"Design Through Destruction" (continued) - Mihran DABAG

Migran Dabag's article "Formation through Destruction" (continued), published in ANIV No. 2 (29) as the conclusion of a work (beginning in ANIV No. 1 (28), 2010) translated by Alexander Korolevich, is devoted to the analysis of generational mechanisms for legitimizing political violence in the ideologies of National Socialism and the Young Turk movement.

Introduction and Methodology

The author examines the construct of "generation" not as a biological category but as a political instrument enabling the overcoming of social stratification through a shared experience and task. The key thesis is that generational identity is built through the appropriation of knowledge and discourses via personal ties — the "construction of the fathers" of the movement — rather than through abstract theorems.

The Case of Ziya Gökalp: Testaments and Delegation

Drawing on the autobiographical "Philosophical Testaments" (1922) of Gökalp, Dabag reconstructs three models of the transmission of authority:

• the father's testament;
• the philosophical mentor's testament;
• the political mentor's testament.

Analysis of textual fragments shows that such "testaments" are simultaneously addressed to a specific individual and — through him — to the entire younger generation of the nation, constructing a "community of the chosen" to whom the mission of national leadership is transmitted.

The Category of "Ideal" (mefkure)

Special attention is given to Gökalp's concept of the ideal as an "inner" value uniting emotion and knowledge, born in crisis and linking the individual to the nation. The author draws a parallel with Hitler's reflections in "Mein Kampf" on idealism as readiness for sacrifice, emphasizing the structural rather than substantive resemblance of these ideological constructs.

Natural Morality and the Historicization of Ethics

Turning to the texts of Ludwig Gumplowicz and Alfred Rosenberg, Dabag demonstrates how nationalist doctrines identified the natural with the moral, presenting the hierarchy of generations and national chosenness as products of "natural" laws, thereby legitimizing required actions through an appeal to science and history.

Key Proposition

Totalitarian movements, in the author's view, presented their goals not as new but as "discovered" and confirmed by historical experience; the novelty lay solely in the demand for immediate realization and in the creation of a situation of action without alternative.

Conclusion

The article concludes with the thesis that the perpetrators of genocide perceived themselves not as criminals but as bearers of a chosen historical mission — a self-understanding rooted precisely in the generational logic of legitimation, whereby the destruction of "alien bodies" is presented as the sole path to salvation and the strengthening of national identity.