An interesting train of thought,
pnewton.
This article by Israel W Charny opens up some deeper thinking on the matter.
The Psychological Satisfaction of Denials of the Holocaust or Other Genocides by Non-Extremists or Bigots, and Even by Known Scholars
"Presented originally as an Invited Address to Conference in New York, April 1995, on “Genocide and Holocaust: Armenian and Jewish Perspectives” sponsored by the Israel Colloquium and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Armenia.
*“Denials of known genocides are not only the work of bigots, such as anti-semites and neo-nazis who deny the Holocaust or Turkish ideologues who deny the history of the Armenian Genocide, but are voiced by many people in all walks of life, and even by bona fide respectable academicians. It is important to understand the motivations and thinking and mind formulations through which such denials are constructed and promoted.” *
“The present paper focuses on a concept of ‘innocent denial’ where the denier really may not be consciously entirely aware of the facts and not necessarily aware of their personal interests in choosing to join with deniers of a known genocide.”
(I am posting only the Conclusion as it is a very long article)
Conclusion
Denials of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust challenge all of us who seek to preserve not only the historical record, but also a sense of tragedy and moral outrage over these events. It is my judgment that only as we become more capable of analyzing the dynamics of any given denial will we be in a position to create better strategies for counterattacking and fighting the denials and the deniers.
Taner Akçam, a Turkish scholar who is affiliated with a research institute in Hamburg, who has stated the importance of understanding the dynamics of perpetrators is one of the rare but growing number of Turkish scholars who acknowledge the Armenian Genocide: “If you want ‘to understand’ and analyse collectively committed cruelty, and you wish to prevent the repetition of such events, then you will not find a solution if you direct your attention primarily to the group of ‘victims.’ Attention must be directed to the ‘perpetrators’ in order to uncover a series of ‘conscious or unconscious’ mechanisms which underlie their actions, for it is the activation of these mechanisms that makes these people ‘perpetrators’” (Akçam, 1995, p. 353).
The same can be said of the importance of our understanding deniers of known genocides, who are, for all practical purposes, accomplices of genocide even after the fact of the murders.
On a metaphoric level, denial is a virus which has many different forms, and which changes its forms. It is especially important to note that the different strategies of denial can be mixed with one another.
We must fight denials because the denial of genocide is a crucial symbolic and ideological process which not only follows every genocide after it has taken place, but is a process which is intended to desensitize and make possible the emergence of new forms of genocidal violence to peoples in the future (see Charny, 1992a, 1999).
We must create new means for fighting denials and deniers in academia, in the mainstream of public education, as well as in the mainstreams of the media. I have expressed the hope that we can establish a Commission to Combat Denials of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide and All Known Genocides. I envision such a Commission as consisting of representatives from a variety of academic disciplines, and also including applied specialists in public opinion polling, media professionals, advertising executives, and indeed popular folk-culture heroes and political leaders, and also ecumenical religious leaders, all brought together to develop a broad-based approach to insisting on the integrity and rationality of the historical truths of the major genocides that civilization is obligated to remember in humility and repentance.
Most of all, we need to link the battles against denials to civilization’s obligation to recommit itself to the cardinal principle, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” for that is the real issue underlying denials of genocide.(my bold)
ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=27
. Do you really want that
thank you for kindly pointing the way to those who want to know the truth:tiphat:I respect that.