It is overlooked that Pashinyan’s democratic credentials are, to put it mildly, highly questionable, and, through “executive aggrandisement”, he has fast been transforming Armenia’s parliamentary system into a constitutional design dependent on a strong PM, mimicking the super Presidential style of President Putin.

The fallacy of the juxtaposition is also conditioned by the fact a nation that is factotum to Russian needs and is firmly in its orbit cannot be the representative of a so-called “free world”, pitted against one which is a great deal more independent and self-sufficient and of immeasurably higher value to the West itself.

Having said all these, let us be clear about one element. The world media is not choc-a-bloc with journalists propounding the anti-Azerbaijani rhetoric and there is no worldwide conspiracy against Azerbaijan. Armenophile busybodies and scribblers of squalid little rags on recycled toilet paper are not in the crosshair of the world’s global media architecture. What is true is that the preconceived sympathy for the weaker side and disdain for the coercive assertiveness of the stronger party have evolved into a feeling that is more visible. However, the hollow whoops of vacuous audiences reacting to outrage-manufacturing could only be ephemeral by nature.

We have been through all this before. President Ilham Aliyev faced journalists from all over the world during the Second Karabakh War, effortlessly defending Azerbaijan’s cause and dismantling with rustic ease every single unfounded thorny accusation levied against him. In 2022, Azerbaijan does not have time for the unedifying remonstrances of the disgruntled. Its detractors may ignore what Baku says at their own peril. Azerbaijan is indefatigably determined not just to see through the smear campaign, but also to entrench the post-2020 geopolitical reality of the South Caucasus. First things first. There is a job to be done.

Caliber.Az