Historical revisionism (negationism)

Historical revisionism involves either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see historical revisionism.^[1] This article deals solely with the latter, the distortion of history, which—if it constitutes the denial of historical crimes—is also sometimes called negationism.^[2][3]

In attempting to revise the past, illegitimate historical revisionism may use techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine; inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents; attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite; manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view; and deliberately mis-translating texts (in languages other than the revisionist's).^[4]

Notable examples of negationism include Holocaust denial and some Soviet historiography.^[5][6]

Some countries have criminalised the negationist revision of certain historical events, while others take a more cautious position for various reasons, such as protection of free speech; still others mandate negationist views.

In modern times, negationism may spread via new media, such as the Internet. In literature, the effects of historical revisionism can appear in science-fiction novels such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell.

Reasons for revisionism

Historical revisionism is conducted to influence a target's ideology or politics for a particular purpose. Revisionists understand Plato's dictum that, "those who tell the stories also hold the power".^[7] Sometimes the purpose is as innocent as wanting to sell more books or attract attention with a startling headline.^[8] Often, however, that purpose is to achieve a nation's aims by transferring war guilt, demonizing an enemy, providing an illusion of victory, or preserving friendship.^[9] James M. McPherson, former president of the American Historical Association, wrote that some would want revisionist history understood as, "a consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present".^[10] Broadly understood, there are two motivations behind revisionist history: the ability to control ideological influence and to control political influence.

Ideological influence

Historical revisionists "seem to have been given a collective task in [a] nation's cultural development, the full significance of which is emerging only now: to redefine [a nation's] status in a changing world".^[11] History is a tool that contributes to the shaping of national identity, cultures, and memories. Through the study of history, individuals are imbued with a particular identity. By revising history, therefore, one has the ability to specifically craft that ideological identity. Because historians are credited as people who single-mindedly pursue truth, revisionist historians capitalize on the profession's credibility and present their pseudohistory as true scholarship.^[12] By adding a measure of credibility to their work, their ideas are more readily accepted in the public mind.^[12] To an extent, historical revisionism is recognized as 'truth-seekers' finding different truths to fit the needed political, social, or ideological context.^[13]

Political influence

History provides insight into past political trends and helps predict political implications of the present. Revisionism can be used to cultivate specific politically motivated myths – sometimes with official consent.^[14] Self-taught, amateur, or dissident academic historians manipulate or misrepresent historical accounts to achieve deliberate political ends. Herodotus, for example, wrote his version of history to gather political support for the Greek system of government over the aggressive Persian despot.^[15] Also, Soviet Communism and Soviet historiography treated reality and the party line as one and the same,^[16] employing historical revisionism to advance a specific political (and ideological) agenda.^[17]

Techniques

Most (if not all) of the techniques used in historical revisionism are for deception or denial. The specific techniques of historical revisionism vary from using forged documents as genuine sources (or inventing reasons to distrust genuine documents), to exploiting opinions by taking them out of their historical context.^[18] Other techniques include manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view, and deliberately mis-translating texts into other languages. Instead of submitting their work to peer review, revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, and often use fallacies to obtain the desired results.^[4] Because historical revisionism can be used to deny, deceive, or influence explanations and perceptions, it can be regarded as a technique of propaganda.^[19] Finally, techniques of historical revisionism operate within the intellectual battlespace in order to advance an interpretation or perception of history.^[20]

British historian Richard J. Evans describes the difference in technique between historians and revisionists thus:

Reputable and professional historians do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account, and, if necessary, amend their own case, accordingly. They do not present, as genuine, documents which they know to be forged just because these forgeries happen to back up what they are saying. They do not invent ingenious, but implausible, and utterly unsupported reasons for distrusting genuine documents, because these documents run counter to their arguments; again, they amend their arguments, if this is the case, or, indeed, abandon them altogether. They do not consciously attribute their own conclusions to books and other sources, which, in fact, on closer inspection, actually say the opposite. They do not eagerly seek out the highest possible figures in a series of statistics, independently of their reliability, or otherwise, simply because they want, for whatever reason, to maximize the figure in question, but rather, they assess all the available figures, as impartially as possible, in order to arrive at a number that will withstand the critical scrutiny of others. They do not knowingly mistranslate sources in foreign languages in order to make them more serviceable to themselves. They do not willfully invent words, phrases, quotations, incidents and events, for which there is no historical evidence, in order to make their arguments more plausible.^[21]

Deception

Deception is offensively using falsified information, lying, and obscuring the truth to manipulate information or opinion. Revisionist historians use deception techniques to help achieve their political or ideological goals. Within literature, history distinguishes between books published by academic historians doing peer-reviewed work based on credible sources, and deceptive history books based on uncredible sources.^[22] The distinction between types of history books rests upon the research techniques used in writing such histories; accuracy and revision are central to historical scholarship. As in any academic discipline, historians submit their papers for peer review, however, instead of submitting their work to the challenges of a peer review, revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, often political, and use many techniques and rhetorical fallacies to obtain the desired results. In doing so, the revisionists therefore engages in deceiving their audience into believing manipulated information. The distinction between types of history books rests upon the research techniques used in writing such histories; accuracy and revision are central to historical scholarship. When these techniques are purposefully sidestepped, the presented information may be considered deception.

Denial

Denial is defensively protecting information from being shared or claiming facts are untrue. Protection can include both physical security, and prevention techniques such as blame shifting, censorship, distraction, and media manipulation. Negationism is the denial of established historical facts – particularly in regards to denying the crimes of World War II and the Holocaust.

Relativization and trivialization

Comparing certain historical atrocities to other crimes commonly occurs in the context of historical revisionism, a practice also referred to as relativization. It does not make claims on facts, but moral judgements, in order to alter the public perception of the first atrocity. Although such comparisons may be frequent in revisionist context, their pronouncement is not necessarily part of revisionist intentions on facts, but an opinion on moral judgement.

• The Holocaust and Nazism: Deborah Lipstadt contends that the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the post-war expulsions and the formal Allied war crimes, is at the center of, and a continuously repeated theme of, contemporary Holocaust denial, calling them "immoral equivalencies".^[23]

Examples

War crimes

Japanese war crimes

The post-war minimisation of the war crimes of Japanese imperialism is an example of "illegitimate" historical revisionism;^[24] some contemporary Japanese revisionists, such as Yuko Iwanami (granddaughter of General Hideki Tojo), propose that Japan's invasion of China, and the Second World War, itself, were justified reactions to racist Western imperialism of the time.^[25] On 2 March 2007, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during the war, saying, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion". Before he spoke, some Liberal Democratic Party legislators also sought to revise Yohei Kono's apology to former comfort women in 1993;^[26] likewise, there was the controversial negation of the six-week Nanking Massacre in 1937–1938.^[27]

Shinzo Abe led the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and headed the Diet antenna of Nippon Kaigi, two openly revisionist groups denying Japanese war crimes.

Editor-in-chief of the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun Tsuneo Watanabe criticized the Yasukuni Shrine 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".^[28] Other critics note that men, who would contemporarily be perceived as "Korean" and "Chinese", are enshrined for the military actions they effected as Japanese Imperial subjects.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings

The Hibakusha ("explosion-affected people") of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seek compensation from their government and criticize it for failing to "accept responsibility for having instigated and then prolonged an aggressive war long after Japan's defeat was apparent, resulting in a heavy toll in Japanese, Asian and American lives".^[29] Historians Hill and Yukiko have stated that attempts to minimize the importance of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is revisionist history.^[30] EB Sledge expressed concern that such revisionism, in his words "mellowing", would allow us to forget the harsh facts of the history that led to the bombings.^[31]

Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav wars

There have been a number of scholars and political activists who have publicly disagreed with mainstream views of Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav wars of 1991–1999. Among the points of contention are whether the victims of massacres such as the Račak massacre and Srebrenica massacre were unarmed civilians or armed resistance fighters, whether death and rape tolls were inflated, and whether prison camps such as Sremska Mitrovica camp were sites of mass war crimes.

These scholars are labeled "revisionists" by their opponents. For example, Diana Johnstone's controversial book, Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions, questions whether genocidal killings occurred in Srebrenica. The book was rejected by publishers in Sweden^[32] prompting an open letter in 2003 defending Johnstone's book (and her right to publish) which was signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali and John Pilger: "We regard Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade as an outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition."^[33][34] On the other hand, Richard Caplan of Reading and Oxford University reviewed the work in International Affairs, where he described the work as "a revisionist and highly contentious account of western policy and the dissolution of Yugoslavia".^[35] The historian Marko Attila Hoare called it "an extremely poor book, one that is little more than a polemic in defence of the Serb-nationalist record during the wars of the 1990s—and an ill-informed one at that".^[32]

The Report about Case Srebrenica by Darko Trifunovic,^[36] commissioned by the government of the Republika Srpska,^[37] was described by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as "one of the worst examples of revisionism in relation to the mass executions of Bosnian Muslims committed in Srebrenica in July 1995".^[38] Outrage and condemnation by a wide variety of Balkan and international figures eventually forced the Republika Srpska to disown the report.^[37][39]

Turkey and the Armenian Genocide

Turkish laws such as Article 301, that state "a person who publicly insults Turkishness, or the Republic or [the] Turkish Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment", were used to criminally charge the writer Orhan Pamuk with disrespecting Turkey, for saying that "Thirty thousand Kurds, and a million Armenians, were killed in these lands, and nobody, but me, dares to talk about it".^[40] The controversy occurred as Turkey was first vying for membership in the European Union (EU) where the suppression of dissenters is looked down upon.^[41] Article 301 originally was part of penal-law reforms meant to modernise Turkey to EU standards, as part of negotiating Turkey's membership to the EU.^[42] In 2006, the charges were dropped due to pressure from the Turkish government.^[41]

On 7 February 2006, five journalists were tried for insulting the judicial institutions of the State, and for aiming to prejudice a court case (per Article 288 of the Turkish penal code).^[43] The reporters were on trial for criticising the court-ordered closing of a conference in Istanbul regarding the Armenian genocide during the time of the Ottoman Empire. The conference continued elsewhere, transferring locations from a state to a private university. The trial continued until 11 April 2006, when four of the reporters were acquitted. The case against the fifth journalist, Murat Belge, proceeded until 8 June 2006, when he was also acquitted. The purpose of the conference was to critically analyze the official Turkish view of the Armenian Genocide in 1915; a taboo subject in Turkey.^[44] The trial proved to be a test case between Turkey and the European Union; the EU insisted that Turkey allow increased freedom of expression rights, as a condition to membership.^[45][46] The Republic of Turkey does not deny the Ottoman Armenian casualties, but denies they were genocide, specifically claiming that said deaths were consequence of war, and also were criminal killings neither approved nor committed by the Ottoman Empire.

Soviet history

During the existence of the Russian SFSR (1918–1991) and the Soviet Union (1922–1991), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) attempted to ideologically and politically control the writing of both academic and popular history. These attempts were most successful in 1934–52 period. According to Mehnert, the Soviets attempt to control academic historiography (the writing of history by academic historians) to promote ideological and ethno-racial imperialism by Russians.^[5] During the 1928–56 period, modern and contemporary history was generally composed according to the wishes of the CPSU, not the requirements of accepted historiographic method.^[5] According to some authors, such as Mehnert, this practice was fundamentally corrupt.

During and after the rule of Nikita Khrushchev (1956–64), Soviet historiographic practice is more complicated. Although not entirely corrupted, Soviet historiography was characterized by complex competition between Stalinist and anti-Stalinist Marxist historians.^[6] To avoid the professional hazard of politicized history, some historians chose pre-modern, medieval history or classical history, where ideological demands were relatively relaxed and conversation with other historians in the field could be fostered;^[47] nevertheless, despite the potential danger of proscribed ideology corrupting historians' work, not all of Soviet historiography was corrupt.^[6]

Control over party history and the legal status of individual ex-party members played a large role in dictating the ideological diversity and thus the faction in power within the CPSU. The history of the Communist Party was revised to delete references to leaders purged from the party, especially during the rule of Joseph Stalin (1922–53).^{[note 1]}

• 

  Original: Nikolai Yezhov at Stalin's left.

• 

  Censored: Yezhov deleted from Stalin's left.

In the Historiography of the Cold War, a controversy over negationist historical revisionism exists, where numerous revisionist scholars in the West have been accused of whitewashing the crimes of Stalinism, overlooking the Katyn massacre in Poland and disregarding the validity of the Venona messages with regards to Soviet espionage in the United States.^[48][49][50]

North Korea and the Korean War

Ever since the outbreak of the Korean War, the authorities of North Korea have consistently denied that the war started on the initiative of the DPRK. North Korean historiography and propaganda continues to maintain that the war was deliberately provoked by the leaders of South Korea, who in turn were instigated by the government of the United States: "On June 17, Juche 39 (1950) the then U.S. President [Harry S.] Truman sent [John Foster] Dulles as his special envoy to South Korea to examine the anti-north war scenario and give an order to start the attack. On June 18 Dulles inspected the 38th parallel and the war preparations of the 'ROK Army' units. That day he told Syngman Rhee to start the attack on North Korea with the counter-propaganda that North Korea first 'invaded' the south."^[51] North Korean publications occasionally claimed that the U.S. needed Korea as "a bridgehead for invading the Asian continent and as a strategic base from which to fight against national-liberation movements and socialism and, ultimately, to attain world supremacy."^[52] The war crimes committed by North Korean forces were similarly denied. In 1951-1952, the leaders of the Workers' Party of Korea internally admitted the "excesses" of their earlier campaign against those North Korean citizens who had – actually or allegedly – collaborated with the enemy during the brief US-South Korean occupation of the DPRK, but later they blamed every wartime atrocity (such as the Sinchon Massacre) squarely on the United States. The over-zealous campaign against "collaborators" was attributed to US manipulation; as Pak Chang-ok, a high-ranking North Korean leader, put it, the enemy had "started to use a new method, namely, it donned a leftist garb, which considerably influenced the inexperienced cadres of the party and government organs."^[53] In 1995-1998, the publication of newly declassified Russian archival documents by Kathryn Weathersby clearly confirmed that the Korean War had been started by North Korea on the personal initiative of Kim Il-sung, and refuted the North Korean Allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War. The state-run Korean Central News Agency simply dismissed the aforesaid Russian documents as "sheer forgery."^[54]

Holocaust denial

Many Holocaust deniers reject "denier" as an accurate description of their point of view, preferring, instead, the term "Holocaust revisionist";^[55] nonetheless, scholars prefer "Holocaust denier" to differentiate deniers from legitimate historical revisionists, whose goal is to accurately analyze historical evidence with established methods.^{[note 2]} Historian Alan Berger reports that Holocaust deniers argue in support of a preconceived theory – that the Holocaust either did not occur or was mostly a hoax – by ignoring extensive historical evidence to the contrary.^[56]

Hence, as retroactive minimisation of the Holocaust, Holocaust deniers have attached themselves to the Heimatvertriebenen (ethnic Germans expelled mainly from the eastern quarter of Germany annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after the war), and have, per their opponents, attempted to use sympathy for said Germans, and blame the Jews for the suffering of the Heimatvertriebenen. Moreover, when the discredited author David Irving^{[note 3]} lost his English libel case against Deborah Lipstadt, and her publisher, Penguin Books, and thus was publicly identified as a Holocaust denier,^[57] 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.^[58]

On 20 February 2006, Irving was found guilty, and sentenced to three years imprisonment for Holocaust denial, under Austria's 1947 law banning Nazi revivalism and criminalising the "public denial, belittling or justification of National Socialist crimes".^[59] Besides Austria, eleven other countries^[60]—including Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Switzerland—have criminalised Holocaust denial as punishable with imprisonment.^{[note 4]}

In textbooks

Japan

The history textbook controversy centers upon the secondary school history textbook Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho ("New History Textbook") said to minimise the nature of Japanese militarism in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), in annexing Korea in 1910, in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), and in the Second World War (1939–45). The conservative Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform commissioned the Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho textbook with the purpose of traditional national and international view of that Japanese historical period. The Ministry of Education vets all history textbooks, and those that do not mention Japanese war crimes and atrocities are not vetted; however, the Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho de-emphasises aggressive Japanese Imperial wartime behaviour and the matter of Chinese and Korean comfort women. It has even been denied that the Nanking massacre (a series of violences and rapes carried on by the Japanese army against Chinese civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War) ever took place (see Nanking massacre denial).^[61] In 2007, the Ministry of Education attempted to revise textbooks regarding the Battle of Okinawa, lessening the involvement of the Japanese military in Okinawan civilian mass suicides.^[62][63]

Pakistan

Allegations of historical revisionism have been made regarding Pakistani textbooks in that they are laced with Indophobic and Islamist bias. Pakistan's use of officially published textbooks has been criticized for using schools to more subtlety foster religious extremism, whitewashing Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent and promoting "expansive pan-Islamic imaginings" that "detect the beginnings of Pakistan in the birth of Islam on the Arabian peninsula".^[64] Since 2001, the Pakistani government has stated that curriculum reforms have been underway by the Ministry of Education.^[65][66][67]

Ex-Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo)

In the 1990s following a massive western media coverage of the Yugoslav civil war, there was a rise of the publications considering the matter on historical revisionism of the Ex-Yugoslav region. One of the most prominent authors on the field of historical revisionism in the 1990s considering the newly emerged republics is Sir Noel Malcolm and his works Bosnia: A Short History (1994) and Kosovo: A Short History (1998), that have seen a robust debate among historians following their release. For example, following the release of Kosovo: A Short History (1998), the merits of the book were the subject of an extended debate in Foreign Affairs. Critics said that Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History (1998) was "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans".^[68] In late 1999, Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota reviewed the book in Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online and while praising aspects of the book also asserted that it was "shaped by the author's overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths", that Malcolm was "partisan", and also complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false".^[69]

Russia

In May 2009, Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, established the History Commission of Russia (formally, the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests) to counter aggressive attempts to rewrite history to Russian disadvantage, yet Alexander Cherkasov of the Memorial human-rights group, called it a regression to Soviet-era control.^[70] Historian Isaak Rozental says, "Their [the Kremlin's] approach is not to study history but to use it."^[71] The textbook History of Russia and the World in the 20th century (2004), by Nikita Zagladin, replaced the National History: 20th century, by Igor Dolutsky; Zagladin's textbook was produced under the aegis of President Vladimir Putin, who wanted a more patriotic textbook. Critics of the textbook note the lack of detail about historical events such as the Siege of Leningrad (1941–44), the Gulag forced-labour camps, the Russo–Finnish Winter War (1939–40), the First Chechen War (1994–96), and the Second Chechen War (1999–2000), as serious factual inaccuracies; most egregious, the critics propose, is the absence of the Holocaust (1933–45), and the glorification of the rule of Josef Stalin (1922–53).^[72]

French law recognising colonialism's positive value

On 23 February 2005, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) 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".^[73] Criticized by historians and teachers, among them Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who refused to recognise the French Parliament's right to influence the way history is written (despite the French Holocaust denial laws, see Loi Gayssot). That law was also challenged by left-wing parties and the former French colonies; critics argued that the law was tantamount to refusing to acknowledge the racism inherent to French colonialism, and that the law proper is a form of historical revisionism.^{[note 5][74][75]}

Ramifications and judicature

Some countries have criminalised historical revisionism of historic events such as the Holocaust. The Council of Europe defines it as the "denial, gross minimisation, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity" (article 6, Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime).

International law

Some council-member states proposed an additional protocol to the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention, addressing materials and "acts of racist or xenophobic nature committed through computer networks"; it was negotiated from late 2001 to early 2002, and, on 7 November 2002, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers adopted the protocol's final text^[76] titled Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cyber-crime, Concerning the Criminalisation of Acts of a Racist and Xenophobic Nature Committed through Computer Systems, ("Protocol").^[77] It opened on 28 January 2003, and became current on 1 March 2006; as of 30 November 2011, 20 States have signed and ratified the Protocol, and 15 others have signed, but not yet ratified it (including Canada and South Africa).^[78]

The Protocol requires participant States to criminalise the dissemination of racist and xenophobic material, and of racist and xenophobic threats and insults through computer networks, such as the Internet.^[79] Article 6, Section 1 of the Protocol specifically covers Holocaust Denial, and other genocides recognised as such by international courts, established since 1945, by relevant international legal instruments. Section 2 of Article 6 allows a Party to the Protocol, at their discretion, only to prosecute the violator if the crime is committed with the intent to incite hatred or discrimination or violence; or to use a reservation, by allowing a Party not to apply Article 6 – either partly or entirely.^[80] The Council of Europe's Explanatory Report of the Protocol says that the "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 European Convention on Human Rights" (see the Lehideux and Isorni judgement of 23 September 1998);^[80]

Two of the English-speaking states in Europe, Ireland and the United Kingdom, have not signed the additional protocol, (the third, Malta, signed on 28 January 2003, but has not yet ratified it).^[81] On 8 July 2005 Canada became the only non-European state to sign the convention. They were joined by South Africa in April 2008. The United States government does not believe that the final version of the Protocol is consistent with the United States' First Amendment Constitutional rights and has informed the Council of Europe that the United States will not become a Party to the protocol.^[79][82]

Domestic law

There are various domestic laws against negationism and hate speech (which may encompass negationism), in sixteen different countries including

• Austria (Article 3h Verbotsgesetz 1947),
• Argentina (National Law 23054 and 23592),
• Belgium (Belgian Holocaust denial law),
• the Czech Republic,
• France (Gayssot Act),
• Germany (§130(3) of the penal code^[83])
• Hungary,
• Israel,
• Liechtenstein,
• Lithuania,
• Luxembourg,
• Poland (Article 55 of the law establishing the Institute of National Remembrance 1998),
• Portugal,
• Romania,
• Slovakia,
• and Switzerland (Article 261bis of the Penal Code).

Additionally, the Netherlands considers denying the Holocaust as a hate crime – which is a punishable offense.^[84] Wider use of domestic laws include the 1990 French Gayssot Act that prohibits any "racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic" speech.,^[84] and the Czech Republic^[85] and the Ukraine^[86] have criminalised the denial and the minimisation of Communist-era crimes.

In fiction

In the science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, the government of Oceania continually revises historical records to concord with current politics. For example, when Oceania is at war with Eurasia, records indicate that this has always been the case, yet when they are no longer fighting the historical records are changed and the populace are brainwashed to believe that the two nations have always been allies. In the novel, historical revisionism is the principal method of propaganda used by the Ministry of Truth, where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works as a historical revisionist.^[87][88] In his novel, Orwell writes, "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."^[89] This quote illustrates Orwell's understanding of how the past can influence both ideology and politics, offers a counterpoint as to why protecting the scholarly practice of history is important, and describes the extreme effects of state-sponsored censorship.

See also

• Academic integrity
• Big Lie
• Black Legend
• Cognitive dissonance
• Denialism
• Doublethink
• Dunning School
• Dustbin of history
• Hate speech
• Historical revisionism
• History wars (Australia)
• Information warfare
• French Loi Gayssot
• Memory hole
• Propaganda
• Pseudohistory
• Selective omission – biases to taboo some elements of a collective memory .

Cases of denialism

• Armenian genocide denial
• Denial of the Holodomor
• Genocide denial
• Holocaust denial
• Nanking Massacre controversy and denial
• Temple Denial

Notes

References

External links

• 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 Web site answering Holocaust deniers

Censorship Media regulation Books (books banned) Films (banned films) Internet circumvention Music Post Press Radio Speech and expression Thought Video games Methods Bleeping Book burning Broadcast delay Burying of scholars Censor bars Chilling effect Concision Conspiracy of silence Content-control software Euphemism Minced oath Expurgation Fogging Gag order Heckling Heckler's veto Internet police Memory hole National intranet Newspaper theft Pixelization Prior restraint Propaganda Purge Revisionism Sanitization Self-censorship Speech code Strategic lawsuit Surveillance computer & network mass Whitewashing Word filtering Damnatio memoriae Contexts Criminal Corporate Hate speech Ideological Media bias Moralistic fallacy Naturalistic fallacy Politics Religious (Islamic) Suppression of dissent Systemic bias By country Censorship Freedom of speech Internet censorship Wikiquote Wikisource Wikimedia Commons Wikinews Wiktionary Wikibooks

Historical revisionism (negationism) Denialism Relativism Rationalization Victim blaming Vergangenheitsbewältigung Historiography School textbook controversies Genocide denial Holocaust Criticism Armenian Genocide Holodomor Bosniak Genocide Nanking Massacre Rwandan Genocide Cambodian Genocide Proponents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Austin App Claude Autant-Lara Maurice Bardèche Harry Elmer Barnes John Tuson Bennett Jane Birdwood, Baroness Birdwood Don Black (white nationalist) Eric Butler Arthur Butz Gheorghe Buzatu Willis Carto Louis-Ferdinand Céline Norberto Ceresole Thies Christophersen Craig Cobb Doug Collins (journalist) Louis Darquier de Pellepoix Léon Degrelle Luis D'Elía David Duke François Duprat Richard Edmonds Saeed Emami Robert Faurisson James H. Fetzer Bobby Fischer Paul Fromm (activist) Hermann Gauch Hutton Gibson Stephen Goodson Jürgen Graf Nick Griffin Hans F. K. Günther Anthony Hancock (publisher) Peter Hartung Taj El-Din Hilaly Michael A. Hoffman II David Hoggan Ahmed Huber David Irving Colin Jordan Ilias Kasidiaris James Keegstra Ali Khamenei Nicholas Kollerstrom Gottfried Küssel Fred A. Leuchter Alex Linder Horst Mahler Naser Makarem Shirazi Princess Marie Adelheid of Lippe-Biesterfeld James J. Martin Anders Greif Mathisen Carlo Mattogno David McCalden Nikolaos Michaloliakos Eustace Mullins Issam Naaman Adnan Oktar Michael Collins Piper Oleg Platonov Konstantinos Plevris Robert Poulet Roeland Raes Ahmed Rami (writer) Mohammad-Ali Ramin Paul Rassinier Otto Ernst Remer Michèle Renouf Vincent Reynouard Jürgen Rieger Ingrid Rimland Thomas Robb Manfred Roeder Malcolm Ross (school teacher) Germar Rudolf Bernhard Schaub Hans Schmidt (Waffen-SS) Simon Sheppard (activist) Bradley R. Smith Wilhelm Stäglich Kevin Alfred Strom Sultan bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Robert Sungenis Mohammed Taheri Serge Thion H. Keith Thompson Fredrick Töben Ferdinand Topacio Hal Turner Richard Verrall Louis Vezelis James von Brunn Udo Walendy Mark Weber Bill White (neo-Nazi) Richard Williamson Sami Abu Zuhri Ernst Zündel Organizations Adelaide Institute Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War CODOH Institute for Historical Review Publications Did Six Million Really Die? Leuchter report Journal of Historical Review The Hoax of the Twentieth Century Conferences International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust Bali Holocaust Conference Legal status Statute law Austria Belgium France Germany Case law Lehideux and Isorni v. France R. v. Zundel Treaties Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime

Antisemitism Core topics Xenophobia History Timeline Geography Religious antisemitism Canards Persecution of Jews New antisemitism Racial antisemitism Secondary antisemitism Antisemitism and Anti-globalization Christianity Islam the Nation of Islam Universities Related topics Anti-Zionism Jewish Bolshevism Nazi propaganda Philo-Semitism Self-hating Jew Ku Klux Klan The International Jew The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Religious antisemitism Anti-Judaism Martin Luther Spanish Inquisition Portuguese Inquisition Blood curse Blood libel Host desecration Judensau Pogrom Antisemitic laws, policies and government actions Ghetto benches Hep-Hep riots Pogroms in the Russian Empire May Laws Polish 1968 political crisis Leo Frank trial (USA) Dreyfus Affair (France) Farhud (Iraq) General Order No. 11 (USA, 1862) Historical revisionism (negationism) Nazi Germany and the Holocaust Racial policy of Nazi Germany Holocaust denial Jews under the laws of Umar Zionist Occupation Government Antisemitic websites Jew Watch Redwatch Radio Islam Institute for Historical Review Bible Believers Metapedia Stormfront.org Podblanc Organizations working against antisemitism Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Stephen Roth Institute Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project (BAHOHP) Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Yad Vashem Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Locations Arab world Europe Austria Canada France Greece Hungary Italy Japan Norway Pakistan Russia Imperial Soviet Spain Sweden Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States

Media manipulation Context Bias Crowd psychology Deception Dumbing down False balance Half-truths Machiavellianism Media Obfuscation Persuasion Psychological manipulation Activism Alternative media Boycott Civil disobedience Culture jamming Demonstrations Guerrilla communication Hacktivism Internet Media Occupations Petitions Protests Youth Advertising Billboards False Infomercials Mobiles Modeling Radio Regulation Sex Slogans Testimonials TV Censorship Regulation Books Broadcast law Burying of scholars Cover-ups Corporate Euphemism Films Historical revisionism Internet Political Religious Self Hoaxing April Fools' Fakelore Fictitious entries Forgery List Literary Racial Urban legend Virus Marketing Branding Loyalty Product Product placement Publicity Research Word of mouth News media Agenda-setting Broadcasting Circus Cycle False balance Infotainment Managing Narcotizing dysfunction Pseudo-event Scrum Sensationalism Tabloid journalism Political campaigning Advertising Astroturfing Attack ad Canvassing Character assassination Charm offensive Election promises Lawn signs Manifestos Name recognition Negative Push polling Smear campaign Wedge issue Propaganda Bandwagon Crowd manipulation Disinformation Fear mongering Framing Indoctrination Loaded language National mythology Techniques Psychological warfare Airborne leaflets False flag Fifth column Information (IT) Lawfare Political Public diplomacy Sedition Subversion Public relations Cult of personality Doublespeak Non-apology apology Reputation management Slogans Sound bites Spin Transfer Understatement Weasel words Sales Cold calling Door-to-door Phone Pricing Product demonstrations Promotional merchandise Promotion

Propaganda techniques Ad hominem Appeal to fear Armed propaganda Atrocity propaganda Bandwagon effect Big lie Blood libel Buzzword Card stacking Censorship Code word Dog-whistle politics Doublespeak Euphemism Framing Glittering generality Historical revisionism Ideograph Indoctrination Lawfare Lesser of two evils principle Limited hangout Loaded language Loosely associated statements Newspeak Obscurantism Plain folks Public relations Slogan Spin Weasel word Whataboutism