Denial is the first book to draw together the ideological and psychological elements involved in historical denial. Tony Taylor surveys major cases in 20th- and 21st-century historical denial that illustrate the nature of prejudice and how it relates to techniques of the instigators of denial, including their use of popular media and the Internet. Among the issues canvassed are denial and the Armenian atrocities as a governmental phenomenon; Holocaust denial in Australia and overseas as a racist phenomenon; Stalinist denial by Marxist historians post-1945 as an ideological phenomenon; Japanese ultra-nationalist denial from the 1960s to date as a cultural phenomenon; Serbian denial of 1990s Balkan atrocities as an ethnic phenomenon, and others. At a time when most debates seem to accept the arguments of the deniers at face value the book will focus on the pathology of denial as an abuse of history through wilful distortion of events and eager self-deception. Denial is also now a major online industry: hate/denial/conspiracy sites have proliferated in the past ten years, a development complicated by new technological developments such as blogging, the strategic diversion of readers from apparently legitimate sites to racist sites, and the jamming of mainstream sites with denial messages.

About the Author
Associate Professor Tony Taylor teaches and researches at Monash University. Between 1999 and 2000 he was Director of the Australian Government's National Inquiry into the Teaching and Learning of History and was author of the Inquiry's report The Future of the Past. His report led to the establishment of the Commonwealth History Project (2001 to 2006). Between 2001 and 2007 he was Director of the National Centre for History Education.


Book Information
ISBN 9780522854824
Author Tony Taylor
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Melbourne University Press
Publisher Melbourne University Press
Weight(grams) 528g
Dimensions(mm) 232mm * 157mm * 25mm