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'''Historical negationism''',<ref>The term ''negationism'' derives from the French [[neologism]] ''négationnisme'', denoting Holocaust denial.(Kornberg, Jacques. [https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-494822161/the-future-of-a-negation-reflections-on-the-question The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide.(Review) (book review)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171222051629/https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-494822161/the-future-of-a-negation-reflections-on-the-question |date=22 December 2017 }}, [[Shofar]], January 2001). It is now also sometimes used for more general political historical revisionism as [http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001238/123862e.pdf (PDF) UNESCO against racism world conference] 31 August – 7 September 2001. "Given the ignorance with which it is treated, the slave trade comprises one of the most radical forms of historical negationism." Pascale Bloch has written in ''International law: Response to Professor Fronza's The punishment of Negationism'' (Accessed ProQuest Database, 12 October 2011) that revisionists are understood as negationists in order to differentiate them from historical revisionists, since their goal is either to prove that the Holocaust did not exist or to introduce confusion regarding the victims and German executioners regardless of historical and scientific methodology and evidence. For those reasons, the term ''revisionism'' is often considered confusing, since it conceals misleading ideologies that purport to avoid disapproval by presenting revisions of the past based on pseudo-scientific methods, while they are in fact a part of negationism.</ref><ref>Kriss Ravetto (2001). [https://books.google.com/books?id=pOyPsK8yClsC&pg=PA33 The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics], University of Minnesota Press {{ISBN|0-8166-3743-1}}. p. 33</ref> also called '''historical [[denialism]]''', is falsification<ref>{{cite book |last1=Watts |first1=Philip |title=Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five |publisher=Infobase Publishing |isbn=978-1-4381-2874-0 |language=en |chapter=Rewriting history: Céline and Kurt Vonnegut|year=2009 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pohl |first1=Dieter |author-link1 = Dieter Pohl| title=Holocaust Studies in Our Societies |journal=S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. |date=2020 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=133–141 |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=858280 |issn=2408-9192 |quote=In addition, Holocaust research can support the fight against the falsification of history, not only Nazi negationism, but also lighter forms of historical propaganda.}}</ref> or distortion of the historical record. This is not the same as ''[[historical revisionism]]'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history.<ref name="Berger-154">"The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians [[Deborah Lipstadt]] (1993) and [[Michael Shermer]] and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about an historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a re-examination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event – like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust – did in fact occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence. ... " Ronald J. Berger. ''Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach'', Aldine Transaction, 2002, {{ISBN|0-202-30670-4}}, p. 154.</ref> In attempting to revise and influence the past, historical negationism acts as illegitimate historical revisionism by using 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 mistranslating traditional or modern texts.<ref name="Evans-145">''Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial'', by [[Richard J. Evans]], 2001, {{ISBN|0-465-02153-0}}. p. 145. The author is a professor of Modern History, at the [[University of Cambridge]], and was a major expert-witness in the ''Irving v. Lipstadt'' trial; the book presents his perspective of the trial, and the expert-witness report, including his research about the Dresden death count.</ref>
Some countries, such as Germany, have criminalized the negationist revision of certain historical events, while others take a more cautious position for various reasons, such as protection of [[free speech]]. Others have in the past mandated negationist views, such as the US state of [[California]], where it is claimed that some schoolchildren have been explicitly prevented from learning about the [[California genocide]].<ref name="ReferenceA">{{Cite journal|last1=Trafzer |first1=Clifford E. |last2=Lorimer |first2=Michelle |title=Silencing California Indian Genocide in Social Studies Texts |date=5 August 2013 |journal=American Behavioral Scientist |pages=64–82 |volume=58 |issue=1 |doi=10.1177/0002764213495032|s2cid=144356070 }}</ref><ref name="ReferenceB">{{Cite journal|last1=Fenelon |first1=James V. |last2=Trafzer |first2=Clifford E. |title=From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas |date=4 December 2013 |journal=American Behavioral Scientist |pages=3–29 |volume=58 |issue=1 |doi=10.1177/0002764213495045|s2cid=145377834 }}</ref> Notable examples of negationism include denials of the [[Holocaust denial|Holocaust]], [[Armenian genocide denial|Armenian genocide]], the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy]], and the [[myth of the clean Wehrmacht|clean ''Wehrmacht'' myth]].<ref name="Mehnert1952Marx">Klaus Mehnert, ''Stalin Versus Marx: the Stalinist historical doctrine'' (Translation of ''Weltrevolution durch Weltgeschichte'') Port Washington NY: Kennikat Press 1972 (1952), on the illegitimate use of history in the 1934–1952 period.</ref><ref name="Markwick">Roger D. Markwick, ''Rewriting history in Soviet Russia : the politics of revisionist historiography, 1956–1974'' New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, on legitimate Soviet historiography particularly in the post 1956 period.</ref> In literature, it has been imaginatively depicted in some [[social science fiction|works of fiction]], such as ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', by [[George Orwell]]. In modern times, negationism may spread via [[political]], [[Religion|religious]] agendas through [[state media]], [[mainstream media]], and [[new media]], such as the [[Internet]].
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[[File:Photo 09 (The "Shame" Album).jpg|thumb|upright|A Chinese POW about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a [[shin gunto]] during the Nanking Massacre]]
The post-war minimization of the war crimes of [[Japanese imperialism]] is an example of "illegitimate" historical revisionism;<ref>[http://www.gmu.edu/academic/ijps/vol5_2/oh_grbi.htm "Forgiving the culprits: Japanese historical revisionism in a post-cold war context"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090805072050/http://www.gmu.edu/academic/ijps/vol5_2/oh_grbi.htm |date=5 August 2009 }} published in the ''International Journal of Peace Studies''</ref> some contemporary Japanese revisionists, such as Yūko Iwanami (granddaughter of General [[Hideki Tojo]]), propose that Japan's invasion of China, and [[World War II]], itself, were justified reactions to the Western imperialism of the time.<ref>[http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?lni=458V-5VC0-0197-80BW&csi=244786&hl=t&hv=t&hnsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true "Now Tojo is a Hero"] ''The Daily Telegraph''. Sydney, Australia. 12 May 1998. ''LexisNexis Database''. Retrieved 23 November 2011. {{subscription required}}</ref> On 2 March 2007, Japanese prime minister [[Shinzō 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 (Japan)|Liberal Democratic Party]] legislators also sought to revise [[Yōhei Kōno]]'s apology to former [[comfort women]] in 1993;<ref>"[https://web.archive.org/web/20070901180504/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070302a9.html No government coercion in war's sex slavery : Abe]", ''[[Japan Times]]'', 2 March 2007</ref><!--(see the [[comfort women]] article for sources) Wikipedia can not be used as a source See [[WP:V]]--> likewise, there was the controversial negation of the six-week [[Nanking Massacre]] in 1937–1938.<ref>{{cite news | title=Japan's Revisionist History | work=[[Los Angeles Times]] | date=11 April 2005 | url=
Shinzō Abe was general secretary of a group of parliament members concerned with history education ({{Lang-ja|日本の前途と歴史教育を考える若手議員の会}}) that is associated with the [[Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform]], and was a special advisor to [[Nippon Kaigi]], which are two openly revisionist groups denying, downplaying, or justifying various [[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".<ref>{{cite news | title=Revenge of the Doves | work=Newsweek | date=6 February 2006 | url=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11080282/site/newsweek/| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060206112046/http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11080282/site/newsweek/| url-status=dead| archive-date=6 February 2006}}</ref> Other critics{{Who|date=June 2014}} note that men, who would contemporarily be perceived as "Korean" and "Chinese", are enshrined for the military actions they effected as Japanese Imperial subjects.{{citation needed|date=June 2012}}
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{{further|Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki}}
{{see also|Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki}}
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".<ref>{{cite news | title=Japan's Atomic Bomb Victims Complain that Their Government Still Neglects Them & Refuses to Take Responsibility | publisher=History News Network | date=8 December 2005| url=http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/13654.html}}</ref> [[EB Sledge]] expressed concern that such revisionism, in his words "mellowing", would allow the harsh facts of the history that led to the bombings to be forgotten.<ref name="Sledge1">{{Cite book| last = Sledge| first = Eugene| title = China Marine| publisher = University of Alabama Press| date = May 2002| page = 160| isbn = 978-0-8173-1161-2 }}</ref> Historians Hill and Koshiro have stated that attempts to minimize the importance of the bombings as "righteous revenge and salvation" would be revisionism, and that while the Japanese should recognize [[Japanese war crimes|their atrocities]] led the bombing, Americans also have to accept the fact that their own actions "caused [[Weapon of mass destruction|massive destruction]] and suffering that has lasted for fifty years".<ref>
====Croatian war crimes in World War II====
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==== Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 ====
Discussion of the killings was taboo in Indonesia and, if mentioned at all, usually called ''[[Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965–66|peristiwa enam lima]]'', the incident of '65.<ref name=Zurbuchen2002>Zurbuchen, Mary S. (July/August 2002). "History, Memory, and the '1965 Incident' in Indonesia". ''Asian Survey'' Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 564–581.</ref> Inside and outside Indonesia, public discussion of the killings increased during the 1990s and especially after 1998 when the New Order government collapsed. Jailed and exiled members of the Sukarno regime, as well as ordinary people, told their stories in increasing numbers. Foreign researchers began to publish increasingly more on the topic, with the end of the military regime and its doctrine of coercing such research attempts into futility.<ref name=Zurbuchen2002 /><ref name="Shadowplay">Friend (2003), p. 115; {{cite video |people=Chris Hilton (writer and director) |title=Shadowplay |medium=Television documentary |work=Vagabond Films and Hilton Cordell Productions |year=2001}}; Vickers (1995).</ref>
The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian histories and have been scarcely examined by Indonesians, and has received comparatively little international attention.<ref>Schwarz (1994), p. 21; Cribb (1990), pp. 2–3; [http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/indonesian-academics-fight-burning-of-books-on-1965-coup/2007/08/08/1186530448353.html Indonesian academics fight burning of books on 1965 coup] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121026103536/http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/indonesian-academics-fight-burning-of-books-on-1965-coup/2007/08/08/1186530448353.html |date=26 October 2012 }}, ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 9 August 2007.</ref> Indonesian textbooks typically depict the killings as a "patriotic campaign" that resulted in less than 80,000 deaths. In 2004, the textbooks were briefly changed to include the events, but this new curriculum discontinued in 2006 following protests from the military and Islamic groups.<ref name=SMH /> The textbooks which mentioned the mass killings were subsequently [[book burning|burnt]]<ref name=SMH /> by order of Indonesia's Attorney General.<ref>[http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/InsideIndonesiaTextbooks.html Teaching and Remembering Inside Indonesia History Textbooks Suharto Era Transitional Justice] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727112102/http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/InsideIndonesiaTextbooks.html |date=27 July 2011 }}. People.uncw.edu. Retrieved 25 December 2010.</ref> John Roosa's ''Pretext for Mass Murder'' (2006) was initially banned by the Attorney General's Office.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jacobson |first=Philip |date=22 October 2013 |title=Book Review: Indonesia and the World Circa 1965 |url=http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2013/10/22/114523601/Book-Review-Indonesia-and-the-World-Circa-1965 |publisher=[[Tempo (Indonesia magazine)|tempo.co]] |access-date=9 June 2014}}</ref> The Indonesian parliament set up a truth and reconciliation commission to analyse the killings, but it was suspended by the [[Supreme Court of Indonesia|Indonesian High Court]]. An academic conference regarding the killings was held in [[Singapore]] in 2009.<ref name="SMH">{{Cite web |last=Allard |first=Tom |date=2009-06-12 |title=Indonesia unwilling to tackle legacy of massacres |url=https://www.smh.com.au/world/indonesia-unwilling-to-tackle-legacy-of-massacres-20090612-c63h.html |access-date=2023-04-27 |website=The Sydney Morning Herald |language=en}}</ref> A hesitant search for mass graves by survivors and family members began after 1998, although little has been found. Over three decades later, great enmity remains in Indonesian society over the events.<ref name="Shadowplay" />
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In his book, ''[[The Stalin School of Falsification]]'', Leon Trotsky cited a range of historical documents such as private letters, telegrams, party speeches, meeting minutes, and suppressed texts such as [[Lenin's Testament]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Stalin School of Falsification |date=13 January 2019 |publisher=Pickle Partners Publishing |isbn=978-1-78912-348-7 |pages=vii-89 |url=https://
During the existence of the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] (1917–1991) 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 the 1934–1952 period. According to [[Klaus Mehnert]], writing in 1952, the Soviet government attempted to control academic [[historiography]] (the writing of history by academic historians) to promote ideological and ethno-racial [[imperialism]] by Russians.<ref name="Mehnert1952Marx"/>{{better source needed|This is a dated source; and may be Cold War propaganda|date=April 2016}} During the 1928–1956 period, modern and contemporary history was generally composed according to the wishes of the CPSU, not the requirements of accepted historiographic method.<ref name="Mehnert1952Marx"/>
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{{see also|Anti-Iranian sentiment in Azerbaijan|Campaign on granting Nizami the status of the national poet of Azerbaijan|Azerbaijan (toponym)#Southern Azerbaijan}}
Historic falsifications in Azerbaijan, in relation to [[Iran]] and [[History of Iran|its history]], are "backed by state and state backed non-governmental organizational bodies", ranging "from elementary school all the way to the highest level of universities".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lornejad |first1=Siavash |last2=Doostzadeh |first2=Ali |editor1-last=Arakelova |editor1-first=Victoria |editor2-last=Asatrian |editor2-first=Garnik |title=On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi |date=2012 |page=85 (note 277) |publisher=Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies |url=https://persianpoetry.arizona.edu/sites/persianpoetry.sites.arizona.edu/files/POLITICIZATION%20OF%20NEZAMI_0.pdf |access-date=27 December 2020 |archive-date=14 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220914063448/https://persianpoetry.arizona.edu/sites/persianpoetry.sites.arizona.edu/files/POLITICIZATION%20OF%20NEZAMI_0.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> As a result of the two [[Russo-Iranian Wars]] of the 19th century, the border between what is present-day [[Iran]] and the Republic of Azerbaijan was formed.<ref name="Croissant">{{cite book |last1=Croissant |first1=Michael P. |title=The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications |date=1998 |publisher=Praeger Publishers |page=61}}</ref> Although there had not been a historical [[Azerbaijanis|Azerbaijani]] state to speak of in history, the demarcation, set at the [[Aras river]], left significant numbers of what were later coined "Azerbaijanis" to the north of the Aras river.<ref name="Croissant"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lornejad |first1=Siavash |last2=Doostzadeh |first2=Ali |editor1-last=Arakelova |editor1-first=Victoria |editor2-last=Asatrian |editor2-first=Garnik |title=On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi |date=2012 |pages=9–10 (note 26) |publisher=Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies |url=https://persianpoetry.arizona.edu/sites/persianpoetry.sites.arizona.edu/files/POLITICIZATION%20OF%20NEZAMI_0.pdf |access-date=27 December 2020 |archive-date=14 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220914063448/https://persianpoetry.arizona.edu/sites/persianpoetry.sites.arizona.edu/files/POLITICIZATION%20OF%20NEZAMI_0.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> During the existence of the [[Azerbaijan SSR]], as a result of Soviet-era historical revionism and myth-building, the notion of a "northern" and "[[Azerbaijan (toponym)#Southern Azerbaijan|southern]]" Azerbaijan was formulated and spread throughout the Soviet Union.<ref name="Croissant"/><ref name="Kamrava">{{cite book |last1=Ahmadi |first1=Hamid |editor1-last=Kamrava |editor1-first=Mehran |title=The Great Game in West Asia: Iran, Turkey and the South Caucasus |date=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0190869663 |pages=109–110 |chapter=The Clash of Nationalisms: Iranian response to Baku's irredentism}}</ref> During the Soviet nation building campaign, any event, both past and present, that had ever occurred in what is the present-day Azerbaijan Republic and Iranian Azerbaijan were rebranded as phenomenons of "Azerbaijani culture".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lornejad |first1=Siavash |last2=Doostzadeh |first2=Ali |editor1-last=Arakelova |editor1-first=Victoria |editor2-last=Asatrian |editor2-first=Garnik |title=On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi |date=2012 |page=17 |publisher=Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies}}</ref> Any Iranian ruler or poet that had lived in the area was assigned to the newly rebranded identity of the [[Transcaucasus|Transcaucasian]] [[Turkic languages|Turkophones]], in other words "Azerbaijanis".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lornejad |first1=Siavash |last2=Doostzadeh |first2=Ali |editor1-last=Arakelova |editor1-first=Victoria |editor2-last=Asatrian |editor2-first=Garnik |title=On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi |date=2012 |page=17 |publisher=Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies |url=https://persianpoetry.arizona.edu/sites/persianpoetry.sites.arizona.edu/files/POLITICIZATION%20OF%20NEZAMI_0.pdf |access-date=27 December 2020 |archive-date=14 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220914063448/https://persianpoetry.arizona.edu/sites/persianpoetry.sites.arizona.edu/files/POLITICIZATION%20OF%20NEZAMI_0.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
According to Michael P. Croissant: "It was charged that the "two Azerbaijans", once united, were separated artificially by a conspiracy between imperial Russia and Iran".<ref name="Croissant"/> This notion based on illegitimate historic revisionism suited Soviet political purposes well (based on "anti-imperialism"), and became the basis for irredentism among [[Azerbaijani nationalism|Azerbaijani nationalists]] in the last years of the Soviet Union, shortly prior to the establishment of the Azerbaijan Republic in 1991.<ref name="Croissant"/>
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==In fiction==
{{see also|Fahrenheit 451|Alternate history}}
In the novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' (1949) by [[George Orwell]], the government of [[Oceania (fiction)|Oceania]] continually revises historical records to concord with the contemporary political explanations of The Party. When Oceania is at war with [[Nations of Nineteen Eighty-Four|Eurasia]], the public records (newspapers, cinema, television) indicate that Oceania has been always at war with Eurasia; yet, when Eurasia and Oceania are no longer fighting each other, the historical records are subjected to negationism; thus, the populace are [[
To cope with the psychological stresses of life during wartime, Smith begins a diary, in which he observes that "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future", and so illustrates the principal, ideological purpose of historical negationism.<ref>Orwell, George. [https://books.google.com/books?id=yxv1LK5gyV4C ''1984''], [[New American Library]], 1961 {{ISBN|978-0-451-52493-5}}, p. 37.</ref>
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