Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The power of collective grievance

In Scotland as in Catalonia, it is a shared sense of victimhood that is the strongest source of patriotism

A mural in Los Angeles commemorating the 1915 Armenian Genocide (Photo: Getty) 
issue 18 April 2015

When last Sunday Pope Francis took the brave step of acknowledging the Armenian tragedy as the ‘first genocide of the 20th century’, he knew he was entering a minefield. On 24 April Armenians will commemorate the 100th anniversary of their genocide. There can be no single date for a genocide but that was the day the entire leadership of the Armenian people was arrested by the Ottoman government in Constantinople, now Istanbul, whose successors are the modern Turkish state.

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