{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "I've read a bit of background but having lived in LA it just feels weird having Armenia in the news for a conflict that's not...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/630643555021586432/", "html": "<p>I&rsquo;ve read a <i>bit</i> of background but having lived in LA it just feels weird having Armenia in the news for a conflict that&rsquo;s not with Turkey</p><p>Like I lived in Little Armenia, by Glendale, capitol of the diaspora, and that was what the SoCal Armenians presented as their defining <i>thing, </i>hating the Turks.</p><p>Like in a lot of ways they were indistinguishable from all the other post-Ottomans in the region: small but strong coffee, hookahs, pastries, tracksuits, a little lace-curtain overboard with the chandeliers\u2026</p><p>But they Hated the Turks. (Also, appreciated System of a Down) that was their brand. On like Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day thered be all these leased BMW 3-series with Armenian flags on the bumpers dragging between Hollywood and Franklin, windows down, blasting System of a Down, scowling about the Turks.</p><p>I&rsquo;m not making that up! If you&rsquo;re from the East Coast, it was like Zionist politics as done by Jersey Italians. If you found and asked a Turk, he&rsquo;d say Armenians were a reasonable Olympic or World Cup rival but he never really thought about them. (Which, I suppose, was the Turkish nationalists&rsquo; dream when they originally founded an ethnostate on land the Armenians had been using)</p><p>Anyway after that it&rsquo;s just unbalancing to think of Armenia as being prominent as the focus of a different plotline</p>"}