Historical negationism

For the critical re-examination of historical facts, see Historical revisionism. For "negationism" as a form of psychological abuse, see Gaslighting.

Historical negationism,[1][2] also called historical denialism, is falsification[3][4] or distortion of the historical record. This is not the same as historical revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history.[5] In attempting to revise and influence the past, historical negationism acts as illegitimate historical revisionism by using techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine, inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents, attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite, manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view, and deliberately mistranslating traditional or modern texts.[6]

Some countries, such as Germany, have criminalized the negationist revision of certain historical events, while others take a more cautious position for various reasons, such as protection of free speech. Others have in the past mandated negationist views, such as the US state of California, where it is claimed that some schoolchildren have been explicitly prevented from learning about the California genocide.[7][8] Notable examples of negationism include denials of the Holocaust, Nakba,[citation needed] Holodomor, Armenian genocide, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, and the clean Wehrmacht myth.[9][10] In literature, it has been imaginatively depicted in some works of fiction, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. In modern times, negationism may spread via political, religious agendas through state media, mainstream media, and new media, such as the Internet.[citation needed]

  1. ^ The term negationism derives from the French neologism négationnisme, denoting Holocaust denial.(Kornberg, Jacques. The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide.(Review) (book review) Archived 22 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Shofar, January 2001). It is now also sometimes used for more general political historical revisionism as (PDF) UNESCO against racism world conference 31 August – 7 September 2001. "Given the ignorance with which it is treated, the slave trade comprises one of the most radical forms of historical negationism." Pascale Bloch has written in International law: Response to Professor Fronza's The punishment of Negationism (Accessed ProQuest Database, 12 October 2011) that revisionists are understood as negationists in order to differentiate them from historical revisionists, since their goal is either to prove that the Holocaust did not exist or to introduce confusion regarding the victims and German executioners regardless of historical and scientific methodology and evidence. For those reasons, the term revisionism is often considered confusing, since it conceals misleading ideologies that purport to avoid disapproval by presenting revisions of the past based on pseudo-scientific methods, while they are in fact a part of negationism.
  2. ^ Kriss Ravetto (2001). The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics, University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0-8166-3743-1. p. 33
  3. ^ Watts, Philip (2009). "Rewriting history: Céline and Kurt Vonnegut". Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-2874-0.
  4. ^ Pohl, Dieter (2020). "Holocaust Studies in Our Societies". S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 7 (1): 133–141. ISSN 2408-9192. In addition, Holocaust research can support the fight against the falsification of history, not only Nazi negationism, but also lighter forms of historical propaganda.
  5. ^ "The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians Deborah Lipstadt (1993) and Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about an historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a re-examination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event – like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust – did in fact occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence. ... " Ronald J. Berger. Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Aldine Transaction, 2002, ISBN 0-202-30670-4, p. 154.
  6. ^ Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, by Richard J. Evans, 2001, ISBN 0-465-02153-0. p. 145. The author is a professor of Modern History, at the University of Cambridge, and was a major expert-witness in the Irving v. Lipstadt trial; the book presents his perspective of the trial, and the expert-witness report, including his research about the Dresden death count.
  7. ^ Trafzer, Clifford E.; Lorimer, Michelle (5 August 2013). "Silencing California Indian Genocide in Social Studies Texts". American Behavioral Scientist. 58 (1): 64–82. doi:10.1177/0002764213495032. S2CID 144356070.
  8. ^ Fenelon, James V.; Trafzer, Clifford E. (4 December 2013). "From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas". American Behavioral Scientist. 58 (1): 3–29. doi:10.1177/0002764213495045. S2CID 145377834.
  9. ^ Klaus Mehnert, Stalin Versus Marx: the Stalinist historical doctrine (Translation of Weltrevolution durch Weltgeschichte) Port Washington NY: Kennikat Press 1972 (1952), on the illegitimate use of history in the 1934–1952 period.
  10. ^ Roger D. Markwick, Rewriting history in Soviet Russia : the politics of revisionist historiography, 1956–1974 New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, on legitimate Soviet historiography particularly in the post 1956 period.