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Keith Kahn-Harris on “Denial: The Unspeakable Truth”

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In Denial: The Unspeakable TruthKeith Kahn-Harris argues that “Holocaust denial is not just eccentricity; it is an attempt to legitimate genocide through covert means. Denials of the harmfulness of tobacco, of the existence of global warming, and other denialisms, are, similarly, projects to legitimate the unspeakable.” Among the “other denialisms” he cites non-Western-mainstream views on 9/11, AIDS, vaccines, the Armenian and Bosnian genocides, the “fine-tuning” argument for the existence of God, the Apollo moon landings, Lysenko’s genetics, Tiananmen Square, perpetual motion machines, and flat earthism.

What’s more, Kahn-Harris urges us to “remember that denialism can never actually be ‘free speech.’ Denialists are not speaking freely: they are speaking under the weight of an unspeakable burden. Restricting denialism is therefore not restricting free speech.” (!)

If that sounds absurd…well, much of it is. But though Denial takes a highly dubious road littered with wrong turns, cul-de-sacs, and detours through innumerable errors of fact and judgment, it arrives at a couple of interesting destinations. Kahn-Harris’s assertion that belief systems often reflect desire and emotion more than rational-empirical assessment is undoubtedly true—perhaps more true for people like himself who reflexively embrace orthodoxies than for those who take the time to investigate controversial issues and risk arriving at contrarian conclusions. (For a brilliant elucidation of why so many people are in denial about 9/11, read Fran Shure’s 21-part series “Why Do Good People Become Silent—or Worse—About 9/11?“)

Denial‘s final chapter “The Post-Denialist Age” makes the excellent point that public discourse seems to be coarsening as people like Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Karl Rove (he might have added Ann Coulter, Silvio Berlusconi, Pam Geller, Jair Bolsonaro, Avigdor Lieberman, Ayelet Shaked, Yair Netanyahu, and many others) openly vaunt their grotesquely immoral desires and are handsomely rewarded for it. Apparently the civilizational imperatives that once prevented people from talking that way are falling by the wayside. Kahn-Harris, in one of his many mind-bogglingly wrongheaded moves, sees this as a good thing: for him, it is much better to enthusiastically advocate the murder of millions of people than to ask good questions about 9/11, vaccine safety, or the Holocaust: “The short-term shock of witnessing the horrors of moral diversity could give way to a politics shorn of illusion and moral masquerade, where different visions of what it is to be human can openly contend.”

Kahn-Harris’s ambivalently panglossian embrace of post-denialism, his call to crush the free speech of 9/11 truthers and anti-vaxxers while encouraging neo-Nazi incitement to mass murder, is obviously  symptomatic…but of what? Is he in denial about the fact that some of the people he calls denialists are right? (No wonder he is so anxious to silence them!) Or perhaps the unspeakable reality he can’t face is that Western secular materialist civilization is in its death throes, and can no longer command people to subjugate their destructive desires to the greater social good. (As Dostoevsky famously said, if there’s no God, why should they?)

All of the sacred cows of secular materialist humanism—democracy, equality, the Good War, the Holocaust, 9/11, scientism, technocracy, climate change, gender constructivism, and more—are dying the death of a thousand cuts. Perhaps Kahn-Harris correctly senses that the heretics who openly challenge public myths are contributing to the impending collapse of the civilization held up by these imaginary sacred pillars. For those of us who expose forbidden truths in hopes of making the world better, that is a terrifying thought. I am grateful to Keith Kahn-Harris for forcing me to confront it.

 

 

5 Thoughts to “Keith Kahn-Harris on “Denial: The Unspeakable Truth””

  1. […] 25) Kevin interviews professor who is badly freaked out by “conspiracy theories”: Keith Kahn-Harris on “Denial: The Unspeakable Truth” http://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/2019/01/denial/ […]

  2. William Gibbons

    I was reading about Jean-Jacques Rousseau this evening and I thought what a privilege reading and writing is to preserve thoughts in history, and thinking about great thinking men of different eras. I thought of Kevin as being one of the great thinking men of this age, and of his courage to fight against the ‘War on Terror’ and to reveal hidden truths.

    1. Cat McGuire

      I agree. Dr. Barrett is one of our leading thinkers — innovative, brave, prescient. History will honor the man and his work.

  3. Peter Kalcev

    After listening to the interview with Keith Kahn-Harris the other day, I appreciated Kevin Barrett’s push-back on some of KKH’s too-numerous to mention contentious * remarks.

    ( * I’m probably being too kind in using the word ‘ contentious ‘ . Perhaps ‘absurd remarks’ would’ve been more apt ) .

    For example, when the Armenian genocide was mentioned during the interview, Kevin was quite right to draw the parallel with the many tens of thousands of German POW’s that died in captivity due to Eisenhower’s policies.

    General Patton witnessed first hand the appalling way these worthy adversaries & proud warriors were given starvation rations (this is well documented) & given inappropriate shelter / medical assistance.

    He objected strenuously & paid the ultimate price for it.

    The fact that KKH flatly denied that Ike did any such thing is one glaring example (among a great many), of the unscholarly approach of this man.

    Let’s hope we’ve heard the last of this fool (Keith Kahn-Harris).

    But, should he ever appear again on your programme, I would hope that you eviscerate him thoroughly & put him out of our misery.

  4. Cat McGuire

    On the question of someone would have talked, there are 2 other responses as to why Big Secrets are able to be kept:
    1) People are highly threatened. If you talk, they can take away your job, your life, or your family’s life, the latter obviating even deathbed confessions.
    2) Compartmentalization means not only do people not know that up to thousands of others could be working on the same project, but they also might not even be aware that they’re part of a much larger agenda.

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