Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide?

John Cox, Amal Khoury, Sarah Minslow, John Cox, Amal Khoury, Sarah Minslow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000437362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

Genocide denial not only abuses history and insults the victims but paves the way for future atrocities. Yet few, if any, books have offered a comparative overview and analysis of this problem. Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide? is a resource for understanding and countering denial.

Denial spans a broad geographic and thematic range in its explorations of varied forms of denial—which is embedded in each stage of genocide.

Ranging far beyond the most well-known cases of denial, this book offers original, pathbreaking arguments and contributions regarding:

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• competition over commemoration and public memory in Ukraine and elsewhere

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• transitional justice in post-conflict societies;

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• global violence against transgender people, which genocide scholars have not adequately confronted;

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• music as a means to recapture history and combat denial;

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• public education's role in erasing Indigenous history and promoting settler-colonial ideology in the United States;

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• "triumphalism" as a new variant of denial following the Bosnian Genocide;

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• denial vis-à-vis Rwanda and neighboring Congo (DRC).

With contributions from leading genocide experts as well as emerging scholars, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, genocide studies, anthropology, political science, international law, gender studies, and human rights.

1 Is denial the final stage of genocide? Consolidation, the metaphysics of denial, and the supersession of stage theory

Henry C. Theriault

DOI: 10.4324/9781003010708-1

It has become a truism that denial is the last stage of genocide. This view is often attributed to Elie Wiesel and is highlighted by Greg Stanton in his “Eight Stages of Genocide” (now “Ten Stages”).¹ The idea is echoed frequently by scholars and others struggling against genocide denial or calling attention to its impact. Yet, this characterization of genocide denial is incorrect and its proliferation has problematic consequences.

On initial consideration, the reasons for this falsity appear simple. First, genocide denial occurs not only after the directly destructive phase of a genocide has been completed, but during and even before it occurs.² The historical record is abundantly clear that denial occurs while a genocide is happening as much as after it occurs. In the Armenian, East Timorese, Guatemalan, Darfurian, and Rohingyan cases, as just some examples, the leaders of the perpetrator groups explicitly denied or have denied what was or has been occurring, falsely dismissing reports as exaggerations, falsely claiming that violence is perpetrated by rogue actors, or falsely characterizing the violence as civil war or even as aggression by the group actually targeted in the genocide. Similarly, deeply embedded euphemistic labeling of acts during the Holodomor—the Ukrainian genocide-famine of the early 1930s—and the Holocaust in conjunction with deft propaganda established a pervasive denial within their perpetrators’ societies and beyond.

What is more, as Fatma Müge Göçek has demonstrated, denial can even be intertwined with the escalating violence and ideology driving a perpetrator group toward committing genocide.³ This approach can be extended to what I have termed “anticipatory denial,” whereby it is not the actuality of a genocide as past or currently occurring that is denied, but its intended future execution.⁴ Göçek importantly sees denial as a potential part of violent dynamics leading to genocide, while I recognize that the very international political and legal attention to genocide that has been meant as a deterrent and transformative ideal can actually entice perpetrators to attempt to create, ahead of a genocide, a rhetorical and perceptual framework in which their actions will not be recognized as genocidal—which they actually will be—as a means of removing these acts of genocide from the purview of anti-genocidal political and legal scrutiny and institutions.

Second, denial is not essential to genocide, nor does it always accompany it, as a “stage” or otherwise. In ancient times and more recently, many perpetrators drew attention to their genocidal acts and possibly even exaggerated them for the intimidation effects. What is more, denial is not a necessary accompaniment of genocide in the contemporary era, either. Instead, it is best to understand denial as one possible tool to be used when the self-understanding of a perpetrator group, the practical political and legal restrictions on its genocidal acts, and/or the broader implications of being seen as a genocide perpetrator group make denial an efficacious strategy. When such conditions do not hold—for instance, when perpetrators or potential perpetrators view themselves as immune to international accountability and/or are so deeply immersed in their ideologies that they do not care about the consequences of their genocidal acts—such as Hutu in 1994 in Rwanda and Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s populations relative to Armenians in 2020—perpetrators are more than willing to stridently espouse genocidalism. In such situations, denial is inverted into celebratory or invective declaration. Thus, not only is denial not necessarily related to genocide but instead its presence depends entirely on the circumstances in which a genocide is planned, executed, and consolidated; just as importantly, within a single perpetrator group denial often coexists with statements openly celebrating the genocide and/or threats to continue the genocidal treatment of victims in the future. Thus, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s supporters can make explicit statements about completing the genocide of 1915⁵ to eliminate all Armenians, referred to (along with other Christian victims of this genocide) by Erdoğan as “leftovers of the sword[s]” that were swung one hundred five years ago,⁶ while telling the leaders of other governments and the world community that he and his people bear Armenians no ill-will and are in fact the agents of “peace” against supposed Armenian “aggression.”⁷ Turkish leaders can be at once completely upfront about their genocidal intent and the 1915 genocide, and at the same time completely dishonest about it.

As I will discuss below, there are cases in which, if the “stage” theory is retained, denial actually fades or is superseded during what is the actual final stage of genocide.

Regardless of the specifics, what is clear from the foregoing is that the relationship between genocide and denial is very complex and variable. Genocide denial is a subspecies of denial more generally. To understand the relationship between genocide and denial in a comprehensive way, we must undertake a second line of inquiry into denial in general, in which genocide denial is one type among many.

Rhetoric and reality

Those studying and/or responding to genocide denial in the past few decades probably did not anticipate the extent to which denial, as a broader phenomenon, would become the global political norm by the late 2010s. While scholars and activists confronting specific cases of genocide denial or working more broadly on the issue have certainly understood the importance of denial not only in the damage it does to victim groups and others, including those in the perpetrator group, but also because of how politically dangerous and debilitating the spread of denial is, even now it is rare for such scholars to recognize genocide denial as part of a broader issue of denial, which is manifested in all sorts of ways, from denial of climate change and the health impacts of cigarette smoking to denial of the moon landings.

Genocide denial is often intertwined with genocidal desire, whether in expressing veiled approval of the denied genocide or for “true believers” whose denial is hidden in and a function of the deeper destructive ideological and epistemic commitments they hold (whereby they rationalize the destruction against targeted groups in a manner that allows them to maintain the delusion of their own moral decency), however much on the surface they may disingenuously espouse (meaninglessly) anti-violent and anti-oppressive views. From careerist scholars who join denial campaigns—usually to advance their positions in academia—to those attacking genocide commemorations through apparently innocuous words, institutional or juridical actions, hate speech, or even blatant violence, they all share a desire that genocide denial be normalized out of an approval of genocide and even a pleasure at demeaning the victims and as a way of reserving the potential of renewed genocide as threat or future activity. What appears to be or is presented as purely economic logic typically involves other motivations as well, and the economic logic can even be a patina that makes denial somehow more palatable: One cannot help but question whether careerism is as much an alibi or rationalization for joining a denial campaign, which underneath might be motivated psychologically by the pleasure of siding with a powerful—indeed, “all powerful” = genocidal—entity and the rush that comes with being able to denigrate a targeted group with impunity. There are many paths to career success; supporting denialism out of self-interest still requires approving of genocide.

Yet, even given such insights into the nefariousness of deniers, those who analyze denialism usually maintain some sense of an external space in which denial does not reflect the epistemic norm but instead can be seen as false against anchoring non-denialist standards of truth. The simpler and less sophisticated among them focus on refuting denialist falsifications and manipulations in order to show that denialist statements are wrong; perhaps without even realizing it, they hold fast to a notion that the world generally seeks truth and that the epistemic frameworks of cultures and social processes support establishment of the truth if people are taught well enough what it is and how to recognize it. Out of such naivete did John Stuart Mill hold that, if free debate that does not restrict blatant lying is allowed, the truth will be established, at least eventually.⁸ Those with a bit more sophistication understand that the effects of propaganda are not dissipated simply by revelation of its falsity, and therefore conjoin the exposure of falsehood to recognition that the tactics and organizations of those who peddle it must be included in the revelation, to undercut the apparent legitimacy of denial from what are (mis)represented as credible sources—especially prominent universities such as Princeton.⁹

Yet, this is still about exposure and assumes that the general frame of reference in which we operate is such that, when proper critical thinking tools are employed to counter propagandistic as well as subtler forms of manipulation, genocide denials can and will be recognized as incorrect or untenable. Unfortunately, not even that increased sophistication sufficiently integrates the true nature of genocide denial as a function of universal psychological, cultural, social, and political tendencies. Truly advanced scholars and practitioners do not confuse outrage at denial’s devasting consequences and the malicious motivations often behind it with surprise at its prevalence. They do not assume that the world is naturally tilted against denial and that this or that denial campaign merely needs to be opposed with enough intellectual or political force to restore the truth-oriented stasis. On the contrary, as Terrence Des Pres so perspicuously recognized, at least in the contemporary world the universal epistemic tilt is toward denial, not away from it. Deniers have figured out how to seize and control some of the most core critical thinking tools, including valuing “the other side of the story” and challenging ideas to the level of logical doubt, even when pushing to the level of logical doubt is in fact not a rational method of truth determination in the face of denial.¹⁰ Only what I will term “critical anti-denialism” responds adequately to the depth of this assault on—not truth, but—humanity, for that is what its function and telos are. Only those adopting critical anti-denialism are not in denial about the true nature of this world, this real world, this deniers’ world.

How did we get here? To answer that, we must begin with a very careful clarification. It is tempting to give in to the world of denial by presenting it as something other than what it is. Though even Hume, as most any modern philosopher, eschewed full skepticism and distinguished between philosophical exercises that push the boundaries of knowledge criteria and concrete, everyday rejection of the view that knowledge is impossible, the powerful nature of philosophical critique allowed a kind of intellectual relativism to gain some credence. While even the aforementioned Mill’s attachment to truth was more one of faith in a kind of “invisible hand” of reason that will guarantee that all debate will somehow automatically tend toward establishment of the truth eventually (so that, no matter how long denial dominates, faith in the ultimate prevailing of truth can be maintained, that is, Godot will eventually arrive), it was still there as a standard.

Jean Baudrillard¹¹ is perhaps the most prominent philosopher known for pushing this line of thought to its limit, in the notion of “hyperreality.” Hyperreality is the space in which everything is simulation or copy; there is no anchoring real or original. As Baudrillard famously claimed, a simulated bank robbery that a guard does not know is simulated will end up being a situation of actual violence (and the simulated bank robbers might even start to act in accord with the new reality), while in psychological terms simulating or faking symptoms of a mental illness might actually be indistinguishable from someone “really” having that (or a) mental illness.

Setting aside the overly facile equivocations Baudrillard makes—an actual armed robbery intended by the assailants that is taken seriously by guards is simply a different phenomenon from a simulation that is transformed into a situation of real violence, and to say that it is impossible to distinguish between “real” and “simulated” symptoms of a mental illness is an epistemological, not ontological, issue; not being able to tell what is behind a door does not mean that there is no determined thing behind that door, and having the real symptoms of schizophrenia is to be a schizophrenic, while simulating them with sincerity is mental illness, but a different one, hypochondria—the key point Baudrillard is making is that, unlike epistemologists before him, he is not advocating a particular way of determining what is true of the world, but instead merely describing the epistemic state in which we exist. In this way, Baudrillard accurately describes the present state of epistemic affairs. It must be stressed that Baudrillard does not lapse into skepticism, such that there is no reality; on the contrary, Baudrillard posits “hyperreality” as a new way to understand what is actual, if no longer “real” in the received sense.

Yet, Baudrillard’s characterization of our current epistemic reality carries with it three errors. First, Baudrillard provides an inaccurate history of how we have gotten to where are and what the context of his innovation is. Second, Baudrillard presents his description as if it is value- or perspective-neutral. This leads to a third error: Baudrillard fails to test his model. As noted, he does not challenge his own logic in the examples he presents, but instead promotes an interpretation that is not the most obvious but that instead best supports his claims. And, he does not consider the consequences of the decision he has made about reality, though this is an inadvertent mistake stemming from the first two mistakes.

Baudrillard presents a history of belief systems regarding “image” (or “representation”), and “reality.” For our purposes, the “image”/“representation” is historically related to the concept of “appearance” but, in order to convey the nuance I wish to later, I link it to the term “rhetoric.” For Baudrillard, the image/representation has gone from “reflect[ing] a profound reality” to “mask[ing]” and misrepresenting “a profound reality,” then to “mask[ing] the absence of a profound reality” (emphasis in the original), and finally to having “no relation to any reality whatsoever,” that is, the state of hyperreality. In other words, representation has gone from corresponding to reality to complete disconnection from it—to the point where it is no longer meaningful to discuss “reality” independent of images without referents.

Setting aside the question of whether this succession of states is too reductive to capture the complexity of the dominant as well as heterodox views present in different cultures arranged by time (and place), the more pressing question is whether such a progression marks the revelation of the most advanced state of epistemic being, or rather is itself the product of a series of contingent if understandable cultural mutations. If Baudrillard is right to see each of these “phases of the image” as either the dominant view of the time or even the reality at that time, he fails to recognize the arbitrariness of each dominant view/reality. If these are or were the reality of the image/representation in a given period, that is because this reality itself was molded by the given view. If we live in an age—and remember that Baudrillard was writing forty years ago, before the internet, yet characterized in about 1980 the 2000s with what we must recognize as prescience—in which image is everything and one’s life is lived in virtual reality or cyberspace, not in some concrete world, that is so because we are choosing to value virtual reality ahead of other concepts of reality. We can certainly do this, but it is a value-laden choice, not an ineluctable condition (as so many prognosticators and profiteers in the digital age try to convince us). By watching “reality” shows that are of course complete constructs not in being scripted but in the very genesis of the situations and the activities of those who know th...