U.S-based pro-Nazi ANCA seeks further escalation in South Caucasus

By Vafa Ismayilova

As part of the global Armenian propaganda machine, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), embracing the radical and aggressive Dashnak ideology, has reported that U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committee, chaired by Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, is set to consider three key amendments.

“Three amendments will be discussed – 1) cutting off U.S. aid to Azerbaijan (enforcing Section 907), 2) Investigating U.S. parts/technology in Turkey's… drones 3) Mandating a U.S. Department of State war crimes report,’’ ANCA said on its Facebook page.

ANCA, which is the U.S. branch of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), unites the most radical nationalists building up hatred towards Azerbaijan and Turkey as a way to ensure political and financial support for themselves.

ARF, also known as Dashnaktsutyun (in short, Dashnak), is an Armenian ultranationalist left-wing party founded in 1890. Today the party operates in Armenia and in countries where the Armenian diaspora is present, including the United States.

Notorious amendment

Back in late September 2021, President Ilham Aliyev explained very clearly and concisely the principles standing behind Section 907 passed by the U.S. Congress.

“After all... the decisions that were made by some countries, they simply defy any logic. While it was Azerbaijani territory that was occupied, the U.S. Congress passed the notorious amendment to the Freedom Support Act, Section No. 907, which deprived Azerbaijan of direct military assistance, direct US assistance, not only military. And we, the affected country, we were essentially discriminated against,” Aliyev said in an interview with Russia’s Natsionalnaya Oborona magazine.

He said that “the rationale behind it was that Azerbaijan was blocking Armenia. Just imagine - Zangilan, Gubadli, Lachin and Kalbajar districts are occupied. And this is described as a blockade of Armenia”.

He stressed that Armenia’s diaspora organizations and also the media controlled by the Armenian lobby distorted the essence of the conflict.

“The fact that Armenia is an aggressor, an occupier which committed ethnic cleansing and an act of genocide in Khojaly, destroyed all historical and cultural buildings – all this was concealed,” Aliyev said.

The Azerbaijani leader stressed that the Armenian diaspora is much more powerful than the Armenian government, underlining that the former created such a background that “the Armenian population cannot feel safe in such a dictatorial country, although Azerbaijan is a multinational, multi-confessional country and everyone here lives in peace and harmony. And this is why, as it were, Nagorno-Karabakh should secede and Nagorno-Karabakh should have an independent status”.

In April 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a telephone conversation with Aliyev that this year too the waiver of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act was extended.

On October 24, 2001, the Senate adopted an amendment to the Act that would provide the President with the ability to waiver Section 907.

Well-known expert Svante Cornell described the term “blockade” as unjustified since it ignored the fact that Armenia itself had imposed an embargo on Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani exclave, and the closure of the border with Armenia took place due to the occupation of the Azerbaijani lands. Moreover, the use of the term "blockade" in itself is misleading, as Armenia has close economic ties with Georgia and Iran.

It should be noted that no amendment or any diaspora-manipulated document can have an impact on the state policy and national interests of Azerbaijan which in last year's 44-day war facilitated on its own the implementation of four UN resolutions urging the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories.  

Azerbaijan was one of the first countries to join the global anti-terror coalition assembled by the U.S. government. Azerbaijan opened its airspace to the allied forces and assured its agencies would cooperate and provide information that would assist in American-led efforts.

Azerbaijan’s contributions to the US-led anti-terror campaign also included deploying a peacekeeping contingent in Afghanistan. Azerbaijani peacekeepers began serving there in November 2002, and by 2021 the contingent consisted of 120 servicemen. They left the country more than a week after the Taliban seized power on August 15, 2021.

Destructive diaspora

It is noteworthy that the most toxic diaspora named ANCA with the pro-Nazi past has supported and promoted for decades Armenia’s war crimes, its occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan’s lands, advocating against peace in Karabakh.

Being far from reality, the lobbyist arm of the Dashnak radical and expansionist group and the Armenian diaspora’s hate club ANCA continues to make baseless land claims towards Turkey and Azerbaijan while Armenians in Armenia leave their country at a high rate. The diaspora cares less about Armenians in Armenia, it focuses on hating Turkey and Azerbaijan. It is actively involved in the anti-Turkish and anti-Azerbaijani misinformation campaigns. 

Back in July 2020, the Azerbaijani Consulate General in Los Angeles tweeted that ANCA “is falsely and dangerously labeling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict as a Christian-Muslim conflict”.

“ANCA intends to cash in on the already divisive environment and anti-Muslim prejudices. Such dangerous bigotry and intolerance have no place in the U.S. or anywhere else,” the consulate said.

Some believe that ANCA, which blames Turkey for bribing the U.S., continues "to bump big money into the American political system" in its own words, as the Senate or the Congress would have ignored Armenian-made false claims if this was not the case.

Nazi background

It should also be emphasized that ANCA is an affiliate and lobbying arm of the Dashnaks, who have sympathies for Hitler and the Holocaust.

In May 2020, a historical document exposing the abovementioned was unearthed in the archives of the U.S. Congress. The finding is a result of the research conducted by Azerbaijan’s Los Angeles-based Consulate General.

Thus on May 4, 1945, a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan, Congressman Frank E. Hook, introduced an article on Armenian Dashnaks’ sympathies for Hitler and the Holocaust, as well as their terrorist activities in the U.S. The article was included in the Congressional Record (the official record of the Congressional proceedings and debates) and published by the U.S. Government.

The article describes the Armenian Dashnaks as a well-organized “revolutionary gang with a long record of terrorist-fascist activity”.

Giving detailed information about Dashnaks’ history, the article emphasizes that Dashnaks adopted terrorism as a political tool early in their existence, using both terror attacks and intimidation to silence their opponents and punish those who refused to donate to the party.

The article mentions that Dashnak terrorists murdered many Armenian Americans in the U.S., who were opposed to them.

Exposing Dashnaks’ sympathies for Nasizm, the article gives a translated quotation from September 17, 1936 issue of their Boston-based newspaper Hairenik, which calls Hitlerism and Fascism as a “gift to mankind”.

Highlighting the Armenian Dashnaks’ rampant anti-Semitism, the Congressional record mentions several articles published by their Hairenik newspaper in August 1936 “extolling the Nazi regime, the myth of Aryan culture, and whitewashing Nazi persecution”. The newspaper described Jews as “the most fanatical nationalists and race worshippers”. Practically the Armenian Dashnaks called the Holocaust - the brutal murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis - “a surgical operation to eradicate poisonous elements”.

The Congressional record also mentions the infamous Armenian Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh as the founder of an Armenian race religion called Tseghakronism (race worshipping), which, it says, primarily targeted young Armenians and was modeled after “Hitler Youth”. The document reveals that Nzhdeh sympathized with Hitler’s racial ideas in his speeches, who said the following in an article published by Hairenik Weekly, on April 10, 1936: “Today Germany and Italy are strong because as a nation they live and breathe in the terms of race.”

The document continues: “From this point on the dope of decadent race worship... was injected into young Tseghakron minds. Whipped into strict discipline, [they] urged never to marry non-Armenians lest it ‘pollute’ the ‘purity of the Armenian race’."

It stated that Nzhdeh and his Armenian Dashnak companions were spreading these racist ideas among the U.S.-born young Armenians.

It is noteworthy that the Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh is considered today a national hero in Armenia. In 2016, the Government of Armenia unveiled his statue in the center of the nation’s capital Yerevan.

Armenia has one of the largest concentrations of Nazi monuments in the world, including statues, memorials, streets, squares, villages, etc. All these monuments honor Armenian Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh, who is still considered a national hero by Armenia, its diaspora in the U.S. and beyond.

Dashnaks, who sympathized with Hitler and supported the Holocaust, are still active in U.S. Their lobbyist arm ANCA is today the main Armenian lobby organization in the U.S. Congress. Dashnaks/ANCA have never apologized for their pro-Nazi past.

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