Home
In this issue
Nov. 25, 2009
Daniel Pipes: Islamism 2.0
JWisdom.com: No God … No You! Know God, Know You! with Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (8 minutes)
Nov. 24, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran : The Atheists' unintended gift
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 12, 2007 / 24 Shevat, 5767

I'm in denial, you're in denial

By Suzanne Fields


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Nothing corrupts intellectual power like the abuse of the language. Free speech becomes an endangered species when powerful words, misused, become shortcuts for specious argument and repetitious cliches trivialize noble ideas.


Nothing stops someone in a foot-in-the-mouth defense of himself like being told "you're in denial," meaning that he's avoiding the truth of experience. If you don't acknowledge an accurate diagnosis of a terminal disease, recognize the philandering of a mate or see the approaching death that awaits us all, "you're in denial." The truth-seeker in wolf's clothing demands that everyone look at the world through his lens, as though through a glass, lightly. Denial is based not on facts, but emotion.


All deniers aren't equal opportunity deniers, and an all-purpose stigma inhibits rational argument. We see this illustrated on Page One every morning. Skeptics of global warming are compared to Holocaust deniers. The ecologically correct become eco-heresy hunters determined to silence anyone who questions their evidence, flimsy and questionable or not. Any human destruction of nature is described as "ecocide" (like genocide.) When David Irving was sentenced to prison in Austria as a "Holocaust denier," an Australian journalist suggested making climate-change denial a similar offense. An Internet commentator wants global-warming deniers to be tried like Nazi war criminals.


"Denial" came out of the therapyspeak prevalent in the middle of the 20th century, especially as it was applied to confronting the reality of mortality. It was popularized as the first stage of grief, but was quickly expanded to include refusal to confront any bad news or disturbing ideas. Like the broken clock that's correct twice a day, denial is sometimes an accurate label for certain behavior, but as a consuming mythology in our culture it becomes the all-purpose description to deny independent thinking.


On a personal level it's used to accuse others of cowardice in refusing to face up to what is regarded as in their own best interest. It elevates a kind of psychological groupthink over independent interpretations and casts a critical eye at those who face their problems in their own way. This attitude wreaks enormous havoc when it is applied to public issues.


When denial is used against those who question the evidence of conventional wisdom it acts as a secular Inquisition creating a free-floating metaphor for post-modern blasphemy. "This targeting of denial has little to do with the specifics of the highly charged emotional issues involved in discussions of the Holocaust or AIDS or pollution," writes sociologist Frank Furedi in Spiked Online. "Rather it is driven by a wider mood of intolerance towards free thinking." It becomes an informal but dangerous form of collective censorship, limiting free speech and demanding social or civil punishment, or both. (Free speech defenders have no problem defending their own dearly held beliefs, but often when called on to defend something they consider dangerous find all manner of exceptions.)


For all of the creepiness of "Holocaust denial," making it against the law not only restricts free speech, perniciously wrong-headed as that is, but forces those who perpetuate it to go underground. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held his Holocaust denial conference in Tehran, he exposed his irrational hatred to the rest of the world, making his threat to "wipe Israel off the map" and his determination to develop nuclear weapons suddenly visible as a genuine threat to everyone.


His hyperventilated rhetoric, as outrageous as it is, requires counter arguments of reason and cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman, a mistake many critics of Hitler made. The Tehran conference drew wide rebuke, inspiring hundreds of articles refuting speaker after speaker. Such refutations won't dissuade the anti-Semites who ply their trade in the Middle East, but will establish a contemporary historical record and heighten the alert for those in the Western democracies who understand that words can be deadly weapons of mass destruction.


No word has been so trivialized as "Holocaust." It's attached to issues that bear no relation to the crimes of the Nazis of the Third Reich. The triumph of bad taste and perversion of moral meaning is exhibited by animal rights protesters who compare the slaughter of animals to the slaughter of Jews. In one of their campaigns, called "Holocaust on Your Plate," images of animals locked in pens are superimposed on photographs of emaciated prisoners behind the barbed wire of a concentration camp.


The human talent for devising destruction is boundless, and humans of goodwill must demand the careful use of words to make reasonable distinctions. If we don't, we are truly in denial.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.

Up

Suzanne Fields Archives

© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works