Profanity, power and the politics of distraction
Armenia is facing one of the most critical junctures in its post-independence history. The shock of losing Artsakh hasn’t faded. Tens of thousands of displaced families are still seeking stability. The country’s borders feel more vulnerable than ever. Confidence in institutions is slipping, democratic norms are wearing thin, and people are tired—angry, even. If ever there were a time for serious, steady leadership, it’s now.
Instead, its prime minister is swearing at bishops on Facebook.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan published a post directed at a senior clergyman, stating, without provocation and shame: “Srbazan, keep banging your uncle’s wife. What’s your problem with me?”
The comment, posted early in the morning, was not made in a private conversation, not caught on a hot mic, not distorted by the media. It was typed and published publicly by the head of Armenia’s government on his official social media page.
It was, by any measure, disgraceful.
The post was quickly followed by others. He suggested that many members of the Armenian clergy had violated their vows of celibacy and should be stripped of their religious office. His wife, Anna Hakobyan, joined in, accusing unnamed priests of being the “country’s chief pedophiles” and “maniacal perverts.”
In a separate Facebook post, Hakobyan targeted journalist and editor Boris Murazi—a member of Armenia’s Yazidi minority—accusing him, without evidence, of providing “sexual services” to former president Serzh Sargsyan and certain bishops. She claimed she had heard this “for years” and speculated that “there might be videos in the drawers of the relevant agencies.” The post was laced with thinly veiled homophobia and intended not just to discredit Murazi, but to shame him. These weren’t off-the-cuff remarks or vague frustrations, but calculated, defamatory attacks aimed at silencing a critical voice. And they came from someone who supposedly leads a campaign to “raise the quality of public speech” in Armenia.
That campaign, titled “Learning is Trendy,” was supposedly about promoting education, literacy and civility in public life. And yet here we are, amid the collapse of public discourse, with its founder and champion engaging in personal attacks that weaponize misogyny, homophobia and conspiracy theories to silence critics.
This would be troubling in any context. But it’s even more absurd considering that both Hakobyan and Pashinyan are journalists. They know better. They’ve worked in newsrooms. They’ve run publications. They know the power of language, and they know exactly what they’re doing—which makes this not just a lapse in judgment, but a choice.
These are not the words of anonymous trolls in the comment section. They are the public declarations of Armenia’s top political figures, delivered through official platforms, aimed at silencing critics and undermining institutions.
And frankly, it’s a failure of leadership.
One can have criticisms of the Armenian Apostolic Church. That’s not the issue. No institution is above scrutiny. But there is a difference between scrutiny and slander, between investigation and insult—a statesman understands that difference. A head of government should know that public office comes with public responsibility, especially in how one speaks.
Profanity may feel cathartic in private, but it has no place in official discourse—certainly not in state-sanctioned social media. When the leader of a country reduces himself to schoolyard vulgarities, he degrades not just himself but the entire office he represents.
Armenia is not the first country to face this problem. U.S. President Donald Trump routinely uses inflammatory and vulgar language to discredit opponents, dominate headlines and distract from deeper policy failures. And the long-term effects have been damaging. The bar for public behavior has clearly been lowered. Political dialogue has been poisoned, and what replaced substance was spectacle.
Pashinyan’s recent conduct follows a similar logic. In lieu of clearly explaining the details of the so-called peace process with Azerbaijan, he attacks the Church. Instead of addressing the status of displaced Artsakh Armenians or demanding the release of Armenian hostages in Baku, he posts gossip about clergy. Instead of reassuring citizens during a time of deep uncertainty, he turns public debate into a profane shouting match.
Some may find this kind of rhetoric refreshing. Others may see it as ‘relatable’ or ‘authentic.’ But authenticity without responsibility is dangerous. Being a ‘man of the people’ does not mean adopting the worst habits of the street. It does not mean abandoning the basic decorum expected of someone tasked with representing the Armenian nation.
Swearing at bishops is the behavior of someone who has run out of ideas and chosen to lash out instead. It is what politicians do when they can no longer govern through results, only through noise.
And this latest outburst isn’t happening in isolation. It follows a long and escalating conflict between Pashinyan and the Church. Over the past year, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the government, leading large-scale protests after Pashinyan’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. Catholicos Karekin II has also spoken out, calling for the prime minister’s resignation.
Instead of engaging with these criticisms directly, Pashinyan and his circle have hinted at retaliation, suggesting the possibility of taxing the Church or even granting the government a role in selecting the next Catholicos.
That should worry anyone who cares about the line between church and state. The Church is not above criticism. But using the machinery of government to go after religious institutions for political opposition is something else entirely. It’s not reform. It’s an abuse of power.
Ultimately, this is not about the Church. It’s not even just about one vulgar post. It’s about the kind of politics Armenia is sliding into.
When the country is facing existential threats, we cannot afford a government that responds to criticism with profanity and provocation. We cannot afford a prime minister whose idea of leadership is picking fights online and humiliating his critics in public. We need calm. We need competence. We need clarity.
We need leaders who understand that words matter.
Pashinyan once promised to build a new political culture in Armenia—one rooted in transparency, accountability and decency. That promise now feels distant. In its place is something far more cynical: a government that punches down, pays more attention to his media posts than his foreign policy and confuses personal vendettas with national priorities.
At a moment when the Armenian state should be strengthening its foundations, it is instead caught in a spiral of petty theatrics. That is not a crisis of image; it is a crisis of leadership.
And Armenia deserves better.
Rupen Janbazian
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As far as I am concerned, it does not matter whether Armenia is facing existential threats or not. Yes, we cannot let, let alone afford representatives of Armenian institutions, be it a government or a social, a political, or a religious organization resort to profanity and provocation, which have brewing in Armenia especially after 2018 Velvet Revolution, and becoming hallmarks of Armenian landscape, from which Diaspora has not been immune. Let us resort to this, if you label a person a “humanoid”, let alone an “oughlu” or a “Turk”, expect the person to live up to that slur and act like one. It seems what works for Armenians is a tit for a tat, and even an eye for an eye, until there comes about a blinking, which has not come about yet.
Tearing the Mask Off the Moral Grandstanding
Let’s be clear from the start: no one is handing out medals for tactless language. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s social media outburst was crude, unnecessary, and unbefitting of a head of government. But if you’re going to drag the man for a Facebook comment, you’d better come with clean hands. And this article? It’s soaked in selective outrage, hypocrisy, and crocodile tears.
Let’s unpack the theatrics.
The piece opens with melodrama: “Armenia is facing one of the most critical junctures in its post-independence history.” True. It is. But the implication that the nation’s biggest threat is a Facebook post is absurd. We’ve lost Artsakh, we’re navigating Russian betrayal, Turkish encirclement, and a broken regional order. And yet the writer thinks the downfall of Armenian civilization hinges on Pashinyan’s bad language? Get real.
Where was this level of righteous fury when former regimes looted Armenia blind, handed out monopolies to their friends, allowed military incompetence to fester, and filled the Church with government-backed yes-men? Suddenly now—now—we’re drawing the line at vulgarity? Please.
This article isn’t about language. It’s about power. Specifically, it’s about the power the Armenian Apostolic Church has historically enjoyed—and is now being challenged for the first time in decades. The author conveniently ignores that the Church has been a political actor for years. When Catholicos Karekin II calls for the elected leader’s resignation, that is not theology. That is politics. When Archbishop Bagrat leads anti-government protests, makes nationalist pronouncements, and functions as a de facto opposition leader, that’s not the Sermon on the Mount. That’s a campaign rally in a cassock.
And guess what? Once you enter the political ring, you don’t get to cry foul when someone punches back.
This isn’t an attack on “religion” or “faith” or “tradition.” It’s a confrontation with a power structure that for decades operated with zero transparency, zero accountability, and plenty of skeletons in the closet. Pashinyan’s mistake wasn’t that he challenged the Church. It’s that he did it in a language too raw for polite society. But let’s not confuse crassness with corruption.
The article also takes issue with Anna Hakobyan, accusing her of “weaponizing homophobia and misogyny.” Are her posts fair? Maybe not. But here’s a wild idea: criticize her statements without inventing a halo for those she’s targeting. Boris Murazi may be a journalist, but being a journalist doesn’t make you immune to criticism—or consequence. And yes, unsubstantiated claims are dangerous. But when’s the last time the Armenian Church opened itself to real scrutiny about its own internal conduct? If we want to have a conversation about standards, let’s start with institutions that have avoided them for centuries.
The hypocrisy here is suffocating.
The article decries “the collapse of public discourse,” but fails to mention how that collapse was engineered by an old elite who dominated media, Church, and judiciary for years. Now that those voices are being challenged, suddenly the pearl-clutching begins.
And the Trump comparison? That’s lazy. Pashinyan is not Trump. He doesn’t mock the disabled. He doesn’t incite white supremacists. He hasn’t spent his life trying to avoid accountability. He emerged from a peaceful revolution, dismantled oligarchic rule, and tried—however imperfectly—to make the state accountable to the people. Equating a reformist leader’s vulgar rhetoric to that of Trumpism is not just bad analysis—it’s dishonest.
Yes, words matter. But context matters more. Armenia’s challenges are not the result of social media posts—they’re the result of decades of misrule, geopolitical isolation, and an elite that refused to face reality until it was too late.
So spare us the sanctimony.
This isn’t about swearing at bishops. It’s about daring to challenge the untouchables. It’s about a government—flawed, frustrated, human—trying to survive a geopolitical nightmare while fending off opposition from the very institutions that enabled Armenia’s decline.
You can disagree with Pashinyan. You can find his tone appalling. Fine. But don’t pretend that the stakes here are moral. They are political. And moral lectures from those who sat quietly while Armenia rotted from the inside are, frankly, a joke.
Armenia doesn’t need manufactured outrage. It needs truth. Brutal, uncomfortable, unvarnished truth. The old Armenia failed. This one, vulgar as it may be, is at least fighting to build something different, something accountable and truthful.
So either join the fight—or stop pretending you’re above it.
While you raise legitimate concerns about the Church’s historical privilege and lack of accountability, your response (which even has a title! Wow!) ultimately avoids the central argument of my piece: that leadership, especially in times of national crisis, requires restraint, responsibility, and a basic standard of public discourse. No one is suggesting the Armenian Apostolic Church is beyond critique. In fact, I clearly stated that no institution should be immune to scrutiny. But what you describe as a confrontation with a power structure was, in reality, a vulgar, baseless, and reckless public attack. This wasn’t accountability; it was a spectacle designed to distract.
You argue that because the Church has been political, it deserves to be hit back in kind. That is not only a poor justification, but it also sets a dangerous precedent. Accountability does not require profanity. It requires evidence, process, and integrity. When the head of government resorts to public insults and unsubstantiated claims targeting clergy and journalists, it reflects a collapse in standards, not a bold act of reform.
You accuse me of ignoring the failures of past regimes. I have written about those failures elsewhere, and I fully agree they deserve criticism. But acknowledging past corruption does not excuse present misconduct. As for your claim that this isn’t ‘Trumpism,’ when a leader uses inflammatory language to dominate the news cycle, deflect criticism, and delegitimize opponents, the comparison is, in my opinion, valid.
You argue that Anna Hakobyan’s comments, while maybe unfair, should be seen in light of the Church’s history and Murazi’s role as a journalist. But the issue isn’t whether Murazi or the Church deserves criticism; the issue is how that criticism is expressed. What Hakobyan did wasn’t a critique–it was a baseless smear, laced with homophobia and vague threats. That kind of language isn’t holding anyone accountable; it’s weaponizing stigma to silence dissent. No one is above scrutiny, but public figures have a responsibility to raise concerns with evidence and integrity. I did not write my piece to defend individuals, but rather to call out the use of power to shame and discredit without proof.
You say Armenia doesn’t need manufactured outrage. You’re right. But it also doesn’t need more noise. And that’s precisely what this government has delivered: loud, performative outrage in place of accountability, and distraction in place of leadership. You describe it as “fighting to build something different, something accountable and truthful,” but if this is what truth and accountability look like, they come dressed in the same failures we’ve seen before, just with more vulgarity and fewer results, i.e. Dysfunction dressed up as authenticity. The displaced are still waiting for honest answers, not empty gestures. The government continues to speak of peace, yet the details remain hidden from the very public expected to bear its consequences. At the same time, across the border, the enemy’s appetite only grows, fed by silence, weakness, and mixed signals. If this is the “something different” being built, it’s hard to see where accountability or truth fit in.