Genocide denial
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize statements of the scale and severity of an incidence of genocide. Some examples are Armenian Genocide denial, Bosnian Genocide denial, Denial of the Holodomor, Holocaust denial, Rwandan Genocide denial and Serbian Genocide denial.
This denial of genocide is usually considered a form of illegitimate historical revisionism. The distinction between respectable academic historians and those of illegitimate historical revisionists rests on the techniques used to write such histories. Accuracy and revision are central to historical scholarship. As in any academic discipline, historians' papers are submitted to peer review. Instead of submitting their work to the challenges of peer review, illegitimate revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, often political, using any number of techniques and rhetorical fallacies to obtain their results.
The European Commission proposed a European Union–wide anti-racism law in 2001, which included an offense of genocide denial, but European Union states failed to agree on the balance between prohibiting racism and freedom of expression. After six years of wrangling a watered down compromise was reached in 2007 giving states freedom to implement the legislation as they saw fit.
See also
- Genocides in history
- Armenian Genocide denial
- Nanking Massacre denial
- Cambodian genocide denial
- Laws against Holocaust denial
