Concept
Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize the scale and severity of an instance of genocide. Denial is an integral part of genocide and includes the secret planning of genocide, propaganda while the genocide is going on, and destruction of evidence of mass killings. According to genocide researcher Gregory Stanton, denial "is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres". Some scholars define denial as the final stage of a genocidal process. Richard G. Hovannisian states, "Complete annihilation of a people requires the banishment of recollection and suffocation of remembrance. Falsification, deception and half-truths reduce what was, to what might have been or perhaps what was not at all." Examples include Denial of atrocities against indigenous peoples, Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide denial, and Bosnian genocide denial. The distinction between respectable academic historians and illegitimate historical negationists and revisionists, including genocide deniers, rests upon the techniques which are used in the writing of such histories. Illegitimate historical revisionists and negationists rewrite history in order to support an agenda, which is usually political, by using falsification and rhetorical fallacies in order to obtain their desired results. According to Taner Akçam, "the practice of "denialism" in regard to mass atrocities is usually thought of as a simple denial of the facts, but this is not true. Rather, it is in that nebulous territory between facts and truth where such denialism germinates." David Tolbert, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, states: Denial is the final fortress of those who commit genocide and other mass crimes. Perpetrators hide the truth to avoid accountability and protect the political and economic advantages they sought to gain by mass killings and theft of the victims' property, and to cement the new reality by manufacturing an alternative history.