Some Hideous Historical Irony, As Armenian Genocide Week Continues

As a hobby, I collect instances of oppressed groups through history brilliantly attacking their own best interest. One horrific example is that the Ottoman government subcontracted a significant portion of their Armenian-massacring to Kurds. As this online encyclopedia puts it:

...the deportations themselves were a silent method of massacring the rest of population, by forcing them to march endlessly through desert, without food or water or enough protection from local Kurdish or Turkish mobs. In the process several hundred thousand died in the resulting death marches from starvation, dehydration, disease or exhaustion. Several hundred thousands more were massacred by Kurdish militia and Ottoman army, giving an estimated total of 1,500,000 Armenians dead.

I guess the reasoning on the Kurds' part was: As a weak minority, the best way for us to advance is by cheerfully helping the people in charge exterminate a weak minority! This can only be good for us, because if there's anything history shows, it's that a government which tries to exterminate one weak minority never ever does the same to others!

It reminds me of my favorite section of Our Dumb Century:

Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists in Well-Thought-Out Scheme

From the East Asian Correspondent, Sept 1, 1939. -- In a course of action praised by many as "far-sighted" and "tactically brilliant," the Japanese government has sworn its allegiance to the Axis powers led by white-supremacist Nazi Germany. In a formal statement, Japanese leaders declared, "We wish to be counted among the loyal allies of this back-stabbing, racist hate nation."

Following the announcement, Japanese General and military leader Hideki Tojo told reporters, "We are pleased to enter into an alliance with the paranoid, xenophobic government of Nazi Germany. We anticipate a deeply enriching exchange of our military aid with their deep-seated hated of our non-white heritage."

Tojo went on to say that the "unbeatable team" of Germans and Japanese will one dominate the industrialized world as "Aryans and those hated by Aryans, working together."

Likening their war instincts to those of "a very advanced clan of yellow apes," German Chancellor Adolf Hitler praised the government and military of Japan.

"I salute you, chinky-dinky rat men, who have been given life by the confused hand of some long-dead pagan deity," he said. "When Germany stands victorious on a conquered Earth, and Aryan supermen wipe out the undesirable mud races one by one, your like will surely survive to be among the last to be exterminated."