Partially to take a bit more time to review an extremely complex album like
Toxicity, I will not be reviewing their next album now. Instead, I feel the need to place a contribution to the overall identity of System of a Down by examining one of the issues that remains centric to their being: the Armenian genocide. Many System songs, even early ones like “War?” are centered around this tender subject. Many of their works and much of their persona have been misinterpreted. It is certainly time that people set their misguided views of the band aside and realize that System’s outspoken political anger wasn’t the flippant rage of Zack de la Rocha. I will not try to make this into a history lesson about the Armenian genocide, but its relevance to understanding what System of a Down stood for.
You can read about the Armenian genocide in full
here.
The Armenian Genocide
Armenia is a small country nestled into the Caucasus Mountains and highlands, landlocked and between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. While the primary religion of surrounding nations is unequivocally Islam, Christianity dominates within Armenia. This disparity in religious beliefs was responsible for one of the worst (and yet, one of the least recognized) genocides in world history. But it didn’t start out as open war…
Once part of the mighty Ottoman Empire, Armenia was a small minority of people living east of what is now present-day Turkey. Today, the population of Armenians is approximately eight to ten million people. Of course, there is a bit of uncertainty because they were scattered across the world since the late nineteenth century. In the beginning of this ethnic hostility, it was simply a huge emergence of discrimination against Christians. Armenians were treated as second-class citizens. Towards the late nineteenth century, Sultan Abdul Hamid II began a disgraceful campaign to eradicate the Armenians for nationalistic purposes. In this campaign, 100,000-300,000 Armenians were killed. And it didn’t stop there.
After the Ottoman Empire officially became a constitutional monarchy, they took legal action against the Armenians to eradicate them from the Ottoman Empire altogether. Laws were passed to strip the Armenians from their possessions, which the government labeled as “abandoned.” By marking gross populations of Armenians as threats to the security of the Ottoman Empire, parliament was able to take martial action against the native Armenians, forcing them out in droves. Since any testimony against Muslims by Christians was rendered inadmissible by Turkish courts, the invading Turkish armies could do as they please – and they did just that. Millions of Armenians were forcibly expelled. Many were killed, women were raped, and their belongings pillaged by the armies.
During the deportation and extermination processes, Armenians were driven into the desert to wander across the borders. Frequently, militant factions of Turks would take Armenians into remote spots in the desert and massacre them en masse. Their justification for murdering the defenseless Armenians was simple: they believed them to be aiding the Russian military. It was obvious, however, that very few Armenians actually acted that way. During World War I (the Great War), over 500,000 Armenians were exterminated, and millions more exiled to the ends of the earth. In total, approximately one to one-and-a-half million Armenians were killed in what would be known as the Armenian genocide.
The repercussions of this atrocity are still haunting ancestors of the exiled Armenians today. To date, twenty-one countries recognize that the event could be classified as genocide. Not even all of the United States is in assent; forty-two states have adopted resolutions confirming it. This is especially difficult for ancestors of the atrocity to digest, since the Turkish government denies the event to this day. Many Armenians are very outspoken about this atrocity, especially Armenian-Americans like System of a Down.
It is vital when interpreting System’s musical work to understand that where they came from and what they stand for. They are Armenian-Americans. They were raised in (but shielded from) the shadow of Hollywood by their
Christian, Armenian expatriate families. It is absolute trash to see them get censored for works like “Chop Suey!” (which people assumed glorified self-righteous suicide), when in reality System wasn’t Muslim or Arabic at all. The American population needs to learn what System of a Down stood for before they cast aspersions on their so-called “offensive” music.