“Denial” is an ordinary English word meaning to assert the untruth of something. Recently, however, it has acquired a further polemical sense. To “deny” in this new sense is to repudiate some commonly professed doctrine. Denial is the secular form of blasphemy; deniers are scorned, ridiculed and sometimes prosecuted.
Where does this new usage come from? There is an old sense of “deny,” akin to “disown,” which no doubt lies in the background. (A traitor denies his country; Peter denied Christ.) But the more immediate source is Freud. Denial in the Freudian sense is the refusal to accept a painful or humiliating truth. Sufferers are said to be in a “state of denial” or simply “in denial.” This last phrase entered general use in the early 1990s and launched “denial” on its modern career. “Holocaust denial” was the first political application, followed closely by “Aids denial,” “global warming denial” and a host of others. An abstract noun, “denialism,” has recently been coined. It is perhaps no accident that denial’s counterpart, affirmation, has meanwhile acquired laudatory overtones. We “affirm” relationships, achievements, values. Ours is a relentlessly positive culture.
An accusation of “denial” is serious, suggesting either deliberate dishonesty or self-deception. The thing being denied is, by implication, so obviously true that the denier must be driven by perversity, malice or wilful blindness. Few issues warrant such confidence. The Holocaust is perhaps one, though even here there is room for debate over the manner of its execution and the number of its victims. A charge of denial short-circuits this debate by stigmatising as dishonest any deviation from a preordained conclusion. It is a form of the argument ad hominem: the aim is not so much to refute your opponent as to discredit his motives. The extension of the “denier” tag to group after group is a development that should alarm all liberal-minded people. One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment—the liberation of historical and scientific enquiry from dogma—is quietly being reversed.
Martin Bright
I agree with the tenor of this piece.
The essence of the Enlightenment was curiosity, & a refusal to accept an illogical & unjustifiable status quo.
Holocaust denial is a revolting position but it should not inhibit any serious statistical & historical research.
Why anyone should want further research on that topic, is of course, problematical.
The term is now used for those who question Anthropogenic Global Warming.
This is highly provocative, & underlines the quasi religious
adherence demanded by those who promulgate this highly politicized” science”.
An anti science really, since it does not welcome criticism
that should ultimately lead to the truth.
Martin Bright
John Carrick
Edward,there’s another rich seam of linguistic gold for you in Alcoholics Anonymous. AA thrives on the phrase “in denial.” I think the famous AA founder Bill Wilson might even have invented it. It’s a great propaganda and brainwashing device, one of many that AA has mastered. If you wanted to study the AA organisation, and its murky beginnings in a Christian sect called the Oxford Group, you would be richly rewarded by their mangling and manipulation of language in pursuit of cultish ends. This manipulative use of language survives and thrives, not merely in AA, but in the reported 95 per cent of drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres that have unquestioningly adopted AA’s famous 12-step method (numbered in honour of the 12 Christian apostles). There’s exhaustive and exhausting analysis of AA language on the Orange Papers website (along with a lot of extraneous political opinionating).
Wai Mun Yoon
Thus, it follows – in a puzzling misdirection of linguistic intent – that ‘truthers’, (the appellation for those who reject official accounts of the events of 9/11, and not related to the Colbertian neologism ‘truthiness’), can now be properly termed ‘denialists’ (ie. deniers of the established explanations).
David Burress
Denialism, anti-denialism, and anti-anti-denialism (this article) are part of politics and journalism, not part of science. And the rules are different. As it has been said “Politics ain’t beanbags,” and the term for those who think otherwise is “losers.”
In politics you need short pithy terms to help your point rise above the noise. Such terms always involve a degree of oversimplification, but using pithy terms will get the general populace closer to the truth than not using pithy terms. By demanding the purity of scientific discourse in the rough and tumble of politics, scientists defend their own perfectionism at the cost of losing vastly important political battles on health, the climate, education, and indeed just about any public policy issue.
Political skills are vastly different from scientific skills. By all means give qualifying details once you you have a particular audience’s attention. But if you don’t know how to persuade a more general audience, please either learn how or stay out of the battle.
As to charges of “denial” being “ad hominem,” in ordinary language it isn’t–it is a simple empiricial description of a position that denies something. What makes it seem ad hominem to educated people is the invocation of the psychological defense mechanism of denial. And indeed saying that someone is being defensive can be an ad hominem argument. However it can also be a legitimate if rather rough way of criticizing arguments (rather than people) by pointing to evasiveness or rejection of evidence.
Political language almost always involves an element of dramatization by personalization, making it seem like a personal attack. The reality is more subtle: we attack persons partly as symbols of the ideas we are contesting. “Denial” is legitimate political shorthand, and not using it makes the world a worse place.
Angelica
Denial, as used by the addictions industry is the most perverse usage. AA treats ‘denial’ as ‘proof’ of the ‘disease’ of ‘alcoholism’.
Jim Roberts
Good article About time someone started challenging this new form of intellectual tyranny. In a healthy society a dissenting or different take on things is encouraged not denigrated
DLH
What a load of rubbish.
This is nothing more than a feeble attempt to shift the focus of disapprobation from the denialists to those who use knowledge and critical thinking to call them out on their intellectual dishonesty and emotional immaturity.