PhD in Denial: Denials of Genocide as Mind Mayhem and Madness even by Well-Known Scholars
Israel W. Charny

• Holocaust!

or

• Armenian Genocide!

• Believe it or not, some serious intellectuals deny the Cambodian Genocide!
  

• Believe it or not, some serious intellectuals deny the genocide in Srebrenica!

• And now, beyond belief, there is a cadre of people, including distinguished scholars, who deny the developing Rwandan Genocide!
  

--denials of the Cambodian Genocide (the material excerpted from Bruce Sharp on "Evil Scholars?  Noam Chomsky and Cambodia");

--denials of the genocidal massacre in Srebrenica  (see the article by  Gerald Caplan previously referred to in which he speaks of the "'crowning achievement' of Edward Herman and David Peterson in their savage genocide-denial over the events in the Balkans in the 1990's, where they say that the extremely well-document massacre of 8000 defenceless Bosnian Muslims by the Bosnian Serbs (Chetnik) army in July 1995 - termed even by the lame International Court of Justice a genocide - never really happened";

--and now also, in a mind-defying act, deniers of the Rwandan Genocide, first of all by the same Edward Herman, who as Adam Jones points out in his article, is warmly endorsed by John Pilger and Noam Chomsky.  Jones writes: "Most surprisingly and disturbingly, Noam Chomsky provides a foreward to the book - declaring it a 'powerful' work and thereby lending the unequaled authority of his name."

One is reminded of the famous Foreward that Chomsky published to a book by arch Holocaust denier Robert Faurrison, where Chomsky claimed variously that he had never read the book, that the Foreward was published without his knowledge, and that the meaning of the Foreward was not to support Faurrison's Holocaust denial - for which Faurrison was convicted with a suspended jail sentence in France- but to support all free speech, even denials of the Holocaust.  Now Chomsky has another Foreward supporting bizarre and ugly denial of a genocide.  It seems high time to recast the view of Noam Chomsky - otherwise to his credit undoubtedly a brilliant and great linguist - as a corrupt 'Say Anything You Want To' ideologist.

I can't even begin to think of a 'reason' or benefit to be gained from these latest assertions that the world is flat - that there were no genocides in Cambodia, Srebrenica, Rwanda.  Who gains what from these denials?  

The Deniers are Crazy!

The deniers' stupidity, madness, arrogance, and hostility to normal responsible human beings and to normal societal organization now comes up for our viewing in a huge new and clear way.

These assertions are crazy!

These deniers are crazy!  

Seeing the basic craziness of these denials also tempts us to 'return' to the classic denials of the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide to which we had become (too) accustomed, and as if accepted as a normal bigoted part of the human landscape, and no longer accept ostensibly rational explanations of them.  It may be that in all cases of denials of genocide, many of the deniers are plain 'nuts,' or perhaps more simply humans who are prepared to lie, including to themselves, about anything - and we should be tough in condemning them and not fall for their 'rights' to 'look at the other side of the issue.'

It seems high time to realize that there are an awful lot of people among us, including a hell of a lot of PhD's, who entitle themselves to say anything whatsoever about any topic in totally lying, distorting, irrational ways.  In everyday language, they are mad people.  

We need to remind ourselves how numerous were the holders of doctorates who sat at the Wannsee Conference and formulated the Final Solution for killing millions of Jews in Europe.  Did you know that famed Dr. Mengele not only had an MD from Frankfurt University but held a PhD in anthropology from Munich University. (The late Franklin Littell, a heroic early Holocaust scholar who focused on the challenges of the Holocaust to the Christian church and ultimately to all moral thinking, proposed to Mengele's universities that both his degrees be revoked posthumously as a statement of dissociation by the universities for our Western civilization, from killing-monsters like Mengele).

In other words, beyond our rational and thoughtful explanations of various types of motivation and reward to known deniers of genocide, which we definitely need to continue to track both in individuals and collectives, it is time for us to conclude scientifically that a great deal of denial comes from the ridiculous human mind acting out unconscious needs, and that this phenomenon is characteristic of many psychiatrically undiagnosed as if rational and responsible people.  As noted several times, it can be true of PhD scholars.  Now I will add that it can even be true of bonafide members of associations of genocide scholars.

Aside from the malevolent deniers, like the killers and their cohorts who 'simply' want to deny a crime, and the ideologists who want to cover for a county or a political belief system, we also have learned that many - perhaps the majority of deniers are relatively 'innocent' - they hear of the denials and unconsciously enjoy adopting the position as if it were proven.  Put together the innocent deniers and the 'mad deniers' and we have a picture of a species that has hardly tamed its primitive mind.  And if one looks squarely at what human beings do to harm their own and others' lives, there is hardly any doubt. The deniers are madmen in a mad species.

When we meet the deniers in our midst we should not be ashamed to see the truth that in any number of cases they are pain-in-the-butt obstinate, exhibitionistic, hateful people who are imposing their control of information and reality on us and getting their emotional rocks off on us by destroying the frames of knowledge and rationality that many of us need and want to live by.   In the worst cases, as the distance between facts and reality versus the deniers claims grows, we should not be afraid also to say they are mad as well as rotten, even if they are PhD's.

The many genocide scholars who said that 'genocide denial is the last stage of genocide' were very right.  Unfortunately, every genocide is denied; not only rationally by the perpetrators trying to hide their rotten crimes, or the fellow travelers of the perpetrators whose political and economic interests justify their not giving a damn about the facts of reality; and not only as if rationally by the various bigots and people with ideological axes to grind. The deniers are also nasty spoiled brats 'getting off on us.'


Israel W. Charny is the Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem and retired Professor of Psychology and Family Therapy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, Editor-in-Chief of the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GENOCIDE, published by ABC-Clio Publishers, US and UK, Author of FASCISM AND DEMOCRACY IN THE HUMAN MIND, published by the University of Nebraska Press, Both the encyclopedia and the book on fascist and democratic thinking were awarded "OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR" by the American Library Association. 

He is also author of FIGHTING SUICIDE BOMBING: "A WORLDWIDE CAMPAIGN FOR LIFE" published 2007 by Praeger Security International [Greenwood Books], and republished in India and Sri Lanka along with the Praeger edition by three publishers: Penguin Books, Pentagon Press, and Lancer.


Please click here to see a Selected Bibliography of Publications by Israel W. Charny on Denial of Genocide

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