Historical negationism

Historical revisionism is the attempt to change commonly held ideas about the past. In its legitimate form (see historical revisionism) it is the reexamination of historical facts, with an eye towards updating historical narratives with newly discovered, more accurate, or less biased information, acknowledging that history of an event, as it has been traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate.

"Historical revisionism" (also but less often in English "negationism"), as used in this article, describes the process that attempts to rewrite history by minimizing, denying or simply ignoring essential facts. Perpetrators of such attempts to distort the historical record often use the term because it allows them to cloak their illegitimate activities with a phrase which has a legitimate meaning.

In some countries historical revisionism (negationism) of certain historical events is a criminal offense. Examples of historical revisionism (negationism) include Holocaust denial and Soviet history. Negationism relies on a number of techniques such as logical fallacies and appeal to fear. Examples of negationism and its effects can be found described in literature, for example Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and is used by hate groups on the Internet.

Politically motivated historical revisionism

Historical revisionism can be used as a label to describe the views of self-taught historians who publish articles that deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence. This usage has occurred because some authors who publish articles that deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence (such as David Irving, a proponent of Holocaust denial), have called themselves "historical revisionists". This label has been used by others pejoratively to describe them when criticizing their work. For example, some people have published popular histories that challenge the generally accepted view of a given period, such as the Holocaust. They do this by downplaying its scale and whitewashing other Nazi war crimes while emphasizing the suffering of the Axis populations at the hands of the Allies and stating or implying that the Allies committed war crimes as well.

Techniques used by politically motivated revisionists

Further information: Criticism of Holocaust denial

It is sometimes hard for a non-historian to distinguish between a book published by a historian doing peer-reviewed academic work, and a bestselling "amateur writer of history". For example, until David Irving lost his British libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and was found to be a "falsifier of history", the general public did not realize that his books were outside the canon of acceptable academic histories.

The distinction rests on the techniques used to write such histories. Accuracy and revision are central to historical scholarship. As in any scientific discipline, historians' papers are submitted to peer review. Instead of submitting their work to the challenges of peer review, revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, often political, using any number of techniques and logical fallacies to obtain their results. Because of this, they are considered by the historian community to be writing flawed History. Some of their most common rhetorical and other techniques include the following:

• Conspiracy theories
• The selective use of facts
• The denial or derision of known facts
• Argument from ignorance (hence the historian community's emphasis on the importance of historical memory and historical studies)
• The assumption of unproven facts
• The fabrication of facts
• The obfuscation of facts
• Claims of "counter-genocide", leading to a confusion between victims and executioners (for example, the Bombing of Dresden in World War II has been said by Holocaust deniers to be a "counter-genocide", thus transforming the German people into victims and henceforth exempting them from any kind of moral responsibility; the term has also been used concerning the Rwandan genocide and the Armenian Genocide)
• Fallacy of equivocation
• Appeal to consequences
• Irrelevant conclusions
• Burden of proof (due to the complex nature of what can be considered a historical "proof" - which differs from a logical proof - revisionists sometime ask historians to further prove an event which has been reasonably proved by historic standards, hence accepted as a fact by the historian community)
• Appeal to fear
• Appeal to spite
• Association fallacy
• Hasty generalization
• The use of attractive or neutral euphemisms to disguise unpleasant facts concerning their own positions
• The use of unpleasant euphemisms to describe opposing facts
• The two wrongs make a right fallacy
• Wishful thinking
• Constant attack against those disputing their views (Ad hominem) (close to slander and libel)
• Meaningless statements
• Reversal of blame (example: accusing Jews of provoking the Holocaust, or Armenians the genocide of 1915)

Law and historical revisionism

Historical revisionism of some issues (such as the Holocaust), in some countries, is a criminal offense. The Council of Europe defines it as "Denial, gross minimisation, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity" (article 6, additional protocol to the convention on cybercrime - see below).

International law

Additional protocol to the convention on cybercrime

An additional protocol to the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention, addressing materials and "acts of racist or xenophobic nature committed through computer networks," was proposed by some member States. This additional protocol was the subject of negotiations in late 2001 and early 2002. Final text of this protocol was adopted by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers on 7th November 2002 under the title "Additional Protocol to the Convention on cyber-crime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems, ("Protocol"). The Protocol opened on 28th January 2003 and entry into force is 1st March 2006. By 17th February 2006 6 States had ratified the Protocol and a further 24 had signed the Protocol but had not yet followed with ratifications.

The Protocol requires participating States to criminalize the dissemination of racist and xenophobic material through computer systems, as well as of racist and xenophobic-motivated threats and insults. Article 6, Section 1 of the Protocol specifically covers the denial of the Holocaust and other genocides recognized as such by other international courts set up since 1945 by relevant international legal instruments. Section 2 of Article 6 allows a Party to the Protocol at their discretion only to prosecute if the offense is committed with the intent to incite hatred, discrimination or violence; or to make use of a reservation, by allowing a Party not to apply – in whole or in part – Article 6.

The Council of Europe Explanatory Report of the Protocol states "European Court of Human Rights has made it clear that the denial or revision of “clearly established historical facts – such as the Holocaust – […] would be removed from the protection of Article 10 by Article 17” of the ECHR (see in this context the Lehideux and Isorni judgment of 23 September 1998)". However, the United States government does not believe that the final version of the Protocol is consistent with the United States' constitutional guarantees and has informed the Council of Europe that the United States will not become a Party to the protocol.

Domestic law

There are various domestic laws concerning negationism and/or hate speech (under which negationism is then included), such as the Belgian negationism law or the 1990 French Gayssot Act, which prohibits any "racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic" speech. Other European countries which have outlawed Holocaust denial are Switzerland (article 261bis of the Penal Code), Germany (§ 130 (3) of the penal code), Austria (article 3h Verbotsgesetz 1947), Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Poland (article 55 of the law creating the Institute of National Remembrance 1998).

February 23, 2005 French law on the "positive value" of colonialism

Main article: French law on colonialism

On February 23, 2005, the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) conservative majority at the French National Assembly voted a law compelling history textbooks and teachers to "...acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa." Criticized by many historians and teachers, among whom Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who refused to recognize that the French Parliament had a right to influence the way history is written, the law was also challenged by left-wing parties and in former French colonies. Several critics also pointed out that this refusal to acknowledge the racism involved in French colonialism was a form of revisionism.

In retaliation against the law, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika (accused by Pierre Messmer in 2000 and 2005 to have organized the massacre of 100,000 Harkis in 1962) refused to sign the prepared "friendly treaty" with France. In Martinique, Aimé Césaire, the famous author of the Négritude literary movement, refused to receive UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy, a probable contender for the 2007 presidential election. On June 26, 2005, Bouteflika declared that the law "...approached mental blindness, negationism and revisionism."

Supporters of the law were decried as a resurgence of the "colonial lobby", a term used in late 19th century France to label those people (deputies, scientists, businessmen, etc.) who supported French colonialism. The public uproar surrounding this law finally pushed president Jacques Chirac to oppose himself to it and to his own majority (the UMP which had voted the law). In defiance of this revisionism, Chirac stated that "In a Republic, there is no official history. It is not to the law to write history. Writing history is the business of historians." He then passed a decree charging the president of the Assembly, Jean-Louis Debré (UMP), with modifying the controversial law, taking out the revisionist article about the "recognition of the positive role of the French presence abroad". In order to do so, Chirac ordered Prime minister Dominique de Villepin to seize the Constitutional Council, whose decision would permit the legal repeal of the law. The Constitutional Council judged that history textbooks regulation is not the domain of the law, but of administrative reglementation. [regulation] As such, the contested amendment was repealed in the beginning of 2006.

The debate lifted on the February 23 2005 law point out, however, to a further debate in France concerning colonialism, which is linked to immigration. As the historian Benjamin Stora pointed out, colonialism is a major "memory" stake that is influencing the way various communities and the nation itself represent themselves. Official state history always had a hard time accepting the existence of past crimes and errors. Historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison also criticized the law. Indeed, the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), previously qualified as a "public order operation", was only recognized as a "war" by the French National Assembly in 1999. In the same sense, philosopher Paul Ricœur (1981) has underlined the needs for a "decolonization of memory", because mentalities themselves have been colonized during the "Age of imperialism."

Holocaust denial

Main articles: Holocaust denial and Criticism of Holocaust denial

Since the adoption of the term by Holocaust-deniers, historical revisionism has become stigmatized, and the term revisionist used as a description of suspect historical works dealing with the Holocaust. In Europe, historical revisionism more often than not refers to denial of the crimes committed by the Nazi state between 1933 and 1945 (the Holocaust, but also the Gypsy genocide (Porajmos), the murder of gay people and the assassination and sterilization of disabled people). Holocaust-deniers have attached themselves to the issue of the Heimatvertriebenen, and have in the view of their opposition attempted to use the sympathy for the plight of those Germans who suffered to blame the Jews for the suffering of the Heimatvertriebenen, or to retroactively minimize the suffering of the Holocaust.

David Irving, self-taught historian, lost his English libel case against Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books (for identifying him as a Holocaust denier). The trial judge Justice Charles Gray concluded that:

"Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favorable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

On February 20, 2006, Irving was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison for Holocaust denial under Austria's 1947 law banning Nazi revivalism and criminalizing the "public denial, belittling or justification of National Socialist crimes". Besides Austria, eleven other countries-- including Belgium (1995 Negationism Act), France (1990 Loi Gayssot), Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Switzerland (article 261bis of the Penal Code)-- have passed laws which make denial of the Holocaust a criminal offense punishable by prison sentence..

Turkey and the Armenian Genocide

Main article: Denial of the Armenian Genocide

Turkey has drafted laws like Article 301 that state "A person who publicly insults Turkishness, or the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment". This law has been used, for example, to bring charges against writer Orhan Pamuk for stating that "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it". The charges were later dropped.

On Tuesday 7 February 2006 the trial opened against five journalists charged with insulting the judicial institutions of the State, and also of aiming to prejudice a court case (Article 288 of the Turkish penal code). The five were on trial because they criticized a court order to shut down a conference in Istanbul about the mass killing of Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman Empire – the conference was nevertheless eventually held after having been transferred from a state university to a private university. The case was adjourned until 11 April, when four of the journalists were acquitted on a technicality. The case against the fifth journalist, Murat Belge, proceeded. On 8 June 2006, Murat Belge was acquitted by the Istanbul court. The trial is seen as a test case between Turkey and the European Union (EU), which insists that Turkey must allow increased rights to free expression as part of the negotiations on EU membership.

The aim of the conference, organized by a number of academics and intellectuals, was to offer a critical look at the official approach to the events of 1915, a topic that has long been taboo in Turkey.

Article 301 was introduced as part of a package of penal-law reform introduced to bring Turkey up to EU standards, in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkish EU membership. The Republic of Turkey does not deny the Ottoman Armenian casualties, but claims that they were not genocide. Specifically, the authorities claim that the deaths were due to wartime upheaval plus crimes committed outside the government of the Ottoman Empire and that the crimes were committed without said government's approval.

Examples of historical revisionism

Japanese war crimes

See also: Japanese imperialism

Historical attempts at downgrading the various war crimes committed by Japanese imperialism are examples of revisionist history . For example, some Japanese revisionists claim that Japan's invasion into China and World War II were justified reactions against western imperialism. The successive visits of former Prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are buried, have been resented by other Asian countries. The shrine has been criticised by people such as Tsuneo Watanabe (editor in chief of Yomiuri Shimbun) as a bastion of revisionism: "The Yasukuni Shrine runs a museum where they show items in order to encourage and worship militarism. It's wrong for the prime minister to visit such a place".

Furthermore, the history textbook controversy centres on how a junior-high history textbook called the "Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho" or "New History Textbook" allegedly downplays or "whitewashes" the nature of Japan's military aggression in the First Sino-Japanese War, in Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, and in World War II. The textbook was created by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a conservative Japanese organization, which, as its name implies, aims to reform the traditional and international view Japanese history in that period. In Japan, the Minstery of Education vet all Japanese history text books. Any submitted textbook which does not mention several atrocities committed by Japan during the WWII cannot pass this vetting process. However, this particular textbook places less emphasis on the nature of wartime atrocities and de-emphasizes the subject of the Chinese and Korean comfort women, which some feel is at least partly inappropriate at the junior high level. However, misreporting that Japanese school textbooks at large and this textbook in particular does not mention atrocities during WWII is rife in China and Korea. Japan's official policy is that publishers have the right to freedom of speech, however, the government does have the right to decide what is appropriate textbook which is taught in public and accredited private high school.

Hibakusha and various historians have often criticized the attempts of downgrading the importance of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which they sometimes called "nuclear holocaust", as an example of revisionist history.

Soviet and Russian history

File:The Commissar Vanishes 1.jpg

Nikolai Yezhov, the young man strolling with Stalin to his left, was executed in 1940.

File:The Commissar Vanishes 2.jpg

Communist Party censors edited the photo, removing Nikolai from (but ironically placing him into) history.

During the rule of dictator Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, a variety of revisionist tactics were employed to ignore unpleasant events of the past. Soviet school books would constantly be revised to remove photographs and articles that dealt with politicians who had fallen out of favor with the regime. History was frequently re-written, with past events modified so they always portrayed Stalin's government favourably.

Russian textbooks on the 20th Century

The textbook History of Russia and the World in the 20th Century, written by Nikita Zagladin, in 2004 replaced Igor Dolutsky's National History: 20th Century. Zagladin's text was implemented under the guidance and encouragement of Vladimir Putin who wanted a textbook that was more "patriotic". Critics of the new book cite a lack of detail in addressing historical events such as the Siege of Leningrad, Gulag labor camps, Soviet attack on Finland and the First and Second Chechen Wars as serious factual innaccuracies. The Holocaust is not mentioned and the rule of Joseph Stalin is glorified.

The revisionist school of communist studies

According to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, writing in their book In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage, many academic studies in the field of Soviet and Communist studies, especially in the area of History of the Soviet Union and regarding the history of the Communist Party USA by the "Revisionist School" have generally taken a benign view of the Party while minimizing Soviet atrocities and the totalitarian nature of the movement. Haynes and Klehr attribute the biased stance of these historians, many of whom entered academia during the Vietnam War era, to anti-American and anti-capitalist sentiments.

Serbia and the Yugoslav Wars

In part due to extreme censorship of media in Slobodan Milošević's 1992-2003 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, there is reluctance in Serbia to acknowledge crimes perpetuated by Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo during the Yugoslav wars, done mostly against civilians. Despite the fact that Serb ethnic cleansing has been proved and documented (including by ICTY Courts who have already sentenced many of those guilty), the strength of nationalism in Serbia led to revisionist attitutes towards these crimes, ranging from totally denying the crimes to attributing them to isolated acts of revenge, despite the fact that it has been branded as genocide . Revisionists often claim that evidence (such as photographs and documents) is fabricated anti-Serb propaganda .

Macedonism

The political idea prevalent in the Republic of Macedonia advocates revising history in order to project an ethnic group that formed in the 20th century - ethnic Macedonians - in the context of the 19th century and even in the Middle Ages. For example, Bulgarian Tsar Samuil is denied the Bulgarian nature of his kingdom, despite overwhelming evidence supporting it, and is defined as a "Slavic" or "Macedonian" king. Further attempts are made to deny the Hellenic nature of the ancient kingdom of Macedon and to seek connections between present day ethnic Macedonians and the Ancient Macedonians.

Miscellaneous

Crypto-revisionism

Crypto-revisionism is a derogatory term used to describe the act of engaging in negationism for primarily political purposes. The term "crypto" is intended to refer to the use of obscure, little-known (or misunderstood) reasoning and overblown statements in order to hide the true intent behind the author's actions (in the same sense that cryptography is used to hide a secret message from prying eyes).

The term "crypto-revisionism" is usually used in public circles in a demeaning manner. Authors often use the term as a way of suggesting that their opponents are trying to hide the truth and bury it with cryptic statements and muddling, distracting facts that are actually unrelated to the subject at hand.

Outdated terminology or ideas

Some history materials, especially those targeted to children or young adults, exclude or restate words and ideas that were widely used in a past era. This form of revisionism might avoid using terminology now considered offensive, or exclude political positions now considered unacceptable. Motivations vary widely, but might include avoiding controversy or hurt feelings, or producing a large distance between older and modern ideas. For example, in some American schools the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. are not presented in their entirety, as King frequently used racial terms such as negro, which was widely accepted when he used it, but in modern United States usage is generally considered outdated or offensive.

Slander or promotion

Revisionist history is also used to promote or slander persons, or promote or discredit an idea — for example, bringing evidence that Abraham Lincoln was homosexual, or that Winston Churchill was a Communist sympathizer; in these cases the goal would not be to downplay or ignore a figure or event, but rather to highlight or reveal a supposedly revised aspect of history, or one that was simply unknown or thought to be of little importance. Sometimes some historical figures are censored or hidden, such as James Wolfe in some Canadian history textbooks. Other times more familiar white/anglo males are de-emphasized in favor of women or non-white males, in an attempt to redress a perceived bias. Though this practice may be more politically correct, it also risks the loss of important figures.

Historical revisionism in literature

In George Orwell's 1984, the government of the main character's country, nominally led by the enigmatic Big Brother, is constantly revising history to be in harmony with the current political situation. For instance, if the country is at war with another, then the official position is that they have always been at war with that country. If the situation changes, the civilians are brainwashed accordingly. In this novel, historical revisionism is one of the main policies of the propaganda arm ("Ministry of Truth") of Oceania's government.

Historical revisionism on the Internet

As the internet is always in movement, sites being created and others erased, it may lead to the temptation of revising history by erasing traces and proofs of previous actions. The Internet Archive, for example, was created against such a loss of memory which reminds Orwell's 1984. According to a 2006 article by the Financial Times, "Wikipedia users expose flattery by political staff" and "revisionism" attempts by US senators. Spam attempts such as the one made by Serdar Argic on usenet to deny the Armenian genocide are also used. The Nizkor Project is dedicated to countering Holocaust denial on the web, although it is against hate speech crime laws on the internet.

See also

• Belgian negationism law
• Big Lie
• Black Legend
• Catalan negationism
• Dunning School
• Hate speech
• Historical revision of the Inquisition
• Historical revisionism
• History wars (Australia)
• Information warfare
• French Loi Gayssot
• Neo-Confederate
• Propaganda

References

• John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial : Historians, Communism, and Espionage, Encounter Books, September, 2003, hardcover, 312 pages, ISBN 1-893554-72-4
• "Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial" , by Richard J. Evans, 2001, ISBN 0-465-02153-0. The author is a Professor of Modern History, at University of Cambridge and he was a major expert witness at the Irving v. Lipstadt trial, and this book presents both his view of the trial, and much of his expert witness report, including his research on the Dresden death count.

Further reading

• Religious Right History Revisionism
• Untruth in the Classroom, 1994
• Why "revisionism" isn't
• Mad Revisionist: A parody site on historical revisionism
• Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans FBA presented at the trial "Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books"
• Revisionist History - a satirical look at historical revisionism
• Article about revisionism concerning the Amerindians by The Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law.
• Nizkor Project - antirevisionist website
• Left-Wing Deniers - website attacking deniers of communist atrocities and genocides
• 1984 (book) by George Orwell