Nikola is a rhetor, but from a dangerous school. Ashotyan's article from prison.
06-07-2026 19:33 Armenia Press of Diaspora
auroranews.am Armen Ashotyan has issued a statement from the "Vardashen" penitentiary
SOPHISTS' "DEADLY WEAPON": THE ISKANDERS. THE FIGHT AGAINST PASHINYAN MUST BE KNOWLEDGE-BASED. THE STATEMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONER ARMEN ASHOTYAN FROM THE CELL
Weeks ago, Nikol Pashinyan, to justify his latest unrestrained speech, said that he is a "passionate orator":
I believe many mocked and joked about this topic, focusing on the word "passionate," behind which Pashinyan's confession was forgotten: he is indeed an orator, a good orator, who, in his own words, seized power in 2018, and now one of the three main pillars holding it is his word (I will not touch upon the other two—repressions and external support for now,- A.A.).
Yes, Nikol is an orator, but in the ordinary, classical sense, he comes from the most dangerous, most destructive school of orators. He is a sophist.
In our daily lives, we use that word, as a rule, with a serious face to describe those who iron out heads or wave the air:
In reality, it is not an innocent trait of self-important people. History is full of cases where sophists have dismantled states, and Armenia is not the only one.
The leitmotif of my article is not to hint or conduct a theoretical analysis. I believe the opposition has been losing to Pashinyan until now because it does not analyze comprehensively and does not approach this issue systematically. In short, the opposition's struggle should be more "knowledge-based," as Nikol is actually a phenomenon that has its own methodology:
Let us try to use historical facts to provide the main descriptions:
The conflict between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece ended with Sparta's victory due to the sophists who held power in Athens. They were the ones who began to create the atmosphere in Athens, and one of them, Alcibiades, who was the ruler and the most influential orator, convinced the city to send an unprecedented large fleet to Sicily, which ended in disaster for Athens:
The ancient Greeks knew well the power of speech, which became more important in the context of Athenian civic democracy, the mechanism of which, if simplified, was as follows: who would convince whom and how:
It was here that the distorted and manipulative type of sophistry mixed with healthy and traditional rhetoric. If before, language and speech served to describe reality, then sophists began to perfect themselves by using speech to distort and deform reality. Sophists reached perfection in convincingly proving what does not correspond to reality (Nikol, heed this,- A.A.).
Since knowledge was no longer dominant, truth came under attack. Sophists turned political debates into principles of "who disgusted whom," "who cut off whose voice," rather than searching for truth:
Sophists said that it does not matter to master the topic or be knowledgeable about the issue. What matters is to be able to speak about the topic (Nikol's ear should heed this again):
Another crucial observation: if in science facts are undeniable and immutable phenomena, then in sophistical rhetoric, any fact is deniable, thus no longer a fact (I can imagine how Nikol's ears are reacting now,- A.A.).
This is the "deadly weapon" of sophists: THE ISKANDERS. The denial of facts disrupts the stability and balance of reality, dismantling the environment surrounding people:
Another secret trick of sophists is to emphasize "values" and emotions in speech. And this is logical: by denying facts, they undermine reality, which they fill with their emotions (as Pashinyan would say, with "passions",- A.A.).
Unlike facts, "values" and emotions are not immutable characteristics of reality; they do not contain information about the world but express our subjective attitude towards the world…
However…
After the destruction of facts, the "values" and emotions of sophists become guiding, decisive, and create an illusion of stability:
With one article, especially from a cell, it is difficult to claim a more detailed description of the problem, so I will try to address the question (very important,- A.A.) in subsequent publications of how the ancient Greeks fought against the destructive tricks of sophists:
To be continued…
ARMEN ASHOTYAN
Vice President of the Republican Party of Armenia
"Vardashen" Penitentiary
* This text was automatically translated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
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