Climate activists rally to urge politicians to stand against climate denial in New York on Jan. 9, 2017. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

According to various sources, denialism is the practice of denying the validity of something for which theres irrefutable proof.

Wikipedia defines scientific denialism as the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of ideas that are radical, controversial, or fabricated.

The most odious example of denialism in modern history is the false assertion that the Nazi genocide against Jews was a myth.

Holocaust denial is widely recognized as an antisemitic theory that ignores overwhelming proof in the form of physical evidence, captured film, state documentation, eye-witness discovery, and the sworn testimony of survivors.

In Israel and several other countries, Holocaust denial is understandably considered to be a felonious expression of hatred thats entirely different from honest skepticism. Denying the Nazis genocide is rightly regarded as an act of pure evil. Holocaust denial has been universally vilified.

George Orwell once asserted that the deliberate misuse of language will corrupt thought, and neo-Marxist intellectuals have mastered the tactic of language corruption through the use of the deceptive metaphor.

The lefts deployment of the term denialist to describe anyone critical of the present-day Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Environmental, Social, and Governance, social justice narrative is deliberately intended to produce the impression that all critics of progressive policy are like modern-day Nazis.

Progressive activists and politicians have levied specious allegations of denialism against their conservative opponents in the United States and Canada. The charge of denialism has become a deliberate deception to justify restricting open debate and free speech.

Late in 2015, Newsweek opinion writer Walter Olson pointed out that Rhode Island Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was coaxing the U.S. Department of Justice to consider filing a racketeering suit against oil and coal companies for promoting wrongful thinking on climate change. Mr. Whitehouse was also interested in targeting the activities of conservative policy groups.

Mr. Olson noted that this was a significant step toward criminalizing policy differences and using litigation and government enforcement to punish opponents in public debate. He cautioned that Others had already gone farther than the senator himself, calling for making climate denial a crime against humanity.

In Canada, Kimberly Murray, an indigenous rights activist appointed to advise federal Minister of Justice David Lametti, recently submitted an interim report on the subject of missing children, unmarked graves, and burial sites allegedly associated with indigenous residential schools.

Writing in The Epoch Times, Barbara Kay pointed out that the Canadian government appears willing to impose legal sanctions on dissenters to the now received wisdom amongst our intelligentsia and political elites that the residential schools were a form of genocide.

Ms. Kay went on to explain that Ms. Murray also recommended a policy of data sovereignty, which would place original documentation on indigenous matters, now in government, church, and university archives, under the control of indigenous organizations. Indigenous groups would be given the power to deny access to objective historians. In other words, unaccountable authorities could withhold the tools of research from anyone regarded to be a potential denialist. Apparently, theres little room left for the full examination of evidence and dispassionate judgment in Canadian policy debates.

In America, Mollie Hemingway, a highly regarded American author, produced a magnificently researched book on the 2020 U.S. election. Rigged was a powerful reminder that honest attention to detail plays an important role in election analysis. Another book by U.S. attorney Christina Bobb provided a thorough analysis of the election fraud that could imperil the survival of the American Republic. Stealing Your Vote was a convincing account of an election that was allegedly filled with cheating by mail, ballot harvesting, and vote dumping that disenfranchised millions of Americans.

Compliant politicians, legacy media journalists, and progressive activists launched an all-out assault on the facts presented in both of these books. Citizens such as Ms. Hemingway and Ms. Bobb are dismissed as election deniers, and the United States is suffering the consequences.

During the COVID pandemic, government agencies across North America hurled charges of denialism against well-qualified medical professionals and informed citizens who questioned the merits of mRNA vaccine mandates, school closings, and draconian shutdowns.

A 2020 paper in the Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR) scolded science deniers, including vaccine science deniers for shilling their scientifically-bankrupt wares on the internet. We, who understand the rigor of science and know the evidence supporting immunization for health and well-being, are often aghast at the falsehoods promulgated, said the report. We now know that many of those so-called falsehoods about COVID vaccine efficacy and adverse events turned out to be true.

Allegations of denialism obstruct rational attempts to re-examine any social or scientific consensus protected by our woke global establishment. Such allegations serve only to exclude fresh thinking in favor of tired radical ideas that are often misinformed and dangerous.

Those who are inclined to begin a debate with the proposition that their opponents are fascists are more likely to abort thought than to encourage it. Branding people as deniers is tantamount to saying theyre morally vile and have no right to join the discussion. Its hardly a secure route toward truth and reconciliation.

William Brooks is a Senior Fellow at Frontier Centre For Public Policy. This commentary was first published here.

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Original post:

Allegations Of Denialism Obstruct Access To Truth - Frontier Centre For Public Policy

The modern rules regarding what constitutes acceptable discourse on any topic, let alone the Middle East, seem to center on how peoples feelings are impacted by how others feel. So I feel safe in saying that I have no idea how to discuss Judaism and Zionism and the absolute right for Israel to exist in security without pissing most everyone off.

Whats more, living in an age where God gave this to us! is considered a provable argument, my being a satirist who read the Bible cover to cover and found it mostly hilarious certainly wont help de-infuriate the situation. But here goes.

There are all kinds of Jews with all kinds of opinions and they often label each other in demeaning ways. Peter Beinart is willing to endure the slander of being called self-hating for his views because as a Jew, he is entitled to his opinion. But I believe an underappreciated aspect of the conversation is the way self-thinking Gentiles tend to self-censor rather than participate because they feel unentitled to offer their honest opinion.

You dont need to be Gore Vidal or Edward Said to think its becoming easier and easier to miscategorize legitimate criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitism. To somehow turn acknowledging the Nakba into a latent form of Holocaust denial. So if youre like me you tend to not mention things. That the Irgun and the Stern Gang werent canvassers, or that Count Folke Bernadotte didnt spend the 1950s in a suite at the King David Hotel, or that Rachel Corrie did not perish in a landscaping mishap.

Evangelical Christians, untroubled by such rationality, dont have this problem. They get to fanatically drool over a militarily militant Israel as the necessary precursor to Jesus eventually meandering his way earthward to sit atop a throne of skulls beside a sea of boiling bones. Though they fail to mention that many of those boiling bones they lust for will be from unconverted Hebrews. Which as codicils go seems a bit of a red flag.

But again, this is my problem (and maybe its a non-existent one for anyone who doesnt find hypocrisy hypocritical), so lets talk about me. I dont seek to hold Israel to a higher standard. There are more than enough injustices and refugee camps in the world without having to fixate on Israel or Saudi Arabia or Iraq or any nation which emerged from Arthur Balfours distracted protractor.

The truth is if Palestinians also had obsequious Capitol Hill support, decades of narrative-enhancing editorial coverage, and limitless financial backing from scabrous billionaires seeking to cleanse their souls by embracing Yahwehs lease agreement containing a 3,000 year sublet option Id be filled with equanimity around settling the whole dispute.

However, the country is growing dangerously more isolated, paranoid, and theocratic. No wait! THATS THE UNITED STATES! Israel claims to be both a Jewish and a democratic state without a constitution or defined borders. Which may require a level of smiting and co-opting unseen since the age when Babylon imposed their one-kingdom solution. So I guess the really important thing is to ensure that nuclear weapons never fall into the hands of a fascistic terrorist like Irans Ali Khamenei but remain in the hands of semi-non fascistic semi-non terrorists like Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump?!?

Actually. Spike that graph.

It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the United States has as much right to be called an honest broker in the Middle East as W.C.Fields Sheriff John Huxley had for being called Honest John. With regard to the Palestinian people, America more accurately represents the senior partner in The Three Stooges law firm of DEWEY (U.S.) CHEATEM (Abbas) & HOWE (Arab world).

Palestinians are subjected to a thousand and one daily humiliations and maybe they always will be. Maybe they are not even a people. The powerful will always describe the powerless in whatever way they choose. But the least everyone can do, while olive groves are plowed under and razor wire strung and water resources diverted and innocent children suffocate in the cramped squalor of Jenin, is be unafraid to throw verbal stones at the obscene level of unconditional money our country gives Israel to finance apartheid adjacent humiliations.

It should not require much thought to oppose gratuitous barbarity. I feel anyones entitled to say that.

See original here:

Israel, Antisemitism, and Self-Thinking Gentiles - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

The location of the newest Holocaust Museum might come as a surprise to anyone unfamiliar with one of the most successful video games in history.

Originally launched as a battle royale style online fighting game, Epic Games Fortnite has become incredibly popular for its customisable world building capabilities, akin to games like Minecraft and Terraria.

Now, the newest edition to the game is a Holocaust museum, developed by Epic Games themselves. The museum has been designed by Luc Bernard, the man behind The Light in the Darkness, considered the first educational game on the Holocaust.

The Light in the Darkness was released earlier this year by Epic Games. It gave gamers the chance to play as a Polish Jewish family trying and failing to escape the horrors of the Holocaust in France. Its a harrowing experience for a videogame.

People often cry at the end, the games director Luc Bernard tells Euronews Culture.

Available for free, The Light in the Darkness has been downloaded across the world. Its been particularly popular in the Middle East. Saudi Arabians are completing the game the most, Bernard explains.

Finding ways to improve Holocaust education is a big motivator for Bernard. So when Epic Games opened up their Fortnite Unreal Editor, his team focused on a new project: the Fortnite Holocaust Museum.

80% of Americans havent visited a museum, Bernard says. Looking at the huge budgets of Holocaust museums, he couldnt question the effectiveness of in-person museums as an educational tool. Okay then, lets make a digital museum in one of the biggest video games thats around. Its that simple.

After extensive research, Bernard and his team have come up with an elegant interactive museum exhibition within the Fortnite game. The player zips around the museum and can find information on a range of Holocaust topics, including some that Bernard feels have too often been left out of traditional exhibitions.

Instead of exclusively focusing on the experiences of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe although they are still front and centre there are also pieces that relate stories of Sephardi Jews in North Africa. There are stories about Abdol Hossein Sardari, the Iranian ambassador who issued thousands of passports to Jews trying to escape France. Other exhibits look at the lives of LGBTQ+ Jews and the Black Panther tank battalion who liberated Jews.

Its about making a museum thats more appealing to a younger audience, explains Bernard.

Bernards team arent the first to consider the Fortnite space ripe for an educational opportunity. A Martin Luther King Jr. event gave players the chance to learn about Black history. The creators of that event have since reached out to Bernard. Hes a big fan and emphasises their shared goal of revolutionising how the world sees gaming.

Were trying to show organisations and museums that, instead of focusing on one city and hoping tourists come by, you could get the entire state to the entire country. You could get the entire world involved, Bernard says.

Improving Holocaust education is especially important as the last surviving witnesses die out. Explaining the horrors to the next generation remains crucial. However, theres growing concerns that many younger gamers are often in environments that effectively condone Holocaust denial.

An Anti-Defamation League (ADL) investigation into online antisemitism found that many Holocaust deniers are using social media platforms and online gaming communities to spread their conspiracies. Although many games were implicated by the study, Fortnite was particularly singled out by the ADL.

Bernard has continually defended Epic Games and Fortnite from the allegations. To make sure people behave appropriately in the upcoming museum, Bernard and Epic have turned off emotes and wall destruction capabilities.

Although there is certainly a moderation concern in usernames, he is emphatic about the support Epic Games provided him to make his educational games.

[ADL] are great people, he says. But I think Epic are one of the best companies to work for in the gaming industry and they treat hatred very seriously.

The Fortnite Holocaust Museum does not yet have a release date.

Go here to read the rest:

Inside the Holocaust Museum coming to the video game Fortnite - Euronews