The Sins of the Fathers: Turkish Denialism and the Armenian Genocide, Siobhan Nash-Marshall (paperback)

Journalists and intellectuals describe “post-truth” as a shocking new phenomenon. “Historical engineering,” however, is not new. Nor are the “post-truth” instances often quoted in the news particularly significant. “Historical engineering” is the intellectual twin of “social engineering.” It has been taking place since the dawn of the modern world and growing ever since. Modern philosophy has spawned it, as demonstrated in The Sins of the Fathers. The book addresses the roots of the post-truth phenomenon. The first in The Betrayal of Philosophy trilogy, the volume describes “historical engineering” and shows how the flaws of modern philosophy gave rise to it. In this work, Nash-Marshall analyzes the Armenian Genocide as the most successful modern project of historical and social engineering. It discusses both Turkey’s “historical engineering, manifested in its official policy of genocide negation, and the Ottoman project of social and territorial engineering which led to the murder of Armenia, the first Christian nation.