View source for Historical negationism

{{Short description|Distortion of historical record}}
{{For-multi|the critical re-examination of historical facts|Historical revisionism}}
{{Redirect-distinguish|Negationism|Denialism}}
{{Use Oxford spelling|date=September 2024}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}

'''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 &ndash; 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 the 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> trivialization,<ref>{{Cite web |last=H. Foxman |first=Abraham |date=2014-01-27 |title=Inappropriate Comparisons Trivialize the Holocaust |url=https://www.adl.org/resources/news/inappropriate-comparisons-trivialize-holocaust |access-date=2025-07-18 |website=Anti Defamation League}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Addressing Anti-Semitism through Education: Addressing Holocaust Denial, Distortion and Trivialization |date=2019-12-04 |publisher=[[Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]] |edition=Teaching Aid 6 |location=Europe |publication-date=2019-12-04 |pages=2–3 |language=en}}</ref> or distortion of the historical record. This is distinct from [[historical revisionism]], a broader term encompassing academic reinterpretations of history driven by new evidence or reasoning.<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.&nbsp;... " 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 the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy]], the [[myth of the clean Wehrmacht|clean ''Wehrmacht'' myth]], and denials of the [[Holocaust denial|Holocaust]], [[Nakba denial|Nakba]], [[Holodomor denial|Holodomor]], the [[Armenian genocide denial|Armenian genocide]] and the [[Nanjing Massacre denial|Nanjing Massacre]].<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><ref>{{Cite web |title=Nakba of 1948 and Today Are Not Separate Events, but Ongoing Process of Palestinian Displacement, Replacement, Speakers Tell Panel, Urging Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza {{!}} Meetings Coverage and Press Releases |url=https://press.un.org/en/2024/gapal1467.doc.htm |access-date=2024-11-22 |website=press.un.org}}</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]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Nations |first=United |title=Social media feeds Holocaust denial and distortion, finds UN report |url=https://www.un.org/en/outreach-programme-holocaust/social-media-feeds-holocaust-denial-and-distortion-finds-un-report |access-date=2024-11-22 |website=United Nations |language=en}}</ref>
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==Origin of the term==
The term ''negationism'' (''négationnisme'') was first coined by the French historian [[Henry Rousso]] in his 1987 book ''[[The Vichy Syndrome]]'' which looked at the French popular [[memory]] of [[Vichy France]] and the [[French Resistance]]. Rousso posited that it was necessary to distinguish between legitimate [[historical revisionism]] in [[Holocaust studies]] and politically motivated denial of the Holocaust, which he termed negationism.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkielkraut|first1=Alain|title=The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide|date=1998|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|location=Lincoln|isbn=978-0-8032-2000-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/futureofnegation0000fink/page/125 125]|url=https://archive.org/details/futureofnegation0000fink/page/125}}</ref>

==Purposes==
Usually, the purpose of historical negation is to align with tribal or ideological beliefs, demonize an enemy, maintain group identity, or preserve social bonds, often through motivated reasoning and denial of established facts.<ref>{{cite news |title=Truth or Denial |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/brand-connect/bleecker-street/denial/ |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=3 June 2025}}</ref>

===Ideological influence===
{{see also|Social influence|War of ideas}}
The principal functions of negationist history are the abilities to control ideological and political influence.

History is a social resource that contributes to shaping [[national identity]], culture, and the public memory. Through the study of history, people are imbued with a particular cultural identity; therefore, by negatively revising history, the negationist can craft a specific, ideological identity. Because historians are credited as people who single-mindedly pursue truth, by way of fact, negationist historians capitalize on the historian's [[Reputation|professional credibility]], and present their [[pseudohistory]] as true scholarship. By adding a measure of credibility to the work of revised history, the ideas of the negationist historian are more readily accepted in the public mind. As such, professional historians recognize the revisionist practice of historical negationism as the work of "truth-seekers" finding different truths in the historical record to fit their political, social, and ideological contexts.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}

===Political influence===
History provides insight into past political policies and consequences, and thus assists people in extrapolating political implications for contemporary society. Historical negationism is applied to cultivate a specific [[political myth]], sometimes with official consent from the government, whereby self-taught, amateur, and dissident academic [[historian]]s either manipulate or misrepresent historical accounts to achieve political ends. For example, after the late 1930s in the [[Soviet Union]], the [[ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] and [[historiography in the Soviet Union]] treated [[reality]] and the [[Party line (politics)|party line]] as the same intellectual entity, especially in regards to the [[Russian Civil War]] and peasant rebellions;<ref>Taisia Osipova, "Peasant rebellions: Origin, Scope, Design and Consequences", in Vladimir N. Brovkin (ed.), ''The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars'', Yale University Press, 1997, {{ISBN|0-300-06706-2}}. pp. 154–76.</ref> Soviet historical negationism advanced a specific, political, and ideological agenda about Russia and its place in world history.<ref>Roger D. Markwick, Donald J. Raleigh, ''Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, {{ISBN|0-333-79209-2}}, pp. 4–5.</ref>

==Techniques==
{{Main|Pseudohistory}}
Historical negationism applies the techniques of research, quotation, and presentation for [[deception]] of the reader and [[denial]] of the historical record. In support of the "revised history" perspective, the negationist historian uses false documents as genuine sources, presents specious reasons to distrust genuine documents, exploits published opinions by quoting out of historical context, manipulates [[statistics]], and mistranslates texts in other languages.<ref>Tennent H. Bagley, [https://archive.org/details/spywarsmolesmyst00bagl Spy Wars]¸ Yale University Press, 2007.  {{ISBN|978-0-300-12198-8}}, p. 105.</ref> The revision techniques of historical negationism operate in the [[academic research|intellectual space]] of public debate for the advancement of a given interpretation of history and the cultural perspective of the "revised history".<ref name= "Dionne1">Dionne, E.J. Jr. [http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?lni=3SJF-B8B0-002S-T1J1&csi=8075&hl=t&hv=t&hnsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true Cold War Scholars Fault Stalin: Soviet Historians Lean to U.S. View]. The Washington Post. 26 July 1990. LexisNexis Database (Retrieved 12 October 2011). First Section, p. A3.</ref> As a document, the revised history is used to negate the validity of the factual, documentary record, and so reframe explanations and perceptions of the discussed historical event, to deceive the reader, the listener, and the viewer; therefore, historical negationism functions as a technique of [[propaganda]].<ref name="Nargor1">Nagorski, Andrew. [http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?lni=4S1C-XM90-TX2J-20J2&csi=5774&hl=t&hv=t&hnsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true Russia's New Normal: The Cold War may be over, but that doesn't mean the threat from the Kremlin has entirely disappeared.] Newsweek; World Affairs. 17 March 2008. LexisNexis Database(. Retrieved 12 October 2011)Vol. 151 No 11. {{ISSN|0163-7053}}</ref> Rather than submit their works for [[peer review]], negationist historians rewrite history and use [[fallacy|logical fallacies]] to construct arguments that will obtain the desired results, a "revised history" that supports an agenda&nbsp;– political, ideological, religious, etc.<ref name="Evans-145"/>

In the practice of [[historiography]], the British historian [[Richard J. Evans]] describes the technical differences, between [[Historical revisionism|professional historians]] and negationist historians, commenting: "Reputable and professional historians do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account, and, if necessary, amend their own case, accordingly. They do not present, as genuine, documents which they know to be forged, just because these forgeries happen to back up what they are saying. They do not invent ingenious, but implausible, and utterly unsupported reasons for distrusting genuine documents, because these documents run counter to their arguments; again, they amend their arguments, if this is the case, or, indeed, abandon them altogether. They do not consciously attribute their own conclusions to books and other sources, which, in fact, on closer inspection, actually say the opposite. They do not eagerly seek out the highest possible figures in a series of statistics, independently of their reliability, or otherwise, simply because they want, for whatever reason, to maximize the figure in question, but rather, they assess all the available figures, as impartially as possible, to arrive at a number that will withstand the critical scrutiny of others. They do not knowingly mistranslate sources in foreign languages to make them more serviceable to themselves. They do not willfully invent words, phrases, quotations, incidents and events, for which there is no historical evidence, to make their arguments more plausible."<ref name="Evans-Pgrph-6-20">[[Richard J. Evans]]. David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial: Electronic Edition, [http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html 6. General Conclusion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924025406/http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html |date=24 September 2015 }} Paragraphs 6.20,6.21</ref>

===Deception===
{{see also|Disinformation}}
Deception includes falsifying information, [[Obscurantism|obscuring the truth]], and lying to manipulate public opinion about the historical event discussed in the revised history. The negationist historian applies the techniques of deception to achieve either a political or an [[Ideology|ideological]] goal, or both. The field of history distinguishes among history books based upon credible, verifiable sources, which were [[Peer review|peer-reviewed]] before publication; and deceptive history books, based upon unreliable sources, which were not submitted for peer review.<ref>Jon Silverman [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4449212.stm How 'Holocaust denier' fought and lost] on the [[BBC]] web-site 18 November 2005</ref><ref>[[Malte Herwig]] "[http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,395810,00.html The Swastika Wielding Provocateur]" in ''[[Der Spiegel]]'' 16 January 2006</ref> The distinction among types of history books rests upon the research techniques used in writing a history. Verifiability, accuracy, and openness to criticism are central tenets of historical [[Scholarly method|scholarship]]. When these techniques are sidestepped, the presented historical information might be deliberately deceptive, a "revised history".

===Denial===
{{see also|Conspiracy theory|Denialism|Genocide denial}}

Denial is defensively protecting information from being shared with other historians, and claiming that facts are untrue, especially denial of the [[war crimes]] and [[crimes against humanity]] perpetrated in the course of [[World War&nbsp;II]] (1939–1945) and [[the Holocaust]] (1933–1945). The negationist historian protects the historical-revisionism project by [[blame shifting]], censorship, distraction, and [[media manipulation]]; occasionally, denial by protection includes [[risk management]] for the physical security of revisionist sources.

===Relativization and trivialization===
{{see also|Holocaust trivialization}}
Comparing certain historical atrocities to other crimes is the practice of relativization, interpretation by moral judgements, to alter public perception of the first historical atrocity. Although such comparisons often occur in negationist history, their pronouncement is not usually part of revisionist intentions upon the historical facts, but an opinion of [[moral judgement]].
* The Holocaust and [[Nazism]]: The historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]] says that the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the [[expulsion of Germans after World War II]] from [[Lebensraum|Nazi-colonized lands]] and the formal [[Allied war crimes during World War II|Allied war crimes]], is at the centre of, and is a continually repeated theme of, contemporary [[Holocaust denial]], and that such relativization presents "immoral equivalencies".<ref>Barry Loberfeld, [http://abcdunlimited.com/ideas/denying.html "Denying the Other Holocausts"]: Professor Lipstadt's Own Assault on Truth and Memory, [[Liberty (1987)|Liberty]], May 2002</ref>
* Some proponents of the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy]] use certain historical examples of non-[[chattel slavery]] in discussions on the role of the slave system of the South, however insofar as it is to further this ideological point it obscures and downplays the specificities of the American slave system- both its place in history, and comparison to other such systems overall. For example, court decisions and statutes mandated multi-generational slavery unlike many other slave systems, and further beyond that stated that a freedman could never become a citizen of the United States. These measures, related to perpetuation and racist characterization besides further restrictions on life even outside slavery in support of it distinguished the system compared to all, or an overwhelming amount of historical systems
* Connected to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy is the [[Irish slaves myth]], a pseudo-historical narrative which conflates the experiences of [[Irish indentured servants]] and [[Atlantic slave trade|enslaved Africans]] in the [[Americas]]. This distortion, which was historically promoted by [[Irish nationalism|Irish nationalists]] such as [[John Mitchel]], has in the modern-day been promoted by [[White supremacy|white supremacists]] in the United States to negate the mistreatment experienced by [[African Americans]] (such as [[Racism in the United States|racism]] and [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]]), also opposing [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]] [[Reparations for slavery in the United States|reparations]].<ref>{{Cite news|last=Linehan|first=Hugh|title=Sinn Féin not allowing facts derail good 'Irish slaves' yarn|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-not-allowing-facts-derail-good-irish-slaves-yarn-1.2644397|access-date=30 March 2021|newspaper=The Irish Times|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kennedy|first1=Liam|title=Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish?|title-link=Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish?|date=2015|publisher=Irish Academic Press|isbn=9781785370472|location=Dublin|page=19|language=en}}</ref>

==Examples==
{{denial of mass killings}}

===Book burning===
{{Main|Book burning}}
Repositories of literature have been targeted throughout history (e.g., the [[House of Wisdom#Destruction by the Mongols|Grand Library of Baghdad]], the burning of liturgical and historical books of the [[Syro-Malabar Catholic Church|St. Thomas Christians]] by the [[Patriarch of the East Indies|archbishop of Goa]] [[Aleixo de Menezes]]<ref>Cf. Gouvea, Jornada (Coimbra, 1606);Geddes,"History of the Malabar Church", London, 1694</ref>) including recently, such as the 1981 [[Burning of Jaffna library]] and the destruction of Iraqi libraries by [[Islamic State|ISIS]] during the [[fall of Mosul]] in 2014.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/26/isis-destroys-thousands-books-libraries|last=Fadhil|first=Muna|title=Isis destroys thousands of books and manuscripts in Mosul libraries |date=26 February 2015|access-date=17 July 2015|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> Similarly, British officials destroyed documents in [[Operation Legacy]] to avoid records on colonial rule falling into the hands of countries declaring independence from Britain and any scrutiny of the British state.

====Chinese book burning====
{{Main|Burning of books and burying of scholars}}
The ''[[Burning of books and burying of scholars]]'' ({{lang-zh|t=焚書坑儒|s=焚书坑儒|p=fénshū kēngrú|l=burning of books and burying (alive) of (Confucian) scholars|first=t}}), or "Fires of Qin", refers to the burning of writings and slaughter of scholars during the [[Qin dynasty]] of [[ancient China]], between the period of 213 and 210 BC. "Books" at this point refers to writings on [[Bamboo and wooden slips|bamboo strips]], which were then bound together. The exact extent of the damage is hard to assess; technological books were to be spared<ref>Shiji Chapter 6. "The Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin" thirty-fourth year: "所不去者，醫藥卜筮種樹之書。"</ref> and even the "objectionable" books, poetry and philosophy in particular, were preserved in imperial archives and allowed to be kept by the official scholar.

===United States history===

====Executive order to negate American history====
{{See also|Executive Order 14151|Executive Order 14172|Executive Order 14253|Diversity, equity, and inclusion policies of the second Trump administration#Government purge}}
During the [[second presidency of Donald Trump]] (2025–present), the [[National Park Service]] was ordered to police "negative" American history. In over 400 Federally managed properties, they displayed signs to encourage visitors to report information critical of American history. It was meant to counter what Trump considered "revisionist" history, such as at Indian massacre sites, Japanese internment sites, and particularly Civil Rights historical sites in the American South, which were all impacted by the order to police negative information.<ref>{{cite web |last=Hebert |first=Olivia |title=National parks ordered to police 'negative' history under Trump directive |work=SFGate |date=May 23, 2025 |access-date=2025-05-22 |url=https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/national-parks-negative-history-trump-20343308.php }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Joselow |first=Maxine |title=Trump Told Park Workers to Report Displays That 'Disparage' Americans. Here's What They Flagged. |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=July 22, 2025 |access-date=2025-07-22 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/climate/trump-national-park-service-history-changes.html }}</ref>

====Confederate revisionism====
{{main|Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Neo-Confederate|White supremacy in U.S. school curriculum}}
The historical negationism of [[American Civil War]] revisionists and [[Neo-Confederate]]s claims that the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate States]] (1861–1865) were the defenders rather than the instigators of the [[American Civil War]], and that the Confederacy's motivation for secession from the United States was the maintenance of the Southern [[states' rights]] and limited government, rather than the preservation and expansion of [[chattel slavery]].<ref>{{cite web |author=David Barton |date=December 2008 |title=Confronting Civil War Revisionism: Why the South Went to War |url=http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=92 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131231075954/http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=92 |archive-date=31 December 2013 |access-date=30 December 2013 |work=Wall Builders}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |author=Barrett Brown |date=27 December 2010 |title=Neoconfederate civil war revisionism: Those who commemorate the South's fallen heroes are entitled to do so, but not to deny that slavery was the war's prime cause |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/26/american-civil-war-usa |access-date=30 December 2013 |work=TheGuardian.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=15 June 2011 |title=Howard Swint: Confederate revisionism warps U.S. history |url=http://www.charlestondailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201106140917 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131231094729/http://www.charlestondailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201106140917 |archive-date=31 December 2013 |access-date=30 December 2013 |work=Charleston Daily Mail}}</ref>

Regarding Neo-Confederate revisionism of the U.S. Civil War, the historian [[Brooks D. Simpson]] says: "This is an active attempt to reshape historical memory, an effort by white Southerners to find historical justifications for present-day actions. The neo–Confederate movement's ideologues have grasped that if they control how people remember the past, they'll control how people approach the present and the future. Ultimately, this is a very conscious war for memory and heritage. It's a quest for [[wikt:legitimacy|legitimacy]], the eternal quest for justification."<ref>{{Cite web |author= |date=15 September 2000 |title=Arizona State Professor Brooks D. Simpson Discusses Neo-Confederate Movement |url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/arizona-state-professor-brooks-d-simpson-discusses-neo-confederate-movement |work=Intelligence Report |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center}}</ref>

In the early 20th century, [[Mildred Rutherford]], the historian general of the [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]] (UDC), led the attack against [[American history]] textbooks that did not present the "[[Lost Cause of the Confederacy]]" version of the history of the U.S. Civil War. To that pedagogical end, Rutherford assembled a "massive collection" of documents that included "essay contests on the glory of the [[Ku Klux Klan]] and personal tributes to faithful slaves".<ref>Blight, David W. ''Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory''. (2001) p. 289 {{ISBN?}}</ref> About the historical negationism of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the historian [[David Blight]] says: "All UDC members and leaders were not as virulently [[racism|racist]] as Rutherford, but all, in the name of a reconciled nation, participated in an enterprise that deeply influenced the [[white supremacist]] vision of Civil War memory."<ref>Blight, David W. ''Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory''. (2001) p. 290</ref>

====California genocide====
Between 1846 and 1873, following the [[conquest of California]] by the United States, the region's [[Indigenous peoples of California|Indigenous Californian]] population plummeted from around 150,000 to around 30,000 due to disease, famine, [[Population transfer|forced removals]], slavery, and massacres. Many historians refer to the massacres as the [[California genocide]]. Between 9,500 and 16,000 California Natives were killed by both government forces and white settlers in massacres during this period.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Madley |first1=Benjamin |title=Understanding Genocide in California under United States Rule, 1846–1873 |year=2016 |journal=The Western Historical Quarterly |pages=449–461 |volume=47 |issue=4 |doi=10.1093/whq/whw176|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Madley |first1=Benjamin |title=California's Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History |date=1 August 2008 |journal=The Western Historical Quarterly |pages=303–332 |volume=39 |issue=3 |doi=10.1093/whq/39.3.303}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Madley |first1=Benjamin |title=Patterns of frontier genocide 1803–1910: the aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia |year=2004 |journal=Journal of Genocide Research |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1462352042000225930 |pages=167–192 |volume=6 |issue=2 |doi=10.1080/1462352042000225930|s2cid=145079658 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Sousa |first1=Ashley Riley |title="They will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed!": a comparative study of genocide in California and Tasmania |year=2004 |journal=Journal of Genocide Research |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1462352042000225949 |pages=193–209 |volume=6 |issue=2 |doi=10.1080/1462352042000225949|s2cid=109131060 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Madley |first=Benjamin |date=2016 |title=An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ya0ODAAAQBAJ |location=New Haven |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300181364}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Adhikari |first=Mohamed |date= 2022 |title=Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ht9dEAAAQBAJ |location=Indianapolis |publisher=Hackett Publishing Company |pages=72–115 |isbn=978-1647920548}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Lindsay |first=Brendan C. |date=March 2015 |title=Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846–1873 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rc_4oQEACAAJ |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-0-8032-6966-8}}</ref> Despite the well documented evidence of the widespread massacres and atrocities, the public school curriculum and history textbooks approved by the [[California Department of Education]] ignore the history of this genocide.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>

According to author Clifford Trafzer, although many historians have pushed for recognition of the genocide in public school curricula, government-approved textbooks omit mention of the genocide because of the dominance of conservative publishing companies with an ideological impetus to deny the genocide, the fear of publishing companies being branded as un-American for discussing it, and the unwillingness of state and federal government officials to acknowledge the genocide due to the possibility of having to pay reparations to indigenous communities affected by it.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

===War crimes===
====Japanese war crimes====<!-- This section is linked from [[Second Sino-Japanese War]]. -->
{{main|Japanese war crimes|Nanjing Massacre denial|American cover-up of Japanese war crimes}}
{{see also|Japanese imperialism|Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine}}
[[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 [[Yuko Tojo|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 [[Shinzo 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=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-apr-11-oe-cunningham11-story.html }}</ref>

Shinzō Abe was general secretary of a group of parliament members concerned with history education ({{Langx|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}}

====Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings====
{{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 = 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>{{Cite journal |last1=Hill |first1=Joshua |last2=Koshiro |first2=Yukiko |date=15 December 1997 |title=Remembering the Atomic Bomb |url=http://www.nd.edu/~frswrite/mcpartlin/1998/Hill.shtml |journal=Fresh Writing |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080205005048/http://www.nd.edu/~frswrite/mcpartlin/1998/Hill.shtml |archive-date=5 February 2008}}</ref>

====Croatian war crimes in World War II====
{{further|Far-right politics in Croatia|Denial of the genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia}}
Some Croats, including some high-ranked officials and political leaders during the 1990s and far-right organization members, have attempted to minimize the magnitude of the [[Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia|genocide perpetrated against Serbs]] and other ethnic minorities in the World War II [[puppet state]] of [[Nazi Germany]], the [[Independent State of Croatia]].<ref>{{cite web|publisher=[[Institute for War and Peace Reporting|IWPR]]|author=Drago Hedl|url=https://iwpr.net/global-voices/croatias-willingness-tolerate-fascist-legacy|title=Croatia's Willingness To Tolerate Fascist Legacy Worries Many|work=BCR Issue 73|date=10 November 2005|access-date=30 November 2010|author-link=Drago Hedl}}</ref> By 1989, the future President of Croatia [[Franjo Tuđman]] (who had been a [[Yugoslav Partisans|Partisan]] during World War II), had embraced [[Croatian nationalism]]<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sadkovich |first1=James J. |title=Father of His Country? Franjo Tudjman and the Creation of Contemporary Croatia |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/304-father-his-country-franjo-tudjman-and-the-creation-contemporary-croatia |publisher=Wilson Center |date=13 October 2004}}</ref> and published ''[[Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy]]'', in which he questioned the official number of victims killed by the [[Ustaše]] during [[World War II]], particularly at the [[Jasenovac concentration camp]].<ref name="Sindbaek">{{cite book |last1=Sindbaek |first1=Tia |title=Usable History?: Representations of Yugoslavia's Difficult Past from 1945 to 2002 |date=2012 |publisher=ISD LLC |isbn=978-8-77124-107-5 |pages=178–179 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BLhYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178}}</ref> Yugoslav and [[Serbian historiography]] had long exaggerated the number of victims at the camp.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Milekic |first1=Sven |title=Croatia's Jasenovac Death Toll: A Political Numbers Game |url=https://balkaninsight.com/2018/01/31/croatia-s-jasenovac-death-toll-a-political-numbers-game-01-31-2018/ |website=Balkan Insight |publisher=BIRN |date=31 January 2018}}</ref> Tuđman criticized the long-standing figures, but also described the camp as a "work camp", giving an estimate of between 30,000 and 40,000 deaths.<ref name="Sindbaek" /> Tuđman's government's toleration of [[Ustaša]] symbols and their crimes often dismissed in public, frequently strained relations with Israel.<ref>{{cite news|work=Reuters|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-croatia-hitler-idUSL1928296120070220|title=Croatia probes why Hitler image was on sugar packets|date=20 February 2007|access-date=12 October 2012|archive-date=24 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924090600/http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/02/20/us-croatia-hitler-idUSL1928296120070220|url-status=live}}</ref>

Croatia's far-right often advocates the false theory that Jasenovac was a "labour camp" where mass murder did not take place.<ref name="Milekic">{{cite web |last1=Milekic |first1=Sven |title=Croatia Ex-President Shown Downplaying WWII Crimes |url=https://balkaninsight.com/2017/01/24/videos-reveal-croatian-ex-president-shocking-wwii-statements-01-24-2017/ |website=Balkan Insight |publisher=BIRN |date=24 January 2017}}</ref> In 2017, two videos of former Croatian president [[Stjepan Mesić]] from 1992 were made public in which he stated that Jasenovac was not a death camp.<ref name="Milekic" /><ref>{{cite news |title=Mesić na snimci iz devedesetih: 'Jasenovac nije bio logor smrti. Tko je stigao tamo, bio je spašen' |url=http://www.novilist.hr/Vijesti/Hrvatska/Mesic-na-snimci-iz-devedesetih-Jasenovac-nije-bio-logor-smrti.-Tko-je-stigao-tamo-bio-je-spasen |work=Novi list |date=23 January 2017}}</ref> The far-right NGO "The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp" also advocates this disproven theory, in addition to claiming that the camp was used by the Yugoslav authorities following the war to imprison Ustasha members and regular [[Croatian Home Guard (World War II)|Home Guard]] army troops until 1948, then alleged [[Stalinism|Stalinists]] until 1951.<ref name="Milekic" /> Its members include journalist [[Igor Vukić]], who wrote his own book advocating the theory, Catholic priest [[Stjepan Razum]] and academic [[Josip Pečarić]].<ref name="Vladisavljevic">{{cite web |last1=Vladisavljevic |first1=Anja |title=Book Event Questioning WWII Crimes Planned for Zagreb Church |url=https://balkaninsight.com/2019/01/07/new-revisionist-book-on-jasenovac-wwii-camp-01-07-2019-1/ |website=Balkan Insight |publisher=BIRN |date=7 January 2019}}</ref> The ideas promoted by its members have been amplified by mainstream media interviews and book tours.<ref name="Vladisavljevic" /> The last book, "The Jasenovac Lie Revealed" written by Vukić, prompted the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] to urge Croatian authorities to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so".<ref>{{cite web |title=Simon Wiesenthal Centre urges Croatia to ban Jasenovac revisionist works |url=http://hr.n1info.com/English/NEWS/a361178/Simon-Wiesenthal-Centre-urges-Croatia-to-ban-Jasenovac-revisionist-works.html |website=hr.n1info.com |publisher=N1 Zagreb |date=9 January 2019 |access-date=21 April 2020 |archive-date=9 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201009060853/http://hr.n1info.com/English/NEWS/a361178/Simon-Wiesenthal-Centre-urges-Croatia-to-ban-Jasenovac-revisionist-works.html |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Jewish rights group urges Croatia to ban pro-Nazi book |url=https://apnews.com/11edaa150f63423989db3540cbbdbd69 |publisher=Associated Press |date=9 January 2019}}</ref> In 2016, Croatian filmmaker [[Jakov Sedlar]] released a documentary ''[[Jasenovac – istina|Jasenovac – The Truth]]'' which advocated the same theories, labelling the camp as a "collection and labour camp".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Milekic |first1=Sven |title=Dishonour for Zagreb Over 'Alternative Facts' About Holocaust |url=https://balkaninsight.com/2017/04/21/dishonour-for-zagreb-over-alternative-facts-about-holocaust-04-21-2017/ |website=BalkanInsight |access-date=5 September 2019 |date=21 April 2017}}</ref> The film contained alleged falsifications and forgeries, in addition to denial of crimes and hate speech towards politicians and journalists.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.telegram.hr/politika-kriminal/ugledni-odvjetnik-tvrdi-da-bi-jakov-sedlar-zbog-filma-jasenovac-i-istina-mogao-u-zatvor-evo-zasto/|title=Jakov Sedlar bi zbog filma 'Jasenovac – istina' mogao u zatvor|language=hr|date=18 April 2016|publisher=Telegram}}</ref>

====Serbian war crimes in World War II====
Among far-right and nationalist groups, denial and revisionism of Serbian war crimes are carried out through the downplaying of [[Milan Nedić]] and [[Dimitrije Ljotić]]'s roles in the [[Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia#Racial persecution|extermination of Serbia's Jews]] in concentration camps, in the German-occupied [[Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia]] by a number of Serbian historians.{{sfn|Perica|2002|p=151}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ramet |first1=Sabrina |title=The denial syndrome and its consequences: Serbian political culture since 2000 |journal=Communist and Post-Communist Studies |year=2007 |volume=40 |pages=41–58 |doi=10.1016/j.postcomstud.2006.12.004 |url=https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article/40/1/41/63/The-denial-syndrome-and-its-consequences-Serbian |access-date=17 April 2020|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Serbian collaborationist armed forces were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the mass killings of Jews as well as Roma and those Serbs who sided with any anti-German resistance and the killing of many Croats and Muslims.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ridgeway |first1=James |last2=Udovickii |first2=Jasminka |title=Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia |date=2000 |publisher=Duke University Press |page=133}}</ref>{{sfn|Cohen|1996|pp=76–81}} Since the end of the war, Serbian collaboration in the Holocaust has been the subject of historical revisionism by Serbian leaders.{{sfn|Cohen|1996|p=113}} In 1993, the [[Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts]] listed Nedić among ''[[The 100 most prominent Serbs]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/serbian/news/2008/07/080707_nedic|title=Rehabilitacija Milana Nedića|publisher=BBC Serbian|date=7 July 2008|access-date=28 January 2017}}</ref> There is also the denial of [[Chetniks|Chetnik]] collaboration with [[Axis powers|Axis forces]] and [[Chetnik war crimes in World War II|crimes]] committed during World War II. Serbian historian Jelena Djureinovic states in her book ''The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution'' that "during those years, the WWII nationalist Chetniks have been recast as an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]] movement equivalent to [[Josip Broz Tito|Tito]]'s [[Yugoslav Partisans|Partisans]], and as victims of communism". The glorification of the Chetnik movement has now become the central theme of Serbia's WWII memory politics. Chetnik leaders convicted under [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|communist rule]] of [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|collaboration with the Nazis]] have been rehabilitated by [[Judiciary of Serbia|Serbian courts]], and television programmes have contributed to spreading a positive image of the movement, "distorting the real picture of what happened during WWII".<ref>{{cite web |title=How Serbia Changed its Mind about World War II History |url=https://balkaninsight.com/2020/02/06/how-serbia-changed-its-mind-about-world-war-ii-history/ |website=Balkan Insight |date=6 February 2020}}</ref>

====Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav wars====
{{further|Bosnian genocide denial}}
There have been a number of far-right and nationalist authors and political activists who have publicly disagreed with mainstream views of [[Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars#War crimes|Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav wars]] of 1991–1999. Some high-ranked Serbian officials and political leaders who categorically claimed that no [[Bosnian genocide|genocide against Bosnian Muslims]] took place at all, include former president of Serbia [[Tomislav Nikolić]], Bosnian Serb leader [[Milorad Dodik]], Serbian Minister of Defence [[Aleksandar Vulin]] and Serbian far-right leader [[Vojislav Šešelj]]. Among the points of contention are whether the victims of massacres such as the [[Račak massacre]] and [[Srebrenica massacre]] were unarmed civilians or armed resistance fighters, whether death and rape tolls were inflated, and whether prison camps such as [[Sremska Mitrovica camp]] were sites of mass war crimes. These authors are called "revisionists" by scholars and organizations, such as [[ICTY]].

The ''[[Report about Case Srebrenica]]'' by [[Darko Trifunovic]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&BBID=15401773&v3=1|title=Brief Record|publisher=US [[Library of Congress]]|access-date=22 April 2009}}</ref> commissioned by the government of the [[Republika Srpska]],<ref name=Katana>Gordana Katana (a correspondent with Voice of America in Banja Luka). [https://web.archive.org/web/20180103221422/https://iwpr.net/global-voices/regional-report-bosnian-serbs-play-down Regional Report: Bosnian Serbs Play Down Srebrenica], website of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Retrieved 25 October 2009</ref> was described by the [[International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia]] as "one of the worst examples of revisionism in relation to the mass executions of Bosnian Muslims committed in Srebrenica in July 1995".<ref>[http://www.icty.org/case/deronjic/4#tjug Judgement against Miroslav Deronjic] ICTY</ref> Outrage and condemnation by a wide variety of Balkan and international figures eventually forced the Republika Srpska to disown the report.<ref name=Katana/><ref name="Newsline030905">{{cite web|title=Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline, 02-09-03|url=http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/rferl/2002/02-09-03.rferl.html#70|date=3 September 2005|access-date=3 July 2009}}</ref> In 2017 legislation that banned the teaching of the [[Srebrenica genocide]] and [[Sarajevo siege]] in schools was introduced in Republika Srpska, initiated by President [[Milorad Dodik]] and his SNSD party, who stated that it was "impossible to use here the textbooks ... which say the Serbs have committed genocide and kept Sarajevo under siege. This is not correct and this will not be taught here".<ref>{{Cite news|date=6 June 2017|title=Serb president bans teaching about Sarajevo siege, Srebrenica genocide|language=en|work=Reuters|author=Daria Sito-Sucic|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bosnia-serbs-history-idUSKBN18X1SL|access-date=19 May 2020}}</ref> In 2019 Republika Srpska authorities appointed Israeli historian Gideon Greif – who has worked at [[Yad Vashem]] for more than three decades – to head its own revisionist commission to "determine the truth" about Srebrenica.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Peled |first1=Daniella |title=Why Are Israel's Top Holocaust Scholars So Willing to Deny This Genocide? |url=https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-are-israel-s-top-holocaust-scholars-so-willing-to-deny-this-genocide-1.7677900 |work=Haaretz |date=3 October 2019}}</ref>

====Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia====
{{main|Historiography of the Volyn tragedy}}
The issue of the Volyn massacres was largely non-existent in Ukrainian scholarly literature for many years, and until very recently, Ukrainian historiography did not undertake any objective research of the events in Volyn.<ref name="Ilyushin15">Ilyushin, p. 15</ref> Until 1991 any independent Ukrainian historic research was only possible abroad, mainly in the US and the Canadian [[diaspora]]. Despite publishing a number of works devoted to the history of UPA, the Ukrainian emigration researchers (with only few exceptions) remained completely mute about the Volyn events for many years. Until very recently much of the remaining documentation was closed in Ukrainian state archives, unavailable to researchers.<ref name="Ilyushin15"/> As a result, Ukrainian historiography lacks broader reliable research of the events and the presence of the issue in Ukrainian publications is still very limited. The young generation of Ukrainian historians is often infected with Ukrainocentrism, and often borrows the stereotypes and myths about Poland and Poles from the biased publications of the Ukrainian diaspora.<ref name="Ilyushin16">Ilyushin, p. 16</ref>

In September 2016, after [[Poland]]'s [[Sejm]] had passed a resolution declaring 11 July a [[National Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Genocide of the Citizens of the Polish Republic committed by Ukrainian Nationalists]] and formally called the [[Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia]] a genocide, the [[Verkhovna Rada]] of [[Ukraine]] passed a resolution condemning "the one-sided political assessment of the historical events in Poland",<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Portnov |first1=Andrii |title=Ukraińskie interpretacje rzezi wołyńskiej |journal=Więź |date=2013 |volume=LVI |issue=652 |pages=158–166 |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=183732 |language=pl |issn=0511-9405}}</ref> rejecting the term "genocide".<ref>{{cite web | url=https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/07/07/ww2-massacre-of-poles-by-ukrainians-must-be-called-genocide-says-head-of-polish-church/ | title=WW2 massacre of Poles by Ukrainians must be called genocide, says head of Polish church | date=7 July 2023 }}</ref>

====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=12 June 2009 |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=27 April 2023 |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" />

====Turkey and the Armenian genocide====
[[File:IgdirGenocideMuseum.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|alt=Photograph of the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum in Turkey|The [[Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum]]'s promotion of the view that [[Armenian people|Armenians]] committed genocide against [[Turkish people|Turks]], rather than vice versa, has received international condemnation for falsifying the [[Armenian genocide denial|history surrounding those Armenians killed]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Turkey and the Armenian Ghost: On the Trail of the Genocide|last1=Marchand|first1=Laure|last2=Perrier|first2=Guillaume|date=2015|publisher=[[McGill-Queen's Press]]|isbn=9780773597204|pages=111–112|quote=The Iğdır genocide monument is the ultimate caricature of the Turkish government's policy of denying the 1915 genocide by rewriting history and transforming victims into guilty parties.}}</ref>]]
{{main|Armenian genocide denial}}

Turkish laws such as [[Article 301 (Turkish Penal Code)|Article 301]], that state "a person who publicly insults [[Turkishness]], or the Republic or [the] Turkish [[Grand National Assembly of Turkey]], shall be punishable by imprisonment", were used to criminally charge the writer [[Orhan Pamuk]] with disrespecting Turkey, for saying that "Thirty thousand Kurds, and a million [[Armenians]], were killed in these lands, and nobody, but me, dares to talk about it".<ref>Sarah Rainsford ''[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4527318.stm Author's trial set to test Turkey]'' [[BBC]] 14 December 2005.</ref> The controversy occurred as Turkey was first vying for membership in the [[European Union]] (EU) where the suppression of dissenters is looked down upon.<ref name="npr.org">Madeleine Brand speaks with Hugh Pope ''[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5171842 Charges Against Turkish Writer Pamuk Dropped]'' [[National Public Radio|NPR]] 25 January 2005.</ref> Article 301 originally was part of penal-law reforms meant to modernize Turkey to [[European Union]] standards, as part of negotiating [[Accession of Turkey to the European Union|Turkey's accession to the EU]].<ref>[http://www.euractiv.com/Article?tcmuri=tcm:29-140266-16&type=News "Turkey's new penal code touches raw nerves"] EurActiv 2 June 2005, updated 14 November 2005.</ref> In 2006, the charges were dropped due to pressure from the European Union and United States on the Turkish government.<ref name="npr.org"/>

On 7 February 2006, five journalists were tried for insulting the judicial institutions of the State, and for aiming to prejudice a court case (per Article 288 of the Turkish penal code).<ref>''[https://archive.today/20120803195426/http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/72146 Writer Hrant Dink acquitted; trials against other journalists continue]'' [[International Freedom of Expression Exchange|IFEX]] 9 February 2006.</ref> The reporters were on trial for criticizing the court-ordered closing of a conference in Istanbul regarding the [[Armenian genocide]] during the time of the [[Ottoman Empire]]. The conference continued elsewhere, transferring locations from a state to a private university. The trial continued until 11 April 2006, when four of the reporters were acquitted. The case against the fifth journalist, [[Murat Belge]], proceeded until 8 June 2006, when he was also acquitted. The purpose of the conference was to critically analyse the official Turkish view of the Armenian genocide in 1915; a [[taboo]] subject in Turkey.<ref>Sarah Rainsford ''[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4273602.stm Turkey bans 'genocide' conference]'' [[BBC]] News 22 September 2005.</ref> The trial proved to be a test case between Turkey and the [[European Union]]; the EU insisted that Turkey should allow increased freedom of expression rights, as a condition to membership.<ref>Benjamin Harvey ''[http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article343939.ece Fight halts Turkish journalists' trial] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930184818/http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article343939.ece |date=30 September 2007 }}'' in [[The Independent]] 8 February 2006.</ref><ref>[[Associated Press]] ''[https://www.theguardian.com/worldlatest/story/0,,-5748033,00.html Case Against 4 Turkish Journalists Dropped]'' in [[The Guardian]] 11 April 2006.</ref>

====South Korean war crimes in Vietnam====
{{further|South Korea in the Vietnam War#War crimes and atrocities}}
At the request of the United States, [[South Korea]] under [[Park Chung Hee]] sent approximately 320,000 South Korean troops to fight alongside the United States and South Vietnam during the [[Vietnam War]]. Various civilian groups have accused the South Korean military of many "[[My Lai massacre|My Lai]]-style massacres",<ref>{{Cite news |last=Griffiths |first=James |title=The 'forgotten' My Lai: South Korea's Vietnam War massacres |work=CNN |url=https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/asia/south-korea-vietnam-massacre-intl/index.html |access-date=27 May 2018}}</ref> while the Korean Ministry of Defense has denied all such accusations.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Forgotten History of South Korean Massacres in Vietnam |url=https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/the-forgotten-history-of-south-korean-massacres-in-vietnam/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200911202121/https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/the-forgotten-history-of-south-korean-massacres-in-vietnam/ |archive-date=11 September 2020 |website=thediplomat.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=South Korean defense minister denies Vietnam War massacres |url=https://apnews.com/article/politics-south-korea-government-vietnam-d59a6464135c216e64fe2e0c3ff36547 |work=AP News |date=17 February 2023}}</ref> Korean forces are alleged to have perpetrated the [[Binh Tai massacre|Binh Tai]], [[Bình An/Tây Vinh massacre|Bình An/Tây Vinh]], [[Bình Hòa massacre|Bình Hòa]], and [[Hà My massacre|Hà My]] massacres and several other massacres across Vietnam,<ref>{{Cite news |date=9 April 2000 |title=Apocalypse Then |work=Newsweek |url=http://www.newsweek.com/apocalypse-then-157805 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612141013/http://www.newsweek.com/apocalypse-then-157805 |archive-date=12 June 2018}}</ref> killing as many as 9000 Vietnamese civilians.<ref>{{cite news |title=It's Time for South Korea to Acknowledge Its Atrocities in Vietnam |url=https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/30/vietnam-war-south-korea-massacres-history-diplomacy/ |work=Foreign Policy |date=30 December 2022}}</ref>

In 2023, a South Korean court ruled in favour of a Vietnamese victim of South Korean atrocities during the war and ordered that the South Korean government compensate the surviving victim. In response, the South Korean government repeated its earlier denials of the atrocities, and later announced its appeal of the decision. This strained relations with Vietnam, as a spokesperson for Vietnam's fording ministry called the decision "extremely regrettable".<ref>{{Cite news |date=9 March 2023 |title=South Korea appeals court ruling to compensate Vietnam war victim |language=en |work=Reuters |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-appeals-court-ruling-compensate-vietnam-war-victim-2023-03-09/ |access-date=1 June 2023}}</ref>

===Iran===
The [[Iran|Islamic Republic of Iran]] uses historical negationism against [[Religious Minorities in Iran|religious minorities]] in order to maintain legitimacy and relevancy of the regime. One example is the regime's approach to the [[Baháʼí Faith in Iran|Baháʼí community]]. In 2008, an erroneous and misleading biography of [[Báb]] was presented to all primary school children.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Islamic Republic of Iran and children's right to education: acceptability and adaptability |doi=10.7577/hrer.3930 |issn=2535-5406 |first=Shabnam |last=Moinipour |date=2021 |journal=Human Rights Education Review |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=26–48|s2cid=236595174 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

In his official 2013 [[Nowruz]] address, [[Supreme Leader of Iran]] Grand Ayatollah [[Ali Khamenei]] questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, remarking that "The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/446928689943420928 |title=Khamenei.ir |work=Twitter}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/03/8006/in-iran-new-years-address-khamenei-questions-holocaust/ |title=In Iran new year's address, Khamenei questions Holocaust |work=al-monitor.com |access-date=23 March 2014 |archive-date=24 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140324233740/http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/03/8006/in-iran-new-years-address-khamenei-questions-holocaust/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> This was consistent with Khamenei's previous comments regarding the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100239211/what-does-irans-supreme-leader-really-think-about-the-holocaust/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002100418/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100239211/what-does-irans-supreme-leader-really-think-about-the-holocaust/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 October 2013 |title=What does Iran's Supreme Leader really think about the Holocaust? |work=News – Telegraph Blogs}}</ref>

===Soviet and Russian history===
{{see also|Historiography in the Soviet Union|Soviet war crimes|Holodomor denial}}
{{Multiple image
| align = right
| direction = vertical
| width = 220
| image1 = 
| image2 = 
| caption2 = [[Nikolai Yezhov]] walking with Stalin in the top photo from the mid 1930s. Following his execution in 1940, Yezhov was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/vanishes.htm |title=Newseum: The Commissar Vanishes |access-date=19 July 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080611034558/http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/vanishes.htm |archive-date=11 June 2008}}</ref>
}}

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 name="The Stalin School of Falsification">{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Stalin School of Falsification |date=2019 |publisher=Pickle Partners Publishing |isbn=978-1-78912-348-7 |pages=vii–89 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PF2LDwAAQBAJ&q=stalin+school |language=en}}</ref> to argue that the Stalinist faction routinely distorted political events, forged a theoretical basis for irreconcilable concepts such as the notion of "Socialism in One Country" and misrepresented the views of opponents. He also argued that the Stalinist regime employed an array of professional historians as well as economists to justify policy manoeuvering and safeguarding its own set of material interests.<ref name="The Stalin School of Falsification"/>

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"/>

During and after the rule of [[Nikita Khrushchev]] (1956–1964), Soviet historiographic practice was more complicated. In this period, Soviet historiography was characterized by complex competition between [[Stalinist]] and [[anti-Stalinist]] Marxist historians.<ref name="Markwick"/> To avoid the professional hazard of politicized history, some historians chose pre-modern, [[Medieval History|medieval history]] or [[Classical History|classical history]], where ideological demands were relatively relaxed and conversation with other historians in the field could be fostered.<ref>[[The Historian (journal)]] ''[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6563.1957.tb01984.x/full Encounters with Soviet Historians]'' in [[The Historian (journal)]] November 1957. Vol 20. No 1. pp. 80–95</ref> Prescribed ideology could still introduce biases in historians' work, but not all of Soviet historiography was affected.<ref name="Markwick"/> Control over party history and the legal status of individual ex-party members played a large role in dictating the ideological diversity and thus the faction in power within the CPSU. The official ''[[History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)]]'' was revised to delete references to leaders purged from the party, especially during the rule of [[Joseph Stalin]] (1922–1953).<ref group="note">An example of changing visual history is the party's motivated practice of [[Censorship of images in the Soviet Union|altering photographs]].</ref>

In the [[historiography of the Cold War]], a controversy over negationist historical revisionism exists, where numerous revisionist scholars in the West have been accused of [[Whitewash (censorship)|whitewashing]] the crimes of Stalinism, overlooking the [[Katyn massacre]] in Poland, disregarding the validity of the [[Venona Project]] messages with regards to [[Soviet espionage in the United States]],<ref>[[John Earl Haynes]] and [[Harvey Klehr]]. ''In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage.'' [[Encounter Books]], 2003. {{ISBN|1-893554-72-4}} pp. 15–17</ref><ref>John Keep. [http://chs.revues.org/index1014.html Recent Writing on Stalin's Gulag: An Overview]. 1997</ref><ref>{{cite book |title= Red Holocaust |last= Rosefielde |first= Steven |author-link= Steven Rosefielde |year= 2009 |publisher= Routledge |isbn= 978-0-415-77757-5 |pages=173–213 |title-link= Red Holocaust (2009 book) }}</ref> as well as the [[Denial of the Holodomor|denial]] of the [[Holodomor]] of 1932–1933.

In 2009, Russia established the [[Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests]] to "defend Russia against falsifiers of history". Some critics, like Heorhiy Kasyanov from the [[National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine]], said the Kremlin was trying to whitewash Soviet history in order to justify its denial of human rights: "It's part of the Russian Federation's policy to create an ideological foundation for what is happening in Russia right now."<ref>{{cite news |title=Russia panel to 'protect history' |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8058087.stm |publisher=BBC News |date= 19 May 2009|access-date=24 May 2009}}</ref> Historian and author [[Orlando Figes]], a professor at the [[University of London]], who views the new commission is part of a clampdown on historical scholarship, stated: "They're idiots if they think they can change the discussion of Soviet history internationally, but they can make it hard for Russian historians to teach and publish. It's like we're back to the old days."<ref name="wsj1">{{cite news |first=Andrew |last=Osborn |title=Medvedev Creates History Commission |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124277297306236553 |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |date=20 May 2009 |accessdate=24 May 2009}}</ref> The commission was disestablished in 2012.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

===Azerbaijan===
{{Main|Falsification of history in Azerbaijan}}

====In relation to Armenia====
{{see also|Anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan|Armenian cemetery in Julfa|Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences#Statements on Armenia and Armenians}}
Many scholars, among them [[Victor Schnirelmann]],<ref name="ShnirelmanTheValue">[[Victor Schnirelmann]]: The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia. Senri Ethnological Studies. pp. 160, 196–97: "The republication of classical and medieval sources with omissions, with the replacement of the term "Armenian state" by "Albanian state" and with other distortions of the original manuscripts was another way to play down the Armenian role in early and medieval Transcaucasia. ... The Azeri scholars did all of this by order of the Soviet and Party authorities of Azerbaijan, rather than through free will."</ref><ref name="ShnirelmanREGNUM">[[Victor Schnirelmann]]: [http://www.regnum.ru/news/1624198.html Why to attribute the dominant views in Azerbaijan to the "world science"?] // REGNUM, 12 February 2013 ([http://www.panorama.am/en/politics/2013/03/06/shnirelman/ Translation])</ref> [[Willem Floor]],<ref name="FloorJavadi">Willem M. Floor, Hasan Javadi. "Abbas-Kuli-aga Bakikhanov. The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan". Mage Publishers, 2008. p. xvi: "This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise"</ref> [[Robert H. Hewsen|Robert Hewsen]],<ref name="Hewsen">Robert Hewsen. ''Armenia: A Historical Atlas.'' [[University of Chicago Press]], 2001. p. 291: "Scholars should be on guard when using Soviet and post-Soviet Azeri editions of Azeri, Persian, and even Russian and Western European sources printed in Baku. These have been edited to remove references to Armenians and have been distributed in large numbers in recent years. When utilizing such sources, the researchers should seek out pre-Soviet editions wherever possible."</ref> [[George A. Bournoutian|George Bournoutian]]<ref name="Aghuank">[[George A. Bournoutian|George Bournoutian]]. A brief history of the Aghuankʻ region. Mazda Publishers, 2009. pp. 8–14: "Therefore, in order to substantiate their political claims, Bunyatov and his fellow academics chose to set aside all scholarly integrity and print large numbers of re-edited versions of these not easily accessible primary sources on Karabagh, while deleting or altering references to the Armenians"</ref><ref name="PrimarySources">[[George A. Bournoutian|George Bournoutian]]. Rewriting History: Recent Azeri Alterations of Primary Sources Dealing with Karabakh // Research note from Volume 6 of the "Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies" (1992, 1993)</ref> and others state that in Soviet and post-Soviet [[Azerbaijan]] since the 1960s there is a practice of revising primary sources on the South Caucasus in which any mention about [[Armenians]] is removed. In the revised texts, ''Armenian'' is either simply removed or is replaced by ''Albanian''; there are many other examples of such falsifications, all of which have the purpose of creating an impression that historically Armenians were not present in this territory. Willem M. Floor and Hasan Javadi in the English edition of "The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan" by [[Abbasgulu Bakikhanov]] specifically point out to the instances of distortions and falsifications made by [[Ziya Bunyadov]] in his Russian translation of this book.<ref name="FloorJavadi"/> According to Bournoutian and Hewsen these distortions are widespread in these works; they thus advise the readers in general to avoid the books produced in Azerbaijan in Soviet and post-Soviet times if these books do not contain the facsimile copy of original sources.<ref name="Hewsen"/><ref name="PrimarySources"/> Shnirelman thinks that this practice is being realized in Azerbaijan according to state order.<ref name="ShnirelmanTheValue"/> [[Philip L. Kohl]] brings an example of a theory advanced by Azerbaijani archaeologist Akhundov about Albanian origin of Khachkars as an example of patently false cultural origin myths.<ref name="Kohl">Philip L. Kohl, Clare P. Fawcett. Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology. Cambridge University Press, 1995. p. 154: "Thus, minimally, two points must be made. Patently false cultural origin myths are not always harmless. The political context within which such myths are articulated is critical, and this context continually changes: given the events of the last nine years, assertion that today's Azerbaijan was the original homeland of Turkic-speaking peoples is charged with political significance"</ref>

The Armenian cemetery in Julfa, a cemetery near the town of [[Julfa, Azerbaijan (city)|Julfa]], in the [[Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic|Nakhchivan]] exclave of Azerbaijan originally housed around 10,000 funerary monuments. The tombstones consisted mainly of thousands of ''[[khachkar]]s'', uniquely decorated cross-stones characteristic of medieval Christian [[Armenian art]]. The cemetery was still standing in the late 1990s, when the government of Azerbaijan began a systematic campaign to destroy the monuments.<ref name= Pickman>{{cite journal|last1=Pickman|first1=Sarah|title=Tragedy on the Araxes|journal=[[Archaeology (magazine)|Archaeology]]|date=30 June 2006|url=http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/djulfa/index.html|publisher=[[Archaeological Institute of America]]}}</ref> After studying and comparing satellite photos of Julfa taken in 2003 and 2009, the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]] came to the conclusion in December 2010 that the cemetery was demolished and levelled.<ref name="AAAS">{{cite web|title=High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and the Destruction of Cultural Artifacts in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan|url=http://www.aaas.org/page/high-resolution-satellite-imagery-and-destruction-cultural-artifacts-nakhchivan-azerbaijan|publisher=[[American Association for the Advancement of Science]]|date=8 December 2010}}</ref> After the director of the [[Hermitage Museum]] [[Mikhail Piotrovsky]] expressed his protest about the destruction of [[Armenian cemetery in Julfa|Armenian khachkars in Julfa]], he was accused by Azerbaijanis of supporting the "total falsification of the history and culture of Azerbaijan".<ref name="Piotrovsky">Алиев В. "Кампанией вокруг хачкаров армяне хотят отвлечь внимание мира от агрессии Армении против Азербайджана"/В. Алиев // Наш век, 2006.-5-11 мая, N N18.-С.6
</ref> Several appeals were filed by both Armenian and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling on it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred [[European Parliament]] members from investigating the claims, charging them with a "biased and hysterical approach" to the issue and stating that it would only accept a delegation if it visited [[Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh|Armenian-occupied territory]] as well.<ref name=TheIndependent>{{cite news|last1=Castle|first1=Stephen|title=Azerbaijan 'flattened' sacred Armenian site|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/azerbaijan-flattened-sacred-armenian-site-480272.html|work=[[The Independent]]|date=23 October 2011}}</ref> In the spring of 2006, a journalist from the [[Institute for War and Peace Reporting]] who visited the area reported that no visible traces of the cemetery remained.<ref name=IWPR>{{cite news|last1=Abbasov|first1=Idrak|last2=Rzayev|first2=Shahin|last3=Mamedov|first3=Jasur|last4=Muradian|first4=Seda|last5=Avetian|first5=Narine|last6=Ter-Sahakian|first6=Karine|title=Azerbaijan: Famous Medieval Cemetery Vanishes|url=https://iwpr.net/global-voices/azerbaijan-famous-medieval-cemetery-vanishes|agency=[[Institute for War and Peace Reporting]]|date=27 April 2006}}</ref> In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery site had been turned into a military [[shooting range]].<ref name="HT">{{cite journal|last1=Maghakyan|first1=Simon|title=Sacred Stones Silenced in Azerbaijan|journal=[[History Today]]|date=November 2007|volume=57|issue=11|pages=4–5|url=http://www.historytoday.com/simon-maghakyan/sacred-stones-silenced-azerbaijan}}</ref> The destruction of the cemetery has been widely described by Armenian sources, and some non-Armenian sources, as an act of "[[cultural genocide]]."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Antonyan|first1=Yulia|last2=Siekierski|first2=Konrad|editor1-last=Aitamurto|editor1-first=Kaarina|editor2-last=Simpson|editor2-first=Scott|title=Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe|contribution=A neopagan movement in Armenia: the children of Ara|date=2014|publisher=Routledge|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=2L3oBAAAQBAJ&dq=cultural+genocide=+julfa+cemetery&pg=PA280 280]|quote=By analogy, other tragic events or threatening processes are designated today by Armenians as "cultural genocide" (for example, the destruction by Azerbaijanis of the Armenian cemetery in Julfa)...}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Ghazinyan|first1=Aris|title=Cultural War: Systematic destruction of Old Julfa khachkars raises international attention|url=http://armenianow.com/news/6092/cultural_war_systematic_destructio|work=[[ArmeniaNow]]|date=13 January 2006|quote=...another “cultural genocide being perpetrated by Azerbaijan.”|access-date=22 November 2020|archive-date=25 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151125053050/http://armenianow.com/news/6092/cultural_war_systematic_destructio|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author1=[[Uğur Ümit Üngör]]|editor1-last=Carmichael|editor1-first=Cathie|editor2-last=Maguire|editor2-first=Richard C.|title=The Routledge History of Genocide|contribution=Cultural genocide: Destruction of material and non-material human culture|date=2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317514848|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6rvlCAAAQBAJ&dq=cultural+genocide+julfa+cemetery&pg=PA250 250]}}</ref>

In Azerbaijan, the [[Armenian genocide]] is [[Armenian genocide denial#International relations|officially denied and is considered a hoax]]. According to the state ideology of Azerbaijan, a genocide of Azerbaijanis, carried out by Armenians and Russians, took place starting from 1813. Mahmudov has claimed that Armenians first appeared in Karabakh in 1828.<ref name="Mahmudov">Махмудов Я.М. Самый опасный вымысел в истории: (Ложь о "Великой Армении" – "идеология" террора, геноцида и захвата чужих земель) // Бакинский рабочий. – 2009:27 января. – N 16. – С. 2–3. ([https://web.archive.org/web/20110706131042/http://br.az/index.php?newsid=766 copy])</ref> Azerbaijani academics and politicians have claimed that foreign historians falsify the history of Azerbaijan and criticism was directed towards a Russian documentary about the regions of [[Karabakh]] and [[Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic|Nakhchivan]] and the historical Armenian presence in these areas.<ref name="Day_Az_02052007">Day.Az. 02 Мая 2007 [18:13]. [http://news.day.az/politics/78533.html Как реагировать на затягивание Россией ответов на ноты протеста?] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20160110163149/http://news.day.az/politics/78533.html copy])</ref><ref name="echo-03-05-2007">Керимов Р. Молчание Кремля: РФ рассматривает ноту протеста Азербайджана, в МИД АР ждут извинений и исправлений ошибок, а НАНА готова помочь соседу документами/Р. Керимов // Эхо, 2007.-3 мая, N N 77.-С.1.3</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://news.day.az/politics/77555.html|title=Посол России был вызван в МИД Азербайджана|date=24 April 2007}}</ref> According to the institute director of the [[Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences]] Yagub Mahmudov, prior to 1918 "there was never an Armenian state in the South Caucasus".<ref name="ANAS">{{cite news |title=Studies prove that before 1918, there was no Armenian state in S.Caucasus |url=https://www.azernews.az/nation/127091.html |access-date=27 August 2019 |agency=Azernews |date=13 February 2018}}</ref> According to Mahmudov, [[Ilham Aliyev]]'s statement in which he said that "Irevan is our [Azerbaijan's] historic land, and we, Azerbaijanis must return to these historic lands", was based "historical facts" and "historical reality".<ref name="ANAS"/> Mahmudov also stated that the claim that Armenians are the most ancient people in the region is based on propaganda, and said that Armenians are non-natives of the region, having only arrived in the area after Russian victories over Iran and the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the 19th century.<ref name=ANAS/> The institute director also said: "The Azerbaijani soldier should know that the land under the feet of provocative Armenians is Azerbaijani land. The enemy can never defeat Azerbaijanis on Azerbaijani soil. Those who rule the Armenian state today must fundamentally change their political course. The Armenians cannot defeat us by sitting in our historic city of Irevan."<ref name="ANAS"/>

====In relation to Iran====
{{see also|Azerbaijan naming controversy|Campaign on granting Nizami the status of the national poet of Azerbaijan|Anti-Iranian sentiment in 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"/>

In Azerbaijan, periods and aspects of Iranian history are usually claimed as being an "Azerbaijani" product in a distortion of history, and historic Iranian figures, such as the [[Persians|Persian]] poet [[Nizami Ganjavi]] are called "Azerbaijanis", contrary to universally acknowledged fact.<ref name="Arakelova">{{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=i, 91–92 |publisher=Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies}}</ref><ref name="Talattof">{{cite journal |last1=Talattof |first1=Kamran |title=Reviewed Work: Ali Doostzadeh, On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi (Yerevan Series for Oriental Studies – 1) by Siavash Lornejad |journal=Iran & the Caucasus |date=2012 |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=380–383|doi=10.1163/1573384X-20120025 }}</ref> In the Azerbaijan SSR, forgeries such as an alleged "Turkish ''[[Diwan (poetry)|divan]]''" and falsified verses were published in order to "Turkify" Nizami Ganjavi.<ref name="Talattof"/> Although this type of irredentism was initially the result of the nation building policy of the Soviets, it became an instrument for "biased, pseudo-academic approaches and political speculations" in the nationalistic aspirations of the young Azerbaijan Republic.<ref name="Arakelova"/> In the modern Azerbaijan Republic, historiography is written with the aim of retroactively Turkifying many of the peoples and kingdoms that existed prior to the arrival of Turks in the region, including the Iranian [[Medes]].<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=18, 85 (note 277) |publisher=Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies}}</ref> According to professor of history [[George Bournoutian]]:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bournoutian |first1=George |title=The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia |date=2016 |publisher=Gibb Memorial Trust |page=xvi}}</ref>
{{blockquote|As noted, in order to construct an Azerbaijani national history and identity based on the territorial definition of a nation, as well as to reduce the influence of Islam and Iran, the [[Azerbaijani nationalism|Azeri nationalists]], prompted by Moscow devised an [[Azerbaijani alphabet#History|"Azeri" alphabet]], which replaced the Arabo-Persian script. In the 1930s a number of Soviet historians, including the prominent Russian Orientalist, [[Ilya Pavlovich Petrushevsky|Ilya Petrushevskii]], were instructed by the Kremlin to accept the totally unsubstantiated notion that the territory of the [[Khanates of the Caucasus|former Iranian khanates]] (except [[Erivan Khanate|Yerevan]], which had become [[Soviet Armenia]]) was part of an Azerbaijani nation. Petrushevskii's two important studies dealing with the [[South Caucasus]], therefore, use the term Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani in his works on the history of the region from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Other Russian academics went even further and claimed that an Azeri nation had existed from ancient times and had continued to the present. Since all the Russian surveys and almost all nineteenth-century Russian primary sources referred to the Muslims who resided in the South Caucasus as "Tatars" and not "[[Azerbaijanis]]", Soviet historians simply substituted Azerbaijani for Tatars. Azeri historians and writers, starting in 1937, followed suit and began to view the three-thousand-year history of the region as that of Azerbaijan. The pre-Iranian, Iranian, and Arab eras were expunged. Anyone who lived in the territory of Soviet Azerbaijan was classified as Azeri; hence the great Iranian poet [[Nizami Ganjavi|Nezami]], who had written only in Persian, became the national poet of [[Azerbaijan]].}}

Bournoutian adds:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bournoutian |first1=George |title=The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia |date=2016 |publisher=Gibb Memorial Trust |pages=xvii, xv, xviii}}</ref>
{{blockquote|Although after [[Stalin]]'s death arguments rose between Azerbaijani historians and Soviet Iranologists dealing with the history of the region in ancient times (specifically the era of the [[Medes]]), no Soviet historian dared to question the use of the term Azerbaijan or Azerbaijani in modern times. As late as 1991, the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, published a book by an Azeri historian, in which it not only equated the "Tatars" with the present-day Azeris, but the author, discussing the population numbers in 1842, also included [[Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic|Nakhichevan]] and [[Ordubad]] in "Azerbaijan". The author, just like Petrushevskii, totally ignored the fact that between 1828 and 1921, Nakhichivan and Ordubad were first part of the [[Armenian Oblast|Armenian Province]] and then part of the [[Erivan Governorate|Yerevan guberniia]] and had only become part of Soviet Azerbaijan, some eight decades later ... Although the overwhelming number of nineteenth-century Russian and Iranian, as well as present-day European historians view the Iranian province of [[Azerbaijan (Iran)|Azarbayjan]] and the present-day [[Republic of Azerbaijan]] as two separate ''geographical'' and ''political'' entities, modern Azeri historians and geographers view it as a single state that has been separated into "northern" and "southern" sectors and which will be united in the future. ... Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the current Azeri historians have not only continued to use the terms "northern" and "southern" Azerbaijan, but also assert that the present-day [[Armenian Republic]] was a part of northern Azerbaijan. In their fury over what they view as the "Armenian occupation" of [[Nagorno-Karabakh]] [which incidentally was [[Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast|an autonomous Armenian region within Soviet Azerbaijan]]], Azeri politicians and historians deny any historic Armenian presence in the South Caucasus and add that all Armenian architectural monuments located in the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan are not Armenian but [[Caucasian Albania|[Caucasian] Albanian]].}}

===North Korea and the Korean War===
Since the start of the [[Korean War]] (1950–1953), the government of [[North Korea]] has consistently denied that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched the attack with which it began the war for the Communist unification of Korea. The historiography of the DPRK maintains that the war was provoked by [[South Korea]], at the instigation of the United States: "On June 17, Juche 39 [1950] the then U.S. President [[Harry S. Truman|[Harry S.] Truman]] sent [[John Foster Dulles|[John Foster] Dulles]] as his special envoy to South Korea to examine the anti-North war scenario and give an order to start the attack. On June 18, Dulles inspected the [[38th parallel north|38th parallel]] and the war preparations of the '[[Republic of Korea Army|ROK Army]]' units. That day he told [[Syngman Rhee]] to start the attack on North Korea with the [[Counterpropaganda|counter-propaganda]] that North Korea first 'invaded' the south."<ref>"U.S. Order to Start Korean War", Korean Central News Agency, 12 June 2000.</ref>

Further North Korean pronouncements included the claim that the U.S. needed the peninsula of Korea as "a bridgehead, for invading the Asian continent, and as a strategic base, from which to fight against [[Wars of national liberation|national-liberation movements]] and [[socialism]], and, ultimately, to attain world supremacy."<ref>Ho Jong Ho, Kang Sok Hui, and Pak Thae Ho, ''US Imperialists Started the Korean War'' (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1993), p. 11.</ref> Likewise, the DPRK denied the [[War crimes in the Korean War|war crimes]] committed by the [[Korean People's Army]] in the course of the war; nonetheless, in the 1951&ndash;1952 period, the [[Workers' Party of Korea]] (WPK) privately admitted to the "excesses" of their earlier campaign against North Korean citizens who had collaborated with the enemy&nbsp;– either actually or allegedly&nbsp;– during the US–South Korean occupation of North Korea. Later, the WPK blamed every wartime atrocity upon the [[United States Armed Forces|U.S. Armed Forces]], e.g. the [[Sinchon Massacre]] (17 October – 7 December 1950) occurred during the retreat of the DPRK government from [[Hwanghae Province]], in the south-west of North Korea.

The campaign against "[[Collaborationism|collaborators]]" was attributed to political and ideological manipulations by the U.S.; the high-ranking leader [[Pak Chang-ok]] said that the American enemy had "started to use a new method, namely, it donned a [[leftist]] garb, which considerably influenced the inexperienced cadres of the Party and government organs."<ref>Balázs Szalontai. "Captives of the Past: The Questions of Responsibility and Reconciliation in North Korea's Narratives of the Korean War", ''Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asian Context'', Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Melissa Nobles, eds., London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 165–82.</ref> Kathryn Weathersby's ''Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945–1950: New Evidence from Russian Archives'' (1993) confirmed that the Korean War was launched by order of [[Kim Il Sung]] (1912–1994); and also refuted the DPRK's [[allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War]]. The [[Korean Central News Agency]] dismissed the historical record of Soviet documents as "sheer forgery".<ref>Korean Central News Agency, 19 January 1998.</ref>

===Holocaust denial===
{{main|Criticism of Holocaust denial|Holocaust denial}}
Holocaust deniers usually reject the term ''Holocaust denier'' as an inaccurate description of their historical point of view, instead preferring the term ''Holocaust revisionist'';<ref>"Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as 'revisionists', in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities". ([http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312050016/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=12 March 2012 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved 16 May 2007)</ref> nonetheless, [[Scholarly method|scholars]] prefer "Holocaust denier" to differentiate deniers from legitimate [[historical revisionism|historical revisionists]], whose goal is to accurately analyse historical evidence with established methods.<ref group="note">To clarify the terminology of ''denial'' vs. ''revisionism'', see:
* "This is the phenomenon of what has come to be known as 'revisionism', 'negationism', or 'Holocaust denial,' whose main characteristic is either an outright rejection of the very veracity of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, or at least a concerted attempt to minimize both its scale and importance&nbsp;... It is just as crucial, however, to distinguish between the wholly objectionable politics of denial and the fully legitimate scholarly revision of previously accepted conventional interpretations of any historical event, including the Holocaust." Bartov, Omer. ''The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation and Aftermath,'' Routledge, pp. 11–12. Bartov is John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at the Watson Institute, and is regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on [[genocide]] ([http://www.watsoninstitute.org/contacts_detail.cfm?id=97 "Omer Bartov"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216115629/http://www.watsoninstitute.org/contacts_detail.cfm?id=97 |date=16 December 2008 }}, The Watson Institute for International Studies).
* "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 a historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a reexamination 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&nbsp;..." Ronald J. Berger. ''Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach'', Aldine Transaction, 2002, {{ISBN|0-202-30670-4}}, p. 154.
* "At this time, in the mid-1970s, the specter of Holocaust Denial (masked as "revisionism") had begun to raise its head in Australia&nbsp;..." [[Paul R. Bartrop|Bartrop, Paul R.]] "A Little More Understanding: The Experience of a Holocaust Educator in Australia" in Samuel Totten, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Paul R Bartrop. ''Teaching about the Holocaust'', Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, p. xix. {{ISBN|0-275-98232-7}}
* "[[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]] urges that denial of the Holocaust should not be called 'revisionism' because 'to deny history is not to revise it'. ''Les Assassins de la Memoire. Un Eichmann de papier et autres essays sur le revisionisme'' (The Assassins of Memory – A Paper-Eichmann and Other Essays on Revisionism) 15 (1987)." Cited in Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the ''Israel Yearbook on Human Rights'', Vol. 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, {{ISBN|0-7923-2581-8}}, p. 215.
* "This essay describes, from a methodological perspective, some of the inherent flaws in the "revisionist" approach to the history of the Holocaust. It is not intended as a polemic, nor does it attempt to ascribe motives. Rather, it seeks to explain the fundamental error in the "revisionist" approach, as well as why that approach of necessity leaves no other choice. It concludes that "revisionism" is a misnomer because the facts do not accord with the position it puts forward and, more importantly, its methodology reverses the appropriate approach to historical investigation&nbsp;..."Revisionism" is obliged to deviate from the standard methodology of historical pursuit because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result, it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred, and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, "revisionism" denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodological dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. [http://www.phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/ "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't"], [[The Holocaust History Project]], 15 May 1999. Retrieved 15 August 2016.
* "Crucial to understanding and combating Holocaust denial is a clear distinction between denial and revisionism. One of the more insidious and dangerous aspects of contemporary Holocaust denial, a la Arthur Butz, Bradley Smith and Greg Raven, is the fact that they attempt to present their work as reputable scholarship under the guise of 'historical revisionism.' The term 'revisionist' permeates their publications as descriptive of their motives, orientation and methodology. In fact, Holocaust denial is in no sense 'revisionism,' it is denial&nbsp;... Contemporary Holocaust deniers are not revisionists – not even neo-revisionists. They are ''Deniers''. Their motivations stem from their neo-Nazi political goals and their rampant antisemitism." Austin, Ben S. [http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/revision.htm "Deniers in Revisionists Clothing"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081121021941/http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/revision.htm |date=21 November 2008 }}, The Holocaust\Shoah Page, [[Middle Tennessee State University]]. Retrieved 29 March 2007.
* "Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review). Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as 'revisionists', in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities. There are, of course, a great many scholars engaged in historical debates about the Holocaust whose work should not be confused with the output of the Holocaust deniers. Debate continues about such subjects as, for example, the extent and nature of ordinary Germans' involvement in and knowledge of the policy of genocide, and the timing of orders given for the extermination of the Jews. However, the valid endeavour of historical revisionism, which involves the re-interpretation of historical knowledge in the light of newly emerging evidence, is a very different task from that of claiming that the essential facts of the Holocaust, and the evidence for those facts, are fabrications." [http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312050016/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=12 March 2012 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved 16 May 2007.</ref> Historian Alan Berger reports that Holocaust deniers argue in support of a preconceived theory – that the Holocaust either did not occur or was mostly a hoax – by ignoring extensive historical evidence to the contrary.<ref>Alan L. Berger, "Holocaust Denial: Tempest in a Teapot, or Storm on the Horizon?", ''In Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas'', Eds. Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, p. 154.</ref>

When the author [[David Irving]]<ref group="note">Further information of how Irving was discredited as a historian:
* "In 1969, after David Irving's support for Rolf Hochhuth, the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, The Daily Telegraph issued a memo to all its correspondents. 'It is incorrect,' it said, 'to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.'" Ingram, Richard. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060323205737/http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece Irving was the author of his own downfall], ''[[The Independent]]'', 25 February 2006.
* "It may seem an absurd semantic dispute to deny the appellation of 'historian' to someone who has written two dozen books or more about historical subjects. But if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as 'historical writer' instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it in order to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian's primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian." Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books, [http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html Expert Witness Report] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131206151336/http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html |date=6 December 2013 }} by Richard J. Evans FBA, Professor of Modern History, [[University of Cambridge]], 2000, Chapter 6.
* "State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: 'He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history.'" Traynor, Ian. [https://www.theguardian.com/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html Irving jailed for denying Holocaust], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 21 February 2006.
* "One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving. ... Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website." Doward, Jamie. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/nov/19/secondworldwar.religion "Muslim leader sent funds to Irving"], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 19 November 2006.
* "David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz." Traynor, Ian. [https://www.theguardian.com/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html "Irving jailed for denying Holocaust"], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 21 February 2006.
* "Conclusion on meaning 2.15 (vi): that Irving is discredited as a historian." [[s:David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/II|David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/II]].
* "DAVID Irving, the discredited revisionist historian and most outspoken British Holocaust denier, has added further fuel to the controversy over his early release from an Austrian jail by recanting his court statement of regret over his views." Crichton, Torcuil. "Holocaust denier reneges on regret", ''[[The Sunday Herald]]'', 24 December 2006.
* "Discredited British author David Irving spoke in front of some 250 people at a small theatre on Szabadság tér last Monday." Hodgson, Robert. [http://www.budapesttimes.hu/?do=article&id=2273 "Holocaust denier David Irving draws a friendly crowd in Budapest"], ''The Budapest Times'', 19 March 2007.
* "An account of the 2000–2001 libel trial in the high court of the now discredited historian David Irving, which formed the backdrop for his recent conviction in Vienna for denying the Holocaust." [http://bbc.ask-adders.com/program-details/David+Irving%3A+The+London+Trial/20060226170000/ Program Details – David Irving: The London Trial 2006-02-26 17:00:00], ''[[BBC Radio 4]].''
* "Yet Irving, a discredited right-wing historian, was described by a High Court judge after a long libel trial as a racist anti-semite who denied the Holocaust." Edwards, Rob. "Anti-green activist in links with Nazi writer; Revealed: campaigner", ''[[The Sunday Herald]]'', 5 May 2002.
* "'The sentence against Irving confirms that he and his views are discredited, but as a general rule I don't think that this is the way this should be dealt with,' said [[Antony Lerman]], director of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research. 'It is better to combat denial by education and using good speech to drive out bad speech.'" Gruber, Ruth Ellen. [http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/28480/edition_id/541/format/html/displaystory.html "Jail sentence for Holocaust denier spurs debate on free speech"], ''[[J. The Jewish News of Northern California]]'', 24 February 2006.
* "Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. She is the author of two books about the Holocaust. Her book ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'' led to the 2000 court case in which she defeated and discredited Holocaust denier David Irving." [https://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/understanding/justice.html Understanding Auschwitz Today], Task of Justice & Danger of Holocaust Deniers, ''[[Public Broadcasting Service]]''.
* "After the discredited British historian David Irving was sentenced to a three-year jail term in Austria as a penalty for denying the Holocaust, the liberal conscience of western Europe has squirmed and agonised." Glover, Gillian. [http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1087&id=277732006 "Irving gets just what he wanted – his name in the headlines"], ''[[The Scotsman]]'', 23 February 2006.
* "...&nbsp;is a disciple of discredited historian and Holocaust denier David Irving." [[David Horowitz|Horowitz, David]]. ''The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America'', Regnery Publishing, 2006, {{ISBN|0-89526-003-4}}, p. 175.
* "If the case for competence applies to those who lack specialist knowledge, it applies even further to those who have been discredited as incompetent. For example, why ought we include David Irving in a debate aiming to establish the truth about the Holocaust, after a court has found that he manipulates and misinterprets history?" Long, Graham. ''Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism'', Imprint Academic, 2004, {{ISBN|1-84540-004-6}}, p. 80.
* "Ironically, Julius is also a celebrated solicitor famous for his defence of Schuchard's colleague, Deborah Lipstadt, against the suit for of libel brought by the discredited historian David Irving brought when Lipstadt accused him of denying the Holocaust." [http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/tseliot.htm "T S Eliot's anti-Semitism hotly debated as scholars argue over new evidence"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024024743/http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/tseliot.htm |date=24 October 2007 }}, [[University of York]], Communications Office, 5 February 2003.
* "Irving, a discredited historian, has insisted that Jews at Auschwitz were not gassed." "Irving vows to continue denial", Breaking News, ''[[Jewish Telegraphic Agency]]'', 7 February 2007.
* "David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was on Monday night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz." [http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=264817&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ "Historian jailed for denying Holocaust"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071001011110/http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=264817&area=%2Fbreaking_news%2Fbreaking_news__international_news%2F |date=1 October 2007 }}, ''[[Mail & Guardian]]'', 21 February 2006.
* "Irving, a discredited historian, has insisted that Jews at Auschwitz were not gassed." [https://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13464 "Irving Vows To Continue Denial"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070102022947/http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13464 |date=2 January 2007 }}, ''[[The Jewish Week]]'', 29 December 2006.
* "The two best-known present-day Holocaust deniers are the discredited historian David Irving, jailed last year in Austria for the offence, and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wants Israel wiped off the map." Wills, Clair. " Ben Kiely and the 'Holocaust denial'", ''[[Irish Independent]]'', 10 March 2007.
* "[Irving] claimed that Lipstadt's book accuses him of falsifying historical facts to support his theory that the Holocaust never happened. This of course discredited his reputation as a historian. ... On 11 April, High Court judge Charles Gray ruled against Irving, concluding that he qualified as a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite, and that as such he distorted history to defend his hero, Adolf Hitler." Wyden, Peter. ''The Hitler Virus: the Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler'', Arcade Publishing, 2001, {{ISBN|1-55970-532-9}}, p. 164.
* "Now that holocaust denier David Irving has been discredited, what is the future of history?" Kustow, Michael. [http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xirving.html "History after Irving"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070416193052/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xirving.html |date=16 April 2007 }}, ''[[Red Pepper (magazine)|Red Pepper]]'', June 2000.
* "In Britain, which does not have a Holocaust denial law, Irving had already been thoroughly discredited when he unsuccessfully sued historian Deborah Lipstadt in 1998 for describing him as a Holocaust denier." [[Agnes Callamard|Callamard, Agnès]]. "Debate: can we say what we want?", ''[[Le Monde diplomatique]]'', April 2007.
* "Holocaust denier and discredited British historian David Irving, for example, asserts. ... that Auschwitz gas chambers were constructed after World War II." [http://www.psychiatricnews.org/pnews/01-02-02/hate.html "Hate-Group Web Sites Target Children, Teens"], ''Psychiatric News'', [[American Psychiatric Association]], 2 February 2001.
* "Holocaust denier: An Austrian court hears discredited British historian David Irving's appeal against his jail sentence for denying the Nazi genocide of the Jews.", [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6183173.stm "The world this week"], [[BBC News]], 20 December 2006.
* "Discredited British historian David Irving began serving three years in an Austrian prison yesterday for denying the Holocaust, a crime in the country where Hitler was born." Schofield, Matthew. [http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/02/21/1140284069021.html?from=rss "Controversial Nazi apologist backs down, but still jailed for three years"], ''[[The Age]]'', 22 February 2006.</ref> lost his [[Irving v Penguin Books Ltd|English libel case]] against Deborah Lipstadt, and her publisher, [[Penguin Books]], and thus was publicly discredited and identified as a Holocaust denier,<ref>"Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory" by [[Deborah Lipstadt|Deborah E. Lipstadt]]. {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}</ref> the trial judge, [[Charles Gray (judge)|Justice Charles Gray]], concluded that "Irving has, for his own ideological reasons, persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that, for the same reasons, he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favorable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards, and responsibility for, the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."<ref>David Pallister ''[https://www.theguardian.com/uk_news/story/0,3604,510058,00.html Author fights Holocaust denier judgment]'' in [[The Guardian]] 21 June 2001</ref>

On 20 February 2006, Irving was found guilty, and sentenced to three years imprisonment for Holocaust denial, under Austria's 1947 law banning Nazi revivalism and criminalizing the "public denial, belittling or justification of National Socialist crimes".<ref>Oliver Duff ''[http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article346741.ece David Irving: An anti-Semitic racist who has suffered financial ruin] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070422204331/http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article346741.ece |date=22 April 2007 }}'' 21 February 2006</ref> Besides Austria, eleven other countries<ref>[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4734648.stm Holocaust denier Irving to appeal] [[BBC]] 21 February 2006. "Austria is one of 11 countries with laws against denying the Holocaust."</ref>&nbsp;– including Belgium, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Switzerland&nbsp;– have criminalized Holocaust denial as punishable with imprisonment.<ref group="note">Laws against denying the Holocaust:
* Philip Johnston "[https://web.archive.org/web/20051220094335/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/18/nxeno18.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/02/18/ixnewstop.html Britons face extradition (to Germany) for 'thought crime' on net]" in ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', 18 February 2003
* Brendan O'Neill [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4578534.stm "Irving? Let the guy go home"] [from Austria] [[BBC]] 4 January 2006
* Malte Herwig ''[http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,395810,00.html The Swastika Wielding Provocateur]'' in ''[[Der Spiegel]]'' 16 January 2006
* {{cite news | title=German neo-Nazi revisionist Zuendel goes on trial | publisher=European Jewish Press | date=12 February 2006 | url=http://www.ejpress.org/article/5768 | access-date=12 February 2006 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060222032427/http://www.ejpress.org/article/5768 | archive-date=22 February 2006 | url-status=dead}}
* [http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=JUSX9010223L 14 July 1990 Act prohibiting racist, antisemitic and xenophobic acts – ''loi Gayssot'']
* {{cite news | title=Row over anti-revisionist laws | date=4 January 2006 | url=http://www.ejpress.org/article/5044 | access-date=12 February 2006 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060302094146/http://ejpress.org/article/5044 | archive-date=2 March 2006 | url-status=dead}}
* {{cite news | title=Belgian Holocaust denier held at Schiphol | publisher=Expatica News | date=5 August 2005 | url=http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=22551&name=Belgian+Holocaust+negationist+held+at+Schiphol | access-date=12 February 2006 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060516043308/http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=22551&name=Belgian+Holocaust+negationist+held+at+Schiphol | archive-date=16 May 2006 | url-status=dead }}
* [https://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw99-2000/switzerland.htm About Switzerland laws] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071025055218/http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw99-2000/switzerland.htm |date=25 October 2007 }} by the [[Stephen Roth Institute]] for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism
* Philip Johnston, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20030520020125/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/2000/01/21/nazi21.html Blair's pledge on Holocaust denial law abandoned]" in ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', 21 January 2000 and Lithuania.</ref>

===North Macedonia===
{{see also|Historiography in North Macedonia}}
{{further|Antiquization}}
According to [[Eugene N. Borza]], the [[Macedonians (ethnic group)|Macedonians]] are in search of their past to legitimize their unsure present, in the [[Breakup of Yugoslavia|disorder]] of the [[History of the Balkans#20th century|Balkan politics]].<ref>Eugene N. Borza, Macedonia Redux in The Eye Expanded: Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity with Frances B. Titchener, and Richard F. Moorton as ed. University of California Press, 1999, {{ISBN|0520210298}}, p. 259.</ref> [[Ivaylo Dichev]] claims that the Macedonian historiography has the impossible task of filling the huge gaps between the ancient [[kingdom of Macedon]], that collapsed in 2nd century BC, the 10th&ndash;11th century state of the [[Cometopuls]], and the [[Yugoslav Macedonia]] established in the middle of the 20th century.<ref>Dichev, Ivaylo, Eros Identiteta, In: Dušan Bjelić, Obrad Savić (eds.), Balkan kao metafora: između globalizacije i fragmentacije. Beograd: Beogradski krug, 2003, pp. 269–284.</ref>
According to [[Ulf Brunnbauer]], modern Macedonian historiography is highly politicized, because the Macedonian [[nation-building]] process is still in development.<ref>Ulf Brunnbauer, "Serving the Nation: Historiography in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) after Socialism", Historien, Vol. 4 (2003–04), [http://history-of-macedonia.com/2009/11/28/historiography-in-fyrom-nationalism-myth-creations-and-nation-building/ pp. 174-175.]</ref> The recent nation-building project imposes the idea of a "Macedonian nation" with unbroken continuity from the antiquity ([[Ancient Macedonians]]) to the modern times,<ref>Klaus Roth, Asker Kartarı as authors and ed., Cultures of Crisis in Southeast Europe, Volume 2, LIT Verlag Münster, 2017, {{ISBN|3643907915}}, p. 169.</ref> which has been criticized by some domestic and foreign scholars<ref>Sinisa Jakov Marusic, New Statue Awakens Past Quarrels in Macedonia. BalkanInsight, 13 July 2012, cited in War in the Balkans: Conflict and Diplomacy before World War I by James Pettifer, I.B. Tauris, 2015, {{ISBN|0857739689}}.</ref> for ahistorically projecting modern ethnic distinctions into the past.<ref>Kyril Drezov, Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims in The New Macedonian Question with J. Pettifer as ed., Springer, 1999, {{ISBN|0230535798}}, p. 55.</ref> In this way generations of students were educated in [[pseudohistory]].<ref>''The past was systematically falsified to conceal the fact that many prominent 'Macedonians' had supposed themselves to be Bulgarian, and generations of students were taught the "pseudo-history" of the 'Macedonian nation."'' For more see: Michael L. Benson, ''Yugoslavia: A Concise History'', 2nd ed., Springer, 2003, {{ISBN|1403997209}}, p. 89.</ref>

===Historiography in Africa===
[[File:Ntrama Church Altar.jpg|thumb|right|250px|During the [[Rwandan genocide]], over five-thousand people seeking refuge in the [[Ntarama Genocide Memorial Centre|then Ntarama church]] were killed by grenade, machete, rifle, or burnt alive.]]
[[Rwandan genocide denial]] has proliferated in multiple contexts despite the fact that the mass killings took place amidst widespread news coverage and additionally later received detailed study during the [[International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda]] (ICTR). Perpetrators of violent attacks against civilians in [[Rwanda]], known as the "génocidaires", have been an element of this controversy. Concentrated details involving the planning, financing, and progress of war crimes have gotten unearthed, yet campaigns of denial endure given the influences of extremist ideologies surrounding ethnicity and race.<ref name="Brad"/>

In May 2020, the ''[[Los Angeles Review of Books]]'' interviewed legal advocate and writer [[Linda Melvern]] on the topic, with her having assisted with ICTR related prosecutions. She concluded that the "pernicious influence" of the [[Hutu Power]] faction that enacted [[Rwandan genocide|the widespread murders]] "lives on in rumor, stereotype, lies, and propaganda." She also remarked that said "movement's campaign of genocide denial has confused many, recruited some, and shielded others" such that with "the use of seemingly sound research methods, the génocidaires pose a threat, especially to those who might not be aware of the historical facts."<ref name="Brad">{{cite news|url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/histories-of-violence-the-violence-of-denial-rwanda-and-the-lived-memory-of-genocide/|accessdate=25 June 2023|journal=[[Los Angeles Review of Books]]|title=Histories of Violence: The Violence of Denial — Rwanda and the Lived Memory of Genocide|date=4 May 2020|first=Brad|last=Evans}}</ref>

In terms of the 21st Century, increased international debate and discussion have partially failed to prevent efforts obfuscating the facts surrounding the [[Darfur genocide|Sudanese genocide]]. In March 2010, [[Omer Ismail]] and [[John Prendergast (activist)|John Prendergast]] wrote for the [[Christian Science Monitor]] warning of multiple distortions of reality with lasting implications given the actions of the then Khartoum-based government. Specifically, they alleged that the state had "systematically denied access to the [[United Nations]]/[[African Union]] observer mission [personnel] to investigate attacks on civilians, so many of these attacks go unreported and the culpability remains mysterious."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0301/Genocide-in-Darfur-How-Sudan-covers-it-up|title=Genocide in Darfur: How Sudan covers it up|date=1 March 2010|accessdate=26 June 2023|author1=Ismail, Omer|author2=Prendergast, John|author1link=Omer Ismail|authorlink2=John Prendergast (activist)|work=[[Christian Science Monitor]]}}</ref>

Historical negationism within the territories of multiple African nations constitutes a crime from a [[de jure]] legal perspective. For example, denying the Rwandan genocide has led to prosecutions in that country. However, the negative social affects from disinformation and misinformation have expanded in some cases using modern media.

===In textbooks===
{{anchor|in textbooks}}
====Japan====
{{Main|Japanese history textbook controversies}}
[[File:Revisionists Yasukuni 1.jpg|thumb|300px|A member of the revisionist group “[[Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform]]” erects a banner reading "[Give] the Children Correct History Textbooks".]]
The [[Japanese history textbook controversies|history textbook controversy]] centres upon the secondary school history textbook ''Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho'' ("New History Textbook") said to [[whitewash (censorship)|minimize]] the nature of [[Japanese militarism]] in the [[First Sino-Japanese War]] (1894–1895), in annexing Korea in 1910, in the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] (1937–1945), and in the [[Pacific War|Pacific Theater]] of [[World War II]] (1941–1945). The conservative [[Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform]] commissioned the ''Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho'' textbook with the purpose of traditional national and international view of that Japanese historical period. The [[Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology|Ministry of Education]] vets all history textbooks, especially those containing references to imperialist atrocities due to a special provision in the textbook examination rules to avoid inflaming controversy with neighbouring countries; however, the ''Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho'' de-emphasizes aggressive Japanese Imperial wartime behaviour and the matter of Chinese and Korean [[comfort women]]. When it comes to the [[Nanking Massacre|Nanking massacre]], the textbook only refers to it as the Nanking Incident, mentioning there were civilian casualties without delving into specifics, and mentioning it again in relation to the Tokyo tribunal, stating that there are multiple opinions about the topic with controversies continuing to this day (see [[Nanking Massacre denial|Nanking massacre denial]]).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Shinta |first=Ichiro |date=2001 |title=「つくる会」の歴史教科書を読む (Reading Thukuru-kai's History Textbook) |url=http://zenchokyo.web.fc2.com/kyoukasyo.htm |website=Zenchokyo Osaka (National Association for Education and Research of Korean Residents in Japan, Osaka)}}</ref> In 2007, the [[Ministry of Education]] attempted to revise textbooks regarding the [[Battle of Okinawa]], lessening the involvement of the [[Imperial Japanese Army]] in Okinawan civilian mass suicides.<ref>[http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070623a1.html Okinawa slams history text rewrite], ''The Japan Times'', 23 June 2007.</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Gheddo |first=Piero |url=http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Okinawa-against-Tokyo%E2%80%99s-attempts-to-rewrite-history-9666.html |title=Okinawa against Tokyo's attempts to rewrite history |publisher=Asianews.it |access-date=4 December 2013}}</ref>

====Pakistan====
{{further|Pakistani textbooks controversy}}
Allegations of historical revisionism have been made regarding Pakistani textbooks in that they are laced with [[Indophobic]], Hindu-hating and [[Islamist]] bias. Pakistan's use of officially published textbooks has been criticized for using schools to more subtly foster religious extremism, whitewashing [[Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent]] and promoting "expansive pan-Islamic imaginings" that "detect the beginnings of Pakistan in the birth of Islam on the [[Arabian Peninsula|Arabian peninsula]]".<ref>[http://archives.dawn.com/archives/30854 Curriculum of hatred], [[Dawn (newspaper)|Dawn]], 20 May 2009</ref> Since 2001, the Pakistani government has stated that curriculum reforms have been underway by the [[Ministry of Education (Pakistan)|Ministry of Education]].<ref name="Jamil">{{cite web|url=http://www.itacec.org/document/nep09/NCERT%20Pakistan%20paper%20BRJ.pdf|title=Curriculum Reforms in Pakistan – A Glass Half Full or Half Empty?|last=Jamil|first=Baela Raza|publisher=Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi|access-date=10 April 2011}}</ref><ref name="Jalal">{{cite web|url=http://www.tufts.edu/~ajalal01/Articles/conjuring.pdf|title=Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining|last=Jalal|first=Ayesha|work=International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27, (1995), 73–89|access-date=10 April 2011}}</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/18/pakistan-textbooks-religious-extremism The threat of Pakistan's revisionist texts], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 18 May 2009</ref>

====South Korea====
12 October 2015, South Korea's government has announced controversial plans to control the history textbooks used in secondary schools despite oppositional concerns of people and academics that the decision is made to glorify the history of those who served the Imperial Japanese government ([[Chinilpa]]). Section and the authoritarian dictatorships in South Korea during 1960s–1980s.The [[Ministry of Education (South Korea)|Ministry of Education]] announced that it would put the secondary-school history textbook under state control; "This was an inevitable choice in order to straighten out historical errors and end the social dispute caused by ideological bias in the textbooks," [[Hwang Woo-yea]], education minister said on 12 October 2015.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20151012000678|title=Ministry unveils plan for history textbook publication system|first=The Korea|last=Herald|date=12 October 2015|access-date=17 October 2016}}</ref> According to the government's plan, the current history textbooks of South Korea will be replaced by a single textbook written by a panel of government-appointed historians and the new series of publications would be issued under the title ''The Correct Textbook of History'' and are to be issued to the public and private primary and secondary schools in 2017 onwards.

The move has sparked fierce criticism from academics who argue that the system can be used to distort the history and glorify the history of those who served the Imperial Japanese government ([[Chinilpa]]) and of the authoritarian dictatorships. Moreover, 466 organizations including [[Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union]] formed History Act Network in solidarity and have staged protests: "The government's decision allows the state too much control and power and, therefore, it is against political neutrality that is certainly the fundamental principle of education." Many South Korean historians condemned [[Kyohaksa]] for their text glorifying those who served the Imperial Japanese government (Chinilpa) and the authoritarian dictatorship with a far-right political perspective. On the other hand, New Right supporters welcomed the textbook, saying that "the new textbook finally describes historical truths contrary to the history textbooks published by left-wing publishers", and the textbook issue became intensified as a case of ideological conflict. In [[History of Korea|Korean history]], the history textbook was once put under state control during the authoritarian regime under [[Park Chung Hee]] (1963–1979), who is a father of [[Park Geun-hye]], former [[President of South Korea]], and was used as a means to keep the [[Fourth Republic of Korea|Yushin Regime]], also known as the Yushin Dictatorship; however, there had been continuous criticisms about the system especially from the 1980s when Korea experienced a [[June Democratic Struggle|dramatic democratic development]]. In 2003, reformation of textbook began when the textbooks on Korean modern and contemporary history were published though the Textbook Screening System, which allows textbooks to be published not by a single government body but by many different companies, for the first time.

====Turkey====
{{main|Turkish textbook controversies}}
[[Education in Turkey]] is centralized, and its policy, administration, and content are each determined by the Turkish government. Textbooks taught in schools are either prepared directly by the [[Ministry of National Education (Turkey)|Ministry of National Education (MEB)]] or must be approved by its Instruction and Education Board. In practice, this means that the Turkish government is directly responsible for what textbooks are taught in schools across Turkey.<ref name=armenianweekly>[http://armenianweekly.com/2014/12/04/textbooks/ Akcam: Textbooks and the Armenian Genocide in Turkey: Heading Towards 2015], ''[[Armenian Weekly]]''</ref> In 2014, [[Taner Akçam]], writing for the ''[[Armenian Weekly]]'', discussed 2014–2015 Turkish elementary and middle school textbooks that the MEB had made available on the internet. He found that Turkish history textbooks describe Armenians as people "who are incited by foreigners, who aim to break apart the state and the country, and who murdered Turks and Muslims." The Armenian genocide is referred to as the "Armenian matter", and is described as a lie perpetrated to further the perceived hidden agenda of Armenians. Recognition of the Armenian genocide is defined as the "biggest threat to Turkish national security".<ref name=armenianweekly/>

Akçam summarized one textbook that claims the Armenians had sided with the Russians during the war. The 1909 [[Adana massacre]], in which as many as 20,000–30,000 Armenians were massacred, is identified as "The Rebellion of Armenians of Adana". According to the book, the Armenian [[Social Democrat Hunchakian Party|Hnchak]] and [[Armenian Revolutionary Federation|Dashnak]] organizations instituted rebellions in many parts of [[Anatolia]], and "didn't hesitate to kill Armenians who would not join them," issuing instructions that "if you want to survive you have to kill your neighbor first." Claims highlighted by Akçam: "[The Armenians murdered] many people living in villages, even children, by attacking Turkish villages, which had become defenseless because all the Turkish men were fighting on the war fronts. ... They stabbed the Ottoman forces in the back. They created obstacles for the operations of the Ottoman units by cutting off their supply routes and destroying bridges and roads. ... They spied for Russia and by rebelling in the cities where they were located, they eased the way for the Russian invasion. ... Since the Armenians who engaged in massacres in collaboration with the Russians created a dangerous situation, this law required the migration of [Armenian people] from the towns they were living in to Syria, a safe Ottoman territory. ... Despite being in the midst of war, the Ottoman state took precautions and measures when it came to the Armenians who were migrating. Their tax payments were postponed, they were permitted to take any personal property they wished, government officials were assigned to ensure that they were protected from attacks during the journey and that their needs were met, police stations were established to ensure that their lives and properties were secure."<ref name=armenianweekly/>

Similar revisionist claims found in other textbooks by Akçam included that Armenian "back-stabbing" was the reason the Ottomans lost the [[Russo-Turkish War (1877–78)|Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78]] (similar to the post-War German [[stab-in-the-back myth]]), that the [[Hamidian massacres]] never happened, that the Armenians were armed by the Russians during late [[World War I]] to fight the Ottomans (in reality they had already been nearly annihilated from the area by this point), that Armenians killed 600,000 Turks during said war, that the deportation were to save Armenians from other violent Armenian gangs, and that deported Armenians were later allowed to retrieve their possessions and return to Turkey unharmed.<ref name="armenianweekly" /> As of 2015, Turkish textbooks continue to refer to Armenians as "traitors," deny the genocide, and assert that the Ottoman Turks "took necessary measures to counter Armenian separatism".<ref>{{Cite web|last=Arango|first=Tim|date=16 April 2015|title=A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey's Denial Only Deepens|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/europe/turkeys-century-of-denial-about-an-armenian-genocide.html|access-date=22 February 2022|website=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> Students are taught that Armenians were forcibly relocated to defend Turkish nationals from attacks, and Armenians are described as "dishonorable and treacherous".<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kafanov|first=Lucy|date=24 April 2015|title=Turkey, Armenians battle over genocide 100 years later|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/23/turkey-armenia-genocide-massacre-anniversary/26261059/|access-date=22 February 2022|website=[[USA Today]]}}</ref>

====Yugoslavia====
Throughout the post war era, though Tito denounced nationalist sentiments in historiography, those trends continued with Croat and Serbian academics at times accusing each other of misrepresenting each other's histories, especially in relation to the Croat-Nazi alliance.<ref name="Kolander267">{{cite book|last=Kolander|first=Patricia|chapter= "Malevolent Partnership of Blatant Opportunism?" Croat-German Relations, 1919–1941|editor1-last=Bullivant|editor1-first=Keith|editor2-last=Giles|editor2-first=Geoffrey J.|editor3-last=Pape|editor3-first=Walter|title=Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural identities and cultural differences|year=1999|publisher=Rodopi|isbn=9789042006782|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jXKk-gs-VNEC&q=Serbian+historiography+tito&pg=PA267|page=267}}</ref> Communist historiography was challenged in the 1980s and a rehabilitation of Serbian nationalism by Serbian historians began.<ref name="Brunnbauer364">{{cite book|last=Brunnbauer|first=Ulf|chapter=Historical Writing in the Balkans|editor1-last=Woolf|editor1-first=Daniel|editor2-last=Schneider|editor2-first=Axel|title=The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 5: Historical Writing Since 1945|year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780199225996|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eJ4SDAAAQBAJ&q=Serbian+historians+debates&pg=PA364|page=364}}</ref>{{sfn|Perica|2002|p=147}} Historians and other members of the intelligentsia belonging to the [[Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts]] (SANU) and the [[Association of Writers of Serbia|Writers Association]] played a significant role in the explanation of the new historical narrative.<ref name="BieberGalijas2016">{{cite book|last1=Bieber|first1=Florian|last2=Galijaš|first2=Armina|title=Debating the End of Yugoslavia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PwspDAAAQBAJ&q=Serbian+historians+debates&pg=PA120|year=2016|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317154242|page=117}}</ref><ref name="Ramet19">{{cite book|last=Ramet|first=Sabrina Petra|title=Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia From The Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević|url=https://archive.org/details/balkanbabeldisin04edrame|url-access=registration|quote=Serbian historians debates.|year=2002|publisher=Westview Press|isbn=9780813339054|page=[https://archive.org/details/balkanbabeldisin04edrame/page/19 19]}}</ref><ref name="Ramet322">{{cite book|last=Ramet|first=Sabrina P.|title=The three Yugoslavias: State-building and legitimation, 1918–2005|year=2006|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=9780253346568|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTw3lEqi2-oC&q=Serbian+historiography+tito&pg=PA322|page=322}}</ref> The process of writing a "new Serbian history" paralleled alongside the emerging ethno-nationalist mobilization of Serbs with the objective of reorganizing the Yugoslav federation.{{sfn|Perica|2002|p=147}} Using ideas and concepts from Holocaust historiography, Serbian historians alongside church leaders applied it to World War Two Yugoslavia and equated the Serbs with Jews and Croats with Nazi Germans.{{sfn|Perica|2002|p=150}}

Chetniks along with the Ustashe were vilified by Tito era historiography within Yugoslavia.<ref name="Ramet129"/> In the 1980s, Serbian historians initiated the process of re-examining the narrative of how World War Two was told in Yugoslavia which was accompanied by the rehabilitation of Četnik leader [[Draža Mihailović]].<ref name="EmmertIngrao42">{{cite book|last1=Emmert|first1=Thomas|last2=Ingrao|first2=Charles|title=Conflict in Southeastern Europe at the End of the Twentieth Century: A" Scholars' Initiative" Assesses Some of the Controversies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gUqOAQAAQBAJ&q=Serbian+historians+controversy&pg=PA42|year=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317970163|page=42}}</ref><ref name="Drapac282">{{cite book|last=Drapac|first=Vesna|chapter=Catholic resistance and collaboration in the Second World War: From Master Narrative to Practical Application|editor1-last=Rutar|editor1-first=Sabine|title=Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe|year=2014|publisher=LIT Verlag|isbn=9783643106582|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lISdAgAAQBAJ&q=Serbian+historians+debates&pg=PA282|page=282}}</ref> Monographs relating to Mihailović and the Četnik movement were produced by some younger historians who were ideologically close to it towards the end of the 1990s.<ref name="Stojanovic249">{{cite book|last=Stojanović|first=Dubravka|editor1-last=Ramet|editor1-first=Sabrina|editor2-last=Listhaug|editor2-first=Ole|title=Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two|year=2011|publisher=Springer|isbn=9780230347816|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkiEDAAAQBAJ&q=Serbian+historians+debates&pg=PA111|page=249}}</ref> Being preoccupied with the era, Serbian historians have looked to vindicate the history of the Chetniks by portraying them as righteous freedom fighters battling the Nazis while removing from history books the ambiguous alliances with the Italians and Germans.<ref name="MacDonald138">{{cite book|last=MacDonald|first=David Bruce|title=Balkan Holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian victim centred propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kBjrJyen4FEC&q=Serbian+historians+controversy&pg=PA138|year=2003|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=9780719064678|page=138}}</ref><ref name="Ramet129">{{cite book|last=Ramet|first=Sabrina P.|title=Serbia since 1989: Politics and Society under Milopevic and After|year=2005|publisher=University of Washington Press|isbn=9780295802077|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dhITCgAAQBAJ&q=Serbian+historiography+tito&pg=PA129|page=129}}</ref><ref name="Subotic201">{{cite book|last=Subotic|first=Jelena|chapter=The Mythologizing of Communist Violence|editor1-last=Stan|editor1-first=Lavinia|editor2-last=Nedelsky|editor2-first=Nadya|title=Post-communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from Twenty-five Years of Experience|year=2015|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9781107065567|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=twFEBgAAQBAJ&q=serbian+historiography+partisans&pg=PA201|page=201}}</ref><ref name="Finney353">{{cite book|last=Finney|first=Patrick|chapter=Land of Ghosts: Memories of War in the Balkans|editor1-last=Buckley|editor1-first=John|editor2-last=Kassimeris|editor2-first=George|title=The Ashgate research companion to modern warfare|year=2010|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781409499534|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qUjCI13U5VUC&q=Serbian+historians+debates&pg=PA353|page=353}}</ref> Whereas the crimes committed by Chetniks against Croats and Muslims in Serbian historiography are overall "cloaked in silence".<ref name="Becirevic46">{{harvnb|Bećirević|2014|p=46}}</ref> During the Milošević era, Serbian history was falsified to obscure the role Serbian collaborators [[Milan Nedić]] and [[Dimitrije Ljotić]] played in cleansing [[History of the Jews in Serbia|Serbia's Jewish community]], killing them in the country or deporting them to Eastern European concentration camps.{{sfn|Perica|2002|p=151}}

In the 1990s following a massive Western media coverage of the [[Yugoslav Wars]], there was a rise of the publications considering the matter on historical revisionism of [[former Yugoslavia]]. One of the most prominent authors on the field of historical revisionism in the 1990s considering the newly emerged republics is [[Noel Malcolm]] and his works ''Bosnia: A Short History (1994)'' and ''Kosovo: A Short History (1998)'', that have seen a robust debate among historians following their release; following the release of the latter, the merits of the book were the subject of an extended debate in ''Foreign Affairs''. Critics said that the book was "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans".{{sfn|Djilas|1998}} In late 1999, Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of [[Gustavus Adolphus College]] in [[Minnesota]] reviewed the book in ''Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online'' and while praising aspects of the book also asserted that it was "shaped by the author's overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths", that Malcolm was "partisan", and also complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false".{{sfn|Emmert|1999}} In 2006, a study by Frederick Anscombe looked at issues surrounding scholarship on Kosovo such as Noel Malcolm's work ''Kosovo: A Short History''.<ref name="Anscombe770"/> Anscombe noted that Malcolm offered a "detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history" and that his work marked a "remarkable reversal" of previous acceptance by Western historians of the "Serbian account" regarding the migration of the Serbs (1690) from Kosovo.<ref name="Anscombe770">{{harvnb|Anscombe|2006|p=770}}. "Noel Malcolm, who offers a detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history... Here is a remarkable reversal, as Malcolm, like other Western historians, had previously accepted the Serbian account."</ref> Malcolm has been criticized for being "anti-Serbian" and selective like the Serbs with the sources, while other more restrained critics note that "his arguments are unconvincing".<ref name="Anscombe770771"/> Anscombe noted that Malcolm, like Serbian and Yugoslav historians who have ignored his conclusions, sidelines and is unwilling to consider indigenous evidence such as that from the Ottoman archive when composing national history.<ref name="Anscombe770771">{{harvnb|Anscombe|2006|pp=770–71}}. "Malcolm is criticized for being anti-Serbian, and for using his sources as selectively as the Serbs, though the more restrained of his critics only suggest that his arguments are unconvincing. Most of the documents he relies on were written by enemies of the Ottoman Empire, or by officials with limited experience of the Ottoman Balkans... Malcolm, like the historians of Serbia and Yugoslavia who ignore his findings, overlooks the most valuable indigenous evidence. Unwillingness to consider Ottoman evidence when constructing national history is exemplified by the Serbian historians..."</ref>

===French law recognizing colonialism's positive value===
{{main|French law on colonialism}}
On 23 February 2005, the [[Union for a Popular Movement]] conservative majority at the [[French National Assembly]] voted a law compelling history textbooks and teachers to "acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in [[French North Africa|North Africa]]".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000000444898|title=Loi n° 2005-158 du 23 février 2005 portant reconnaissance de la Nation et contribution nationale en faveur des Français rapatriés (1). - Légifrance}}</ref> It was criticized by historians and teachers, among them [[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]], who refused to recognize the [[French Parliament]]'s right to influence the way history is written (despite the French Holocaust denial laws, see ''[[Loi Gayssot]]''). That law was also challenged by left-wing parties and the former [[French colonial empires|French colonies]]; critics argued that the law was tantamount to refusing to acknowledge the racism inherent to French [[colonialism]], and that the law proper is a form of historical revisionism.<ref group="note">In retaliation against the law, Algerian president [[Abdelaziz Bouteflika]] refused to sign a prepared "friendly treaty" with France. On 26 June 2005, Bouteflika declared that the law "approached mental blindness, negationism and revisionism". In [[Martinique]], [[Aimé Césaire]], author of the ''[[Négritude]]'' literary movement, refused to receive UMP leader [[Nicolas Sarkozy]], the incumbent president of France.</ref><ref name="L'Obs 2006">{{cite web | title=Les principales prises de position | website=L'Obs | date=26 January 2006 | url=https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/20060126.OBS3854/les-principales-prises-de-position.html | language=fr | access-date=2 August 2018}}</ref><ref>* {{cite news | title=French Revisionism: Case of Positive Role of French Colonisation | work=The Cameroun Post | date=18 December 2005 | url=http://www.postnewsline.com/2005/12/french_revision.html }}
* {{cite news | title=France under pressure to defend its colonial past | agency=Agence France-Presse | date=8 December 2005 | url=http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=25&story_id=26037 | access-date=13 February 2006 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060622065015/http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=25 | archive-date=22 June 2006 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Marcos martial law negationism in the Philippines===
{{main|Historical distortion regarding Ferdinand Marcos}}
{{see also|Ferdinand Marcos' cult of personality}}
In the Philippines, the biggest examples of historical negationism are linked to the Marcos family dynasty, usually [[Imelda Marcos]], [[Bongbong Marcos]], and [[Imee Marcos]] specifically.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://cmfr-phil.org/media-ethics-responsibility/journalism-review/edsa-people-power-inadequate-challenge-to-marcos-revisionism/ | title=EDSA People Power: Inadequate Challenge to Marcos Revisionism &#124; CMFR| date=10 March 2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://news.mb.com.ph/2018/09/07/up-faculty-vows-to-fight-historical-revisionism/ | title=UP faculty vows to fight historical revisionism | access-date=16 November 2018 | archive-date=24 September 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180924033625/https://news.mb.com.ph/2018/09/07/up-faculty-vows-to-fight-historical-revisionism/ | url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.esquiremag.ph/politics/marcos-propaganda-a1576-20160923-lfrm2 | title=Why has Marcos' propaganda lived on?}}</ref> They have been accused of denying or trivializing the human rights violations during [[martial law]] and the plunder of the Philippines' coffers while [[Ferdinand Marcos]] was president.<ref>[https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/204000/asa350191977en.pdf Report of an Amnesty International Mission to The Republic of the Philippines: 22 November ~ 5 December 1975] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010145425/https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/204000/asa350191977en.pdf |date=10 October 2017 }} amnesty.org</ref><ref name="rapplerNoApologies">{{cite news |url=http://www.rappler.com/nation/103772-bongbong-marcos-regime-no-apologies |title=Marcos on dad's regime: What am I to apologize for? |author=Ayee Macaraig |date=26 August 2015 |work=Rappler}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.rappler.com/nation/47220-pcgg-welcomes-singapore-court-decision-marcos-swiss-funds | title=PCGG welcomes Singapore court decision on Marcos' Swiss funds| date=4 January 2014}}</ref>

===Denial of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula===
{{see also|Umayyad conquest of Hispania}}
A spin-off of the vision of history espoused by the "inclusive [[Spanish nationalism]]" built in opposition to the [[National Catholicism|National-Catholic]] brand of Spanish nationalism, it was first coined by [[Ignacio Olagüe]] (a dilettante historian connected to the early [[Spanish fascism]]) particularly in the former's 1974 work ''La revolución islámica en Occidente'' ("The Islamic revolution in the West").<ref name=garciasanjuan /> Olagüe argued that it was impossible for [[Arabs]] to have invaded Hispania in 711 since they had not yet established their dominance over the neighbouring part of [[North Africa]]. Instead, Olagüe held that the events of 711 could be explained as skirmishes involving allied North African troops within the context of a civil war pitting Catholic Goths led by [[Roderic]] against Goths adhering to some form of [[Arianism]] and a largely-[[nontrinitarian]] Spanish population, including [[Nestorians]], [[Gnostics]] and [[Manichaeans]]. The negationist postulates of Olagüe were later adopted by certain sectors within [[Andalusian nationalism]].<ref name=garciasanjuan /> These ideas were resurrected in the early 21st century by the Arabist Emilio González Ferrín.<ref name=garciasanjuan>{{Cite journal|first=Alejandro|last=García Sanjuán|title=La creciente difusión de un fraude historiográfico: la negación de la conquista musulmana de la península ibérica|journal=Vínculos de Historia|issn=2254-6901|issue=7|year=2018|pages=173–193|doi=10.18239/vdh_2018.07.10|hdl=10272/16207|author-link=Alejandro García Sanjuán|publisher=[[Universidad de Huelva]]|location=Huelva|doi-broken-date=1 July 2025|url=http://rabida.uhu.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/10272/16207/La%20creciente.pdf?sequence=2}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/04/06/hechos/1523043230_705992.html|website=[[El País]]|title=El "fraude" que intenta tergiversar la historia de Al Andalus|first=Patricia R.|last=Blanco|date=9 April 2018}}</ref>

===Australia===
{{main|Australian history wars}}
{{see also|Australian frontier wars|Stolen Generations}}
The [[Indigenous Australian]] population plummeted in the [[Australian frontier wars]]. The aboriginal people were regarded as lacking any concept of property or land rights: consequently, Australia was considered ''[[terra nullius]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/recognising-invasions/terra-nullius/ |date=15 February 2024 |website=Australian Museum| title=Terra nullius}}</ref> [[List of massacres of Indigenous Australians|Massacres]] and [[Mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians|mass poisonings]] were carried out against indigenous people.<ref name="Mapping">{{cite web|title=Mapping the massacres of Australia's colonial frontier|url=https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured-news/mapping-the-massacres-of-australias-colonial-frontier|website=www.newcastle.edu.au|publisher=University of Newcastle|access-date=13 September 2017|language=en|date=5 July 2017}}</ref> Indigenous children were removed from their families in what is known as the [[Stolen Generations]].<ref>Marten, J.A. (2002) ''Children and War'', NYU Press, New York, p. 229 {{ISBN|0-8147-5667-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/family.cfm#bi |title=Indigenous Australia: Family Life |access-date=28 March 2008 |publisher=Australian Museum |year=2004 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080205154402/http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/family.cfm |archive-date=5 February 2008}}</ref> Several critics like [[Andrew Bolt]] and [[Keith Windschuttle]] have rejected the scholarly evidence pointing to the [[Genocide of Indigenous Australians|genocide against Indigenous Australians]] and have accused historians like [[Henry Reynolds (historian)|Henry Reynolds]] and [[Lyndall Ryan]] of deliberately fabricating Australian history to suit a political agenda.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_0975076906 |title=Whitewash : on Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal history |date=2003 |publisher=Melbourne, Vic. : Black Inc. Agenda |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-9750769-0-3}}</ref><ref name="f973">{{cite journal |last=Attwood |first=Bain |year=2001 |title=The Stolen Generations and genocide: Robert Manne's |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/45135477 |journal=Aboriginal History |publisher=[[ANU Press]] |volume=25 |pages=163–172 |issn=0314-8769 |jstor=45135477 |access-date=10 November 2024}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Manne |first=Robert |date=2006-09-09 |title=The cruelty of denial |url=https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-cruelty-of-denial-20060909-ge33kp.html |access-date=2025-05-20 |website=The Age |language=en}}</ref>

===Nakba===
{{main|Nakba denial}}
Nakba denial is a form of historical denialism<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ben Salem |first=Lobna |year=2021 |title=Humanizing the Enemy: Transcending Victimhood Narratives in Mahmoud Darwish'S and Yehuda Amichai'S Poetry |journal=Postcolonial Text |via=Docslib.org |volume=16 |number=1 |pages=1–18 |url=https://docslib.org/doc/2129167/humanizing-the-enemy-transcending-victimhood-narratives-in-mahmoud-darwish-s-and-yehuda-amichai-s-poetry |access-date=31 January 2024}}</ref> pertaining to the [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]] and [[Nakba#Components|its accompanying effects]], which [[Palestinians]] refer to collectively as the "[[Nakba]]" ({{Lit|catastrophe}}).<ref>{{cite news |title=Abbas signs decree criminalizing 'Nakba' denial |author=<!--TOI Staff--> |newspaper=[[The Times of Israel]] |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-signs-decree-criminalizing-nakba-denial/ |date=30 May 2023}}</ref> Underlying assumptions of Nakba denial cited by scholars can include the denial of historically documented violence against Palestinians, the denial of a [[Palestinians#Emergence of a distinct identity|distinct Palestinian identity]], the idea that [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] was [[Terra nullius|barren land]], and the notion that Palestinian dispossession were part of [[Jewish exodus from the Muslim world|mutual transfers between Arabs and Jews]] justified by war.<ref>{{cite book |chapter=Nakba Denial: Israeli Resistance to Palestinian Refugee Reparations |last=Fischbach |first=Michael R. |title=Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective |editor1-last=Bhabha |editor1-first=Jacqueline |editor1-link=Jacqueline Bhabha |editor2-last=Matache |editor2-first=Margareta |editor2-link=Caroline Elkins |editor3-last=Elkins |editor3-first=Caroline |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |series=Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights |date= 2021 |pages=183–200 |doi=10.9783/9780812299915-014 |isbn=978-0-8122-9991-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Exodus, Nakba Denialism, and the Mobilization of Anti-Arab Racism |last=Nassar |first=Maha |journal=[[Critical Sociology (journal)|Critical Sociology]] |year=2023 |volume=49 |issue=6 |pages=1037–1051 |doi=10.1177/08969205221132878 |s2cid=253134415}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Zionism and the Nakba: The Mainstream Narrative, the Oppressed Narratives, and the Israeli Collective Memory |last=Mori |first=Mariko |journal=Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies |date=July 2009 |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=89–107 [95–97] |url=https://kias.asafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/1st_period/contents/pdf/kb3_1/07mori.pdf |issn=1881-8323}}</ref>

==Ramifications and judicature==
16 European countries as well as Canada and Israel have [[Legality of Holocaust denial|criminalized historical negationism]] of [[the Holocaust]].{{citation needed|date=January 2023}} The [[Council of Europe]] defines it as the "denial, gross minimisation, approval or [[genocide justification|justification of genocide]] or [[crimes against humanity]]" (article 6, ''Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime'').

===International law===
{{main|Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime}}
Some council-member states proposed an additional protocol to the Council of Europe [[Budapest Convention on Cybercrime|Cybercrime Convention]], addressing materials and "acts of racist or xenophobic nature committed through computer networks"; it was negotiated from late 2001 to early 2002, and, on 7 November 2002, the [[Council of Europe Committee of Ministers]] adopted the protocol's final text<ref name="www.usdoj.gov COEFAQs"/> titled ''Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cyber-crime, Concerning the Criminalization of Acts of a Racist and Xenophobic Nature Committed through Computer Systems'', ("Protocol").<ref>[http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=189&CM=8&DF=17/02/2006&CL=ENG Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems] on the [[Council of Europe]] web site</ref> It opened on 28 January 2003, and became current on 1 March 2006; as of 30 November 2011, 20 States have signed and ratified the Protocol, and 15 others have signed, but not yet ratified it (including Canada and South Africa).<ref name="APCC"/>

The Protocol requires participant States to criminalize the dissemination of racist and xenophobic material, and of racist and xenophobic threats and insults through computer networks, such as the Internet.<ref name="www.usdoj.gov COEFAQs">[http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/COEFAQs.htm#topicE Frequently asked questions and answers Council of Europe Convention on cyber-crime] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060209153034/http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/COEFAQs.htm |date=9 February 2006 }} by the United States Department of Justice</ref> Article 6, Section 1 of the Protocol specifically covers [[Holocaust denial]], and other genocides recognized as such by international courts, established since 1945, by relevant international legal instruments. Section 2 of Article 6 allows a Party to the Protocol, at their discretion, only to prosecute the violator if the crime is committed with the intent to incite hatred or discrimination or violence; or to use a reservation, by allowing a Party not to apply Article 6 – either partly or entirely.<ref name="conventions.coe.int">{{cite web|url=http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Reports/Html/189.htm|title=Liste complète|access-date=17 October 2016}}</ref> The Council of Europe's ''Explanatory Report'' of the Protocol says that the "[[European Court of Human Rights]] has made it clear that the denial or revision of 'clearly established historical facts – such as the Holocaust &nbsp;– &nbsp;... would be removed from the protection of Article 10 by Article 17' of the [[European Convention on Human Rights]]" (see the ''[[Lehideux and Isorni v. France|Lehideux and Isorni]]'' judgement of 23 September 1998);<ref name="conventions.coe.int"/>

Two of the English-speaking states in Europe, Ireland and the United Kingdom, have not signed the additional protocol, (the third, Malta, signed on 28 January 2003, but has not yet ratified it).<ref name="APCC">{{cite web|url=http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=189&CM=8&DF=30/11/2011&CL=ENG |title=Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems (Chart of signatures and ratifications) Status as of: 30/11/2011|publisher=Council of Europe website|access-date=30 November 2011}}</ref> On 8 July 2005 Canada became the only non-European state to sign the convention. They were joined by South Africa in April 2008. The United States government does not believe that the final version of the Protocol is consistent with the United States' First Amendment Constitutional rights and has informed the Council of Europe that the United States will not become a Party to the protocol.<ref name="www.usdoj.gov COEFAQs"/><ref name=signatures>[http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=189&CM=8&DF=17/02/2006&CL=ENG APCoc Treaty open for signature by the States which have signed the Treaty ETS 185.] on the [[Council of Europe]] web site</ref>

===Domestic law===
There are domestic laws against negationism and [[hate speech]] (which may encompass negationism) in several countries, including:

* Austria (Article I §3 [[Verbotsgesetz 1947]] with its 1992 updates and added paragraph §3h).<ref>[http://www.ris.bka.gv.at/Dokumente/BgblPdf/1992_148_0/1992_148_0.pdf ''148. Bundesverfassungsgesetz: Verbotsgesetz-Novelle 1992''], Austrian federal law gazette, 19 March 1992, {{in lang|de}}</ref>
* Belgium ([[Belgian Holocaust denial law]]).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/belgium/|title=2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Belgium|date=20 April 2017|website=U. S. Department of State|access-date=16 May 2019}}</ref>
* Czech Republic.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/czech-republic/|title=2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Czech Republic|date=20 April 2018|website=U. S. Department of State|access-date=16 May 2019}}</ref>
* France ([[Gayssot Act]]).
* Germany (§130(3) of the penal code).<ref name="§130(3) of the German penal code">[http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html Text of §130(3) of the German penal code] (in German).</ref>
* Hungary.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/hungary/|title=2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Hungary|date=20 April 2018|website=U. S. Department of State|access-date=16 May 2019}}</ref>
* Israel.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/history/holocaust/pages/denial%20of%20holocaust%20-prohibition-%20law-%205746-1986-.aspx|title=Denial of Holocaust -Prohibition- Law- 5746-1986-|date=8 July 1986|website=Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs|access-date=16 May 2019}}</ref>
* [[Lithuania]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/lithuania/|title=2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Lithuania|date=20 April 2018|website=U. S. Department of State|access-date=16 May 2019}}</ref>
* [[Luxembourg]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/luxembourg/|title=2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Luxembourg|date=20 April 2018|website=U. S. Department of State|access-date=16 May 2019}}</ref>
* Poland (Article 55 of the law establishing the [[Institute of National Remembrance]] 1998).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ipn.gov.pl/en/about-the-ipn/documents/327,The-Act-on-the-Institute-of-National-Remembrance.html#page|title=The Act on the Institute of National Remembrance|date=16 June 2016|website=Institute of National Remembrance|access-date=16 May 2019|archive-date=30 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190830073457/http://ipn.gov.pl/en/about-the-ipn/documents/327,The-Act-on-the-Institute-of-National-Remembrance.html#page|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* Portugal.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=October 2014|title=Comparative study on legislation sanctioning hate speech and discrimination in the member states of the European Union|url=http://discursfaradiscriminare.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Comparative-Study.pdf|journal=Comparative Study on Legislation Sanctioning Hate Speech and Discrimination in the Member States of the European Union|pages=46, 47, 48}}</ref>
* Romania.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=October 2014|title=Comparative study on legislation sanctioning hate speech and discrimination in the member states of the European Union|url=http://discursfaradiscriminare.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Comparative-Study.pdf|journal=Comparative Study on Legislation Sanctioning Hate Speech and Discrimination in the Member States of the European Union|pages=57, 58, 59, 60}}</ref>
* [[Slovakia]].<ref>{{Cite journal|date=October 2014|title=Comparative study on legislation sanctioning hate speech and discrimination in the member states of the European Union|url=http://discursfaradiscriminare.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Comparative-Study.pdf|journal=Comparative Study on Legislation Sanctioning Hate Speech and Discrimination in the Member States of the European Union|pages=48, 49, 50, 51}}</ref>
* Switzerland (Article 261bis of the Penal Code).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gorton|first=Sean|date=2015|title=THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF GENOCIDE DENIAL LAWS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION|journal=George Washington International Law Review|volume=47|issue=2|pages=421–445}}</ref>

Additionally, the Netherlands considers denying the Holocaust as a [[hate crime]] – which is a punishable offence.<ref name="The Laws Banning Holocaust Denial">[http://beta.genocidepreventionnow.org/Portals/0/docs/Laws_Banning_Holocaust%20Denial_blog.pdf The Laws Banning Holocaust Denial] {{Webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20111027125404/http://beta.genocidepreventionnow.org/Portals/0/docs/Laws_Banning_Holocaust%20Denial_blog.pdf |date=27 October 2011 }} Genocide Prevention Now. Retrieved 28 November 2011. pp. 1–9</ref> Wider use of domestic laws include the 1990 French [[Gayssot Act]] that prohibits any "racist, anti-Semitic or [[xenophobia|xenophobic]]" speech,<ref name="The Laws Banning Holocaust Denial"/> and the Czech Republic<ref>{{cite web|url=https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100555.htm|title=2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Czech Republic|date=11 March 2008 |access-date=17 October 2016}}</ref> and Ukraine<ref>[http://www.day.kiev.ua/179841/ Holodomor and Holocaust denial to be a criminal offense], The Day</ref> have criminalized the denial and the minimization of [[Crimes against humanity under communist regimes|Communist-era crimes]].

==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 [[Brainwashing|brainwashed]] to believe that Oceania and Eurasia always have been allies against Eastasia. The protagonist of the story, [[Winston Smith (Nineteen Eighty-Four)|Winston Smith]], is an editor in the [[Ministry of Truth]], responsible for effecting the continual historical revisionism that will negate the contradictions of the past upon the contemporary world of Oceania.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/themes.html|title=SparkNotes: 1984: Themes, Motifs & Symbols|access-date=17 October 2016}}</ref><ref>Orwell, George ''Nineteen Eighty-four'' New American Library 1961 {{ISBN|978-0-451-52493-5}}</ref>
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>

[[Franz Kurowski]] was an extremely prolific right-wing German writer who dedicated his entire career to the production of [[Propaganda in Nazi Germany|Nazi military propaganda]], followed by post-war military pulp fiction and revisionist histories of [[World War II]], [[Clean Wehrmacht|claiming the humane behaviour and innocence of war crimes]] of the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'', glorifying war as a desirable state, while fabricating eyewitness reports of atrocities allegedly committed by the Allies, especially Bomber Command and the air raids on Cologne and Dresden as a planned genocide of the civilian population.<ref>*{{DNB portal|106231650|NAME=Franz Kurowski}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal|History}}
* [[Academic integrity]]
* [[Alternative facts]]
* [[Ash heap of history]]
* [[Big lie]]
* [[Black legend]]
* [[Cognitive dissonance]]
* ''[[Damnatio memoriae]]''
* [[Doublethink]]
* [[Dunning School]] ([[United States]])
* [[Australian history wars|History wars (Australia)]]
* [[History wars (Canada)]]
* [[Hindutva pseudohistory]]
* [[Information warfare]]
* [[Memory hole]]
* [[National memory]]
* [[Selective omission]] – biases to taboo some elements of a [[collective memory]]

===Cases of denialism===
* [[1776 Commission]]
* [[Anti-Katyn]]
* [[Austria victim theory]]
* [[Denial of atrocities against indigenous peoples]]
* [[Denial of the Holodomor]]
* [[Genocide denial]] – lists a number of particular cases
* [[Holocaust denial]]
* ''[[Italiani brava gente]]''
* [[Myth of the clean Wehrmacht]]
* [[Temple denial]]
* [[Waffen-SS in popular culture]]
* [[White Legend]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
* {{cite journal|last=Anscombe|first=Frederick|title=The Ottoman Empire in Recent International Politics – II: The Case of Kosovo|journal=The International History Review|volume=28|issue=4|year=2006|pages=758–793|jstor=40109813|doi=10.1080/07075332.2006.9641103|s2cid=154724667|url=https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/576/1/Binder1.pdf|access-date=24 September 2019|archive-date=24 September 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190924173521/https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/576/1/Binder1.pdf|url-status=dead}}
* {{cite book |last=Bećirević |first=Edina |title=Genocide on the Drina River |year=2014 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=9780300192582 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N0X4AwAAQBAJ |via=[[Google Books]]}}
* {{cite book |last=Cohen |first=Philip J. |title=Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History |publisher=Texas A&M University Press |location=[[College Station, Texas]] |year=1996 |isbn=0-89096-760-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/serbiassecretwar0000cohe |url-access=registration}}
* {{cite journal|last=Djilas|first=Aleksa|title=Imagining Kosovo: A Biased New Account Fans Western Confusion|journal=Foreign Affairs|volume=77|issue=5|pages=124–131|date=September–October 1998|jstor=20049055|doi=10.2307/20049055}}
* {{cite journal|last=Emmert|first=Thomas|title=Challenging myth in a short history of Kosovo|journal=Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online|volume=1|issue=2|pages=217–221|year=1999|doi=10.1080/14613199908414002}}
* {{Cite book|url=|title=The Quest for Origins – Who First Discovered and Settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?|last=Howe|first=K|year=2003|publisher=Penguin Books Press|isbn=9780143008453|language=en}}
* {{cite book|last=Perica|first=Vjekoslav|title=Balkan idols: Religion and nationalism in Yugoslav states|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jIoKMGRHxn4C&q=Serbian+historians+historiography&pg=PA147|year=2002|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195174298}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book |last1=Elst |first1=Koenraad |author-link=Koenraad Elst |title=Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam |date=1992 |publisher=Voice of India |url=https://archive.org/details/negationism-in-india-concealing-the-record-of-islam/}}
* [[Arun Shourie|Shourie, Arun]]. 2014. Eminent historians: their technology, their line, their fraud. HarperCollins. {{ISBN|9789351365921}}.
* [[Arun Shourie]], Sita Ram Goel, Harsh Narain, J. Dubashi & Ram Swarup. Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them Vol. I, (A Preliminary Survey) (1990) {{ISBN|81-85990-49-2}}.
* Sisson, Jonathan (2010) “A Conceptual Framework for Dealing with the Past.” Politorbis Nr. 50 - 3 / 2010.

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* [https://www.york.cuny.edu/~drobnick/oah.html Untruth in the Classroom, 1994]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100428044832/http://www.holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/ Why "revisionism" isn't]
* [https://www.revisionism.nl/ Mad Revisionist: A parody site on historical revisionism]
* [https://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans.html Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans FBA] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160320022855/http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans.html |date=20 March 2016 }} presented at the trial "Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books"
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051226194457/http://www.dribbleglass.com/Jokes/history.htm Revisionist History] – a satirical look at historical revisionism
* [http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Westonnote.pdf  43-page long academic paper about revisionism concerning the Amerindians] by ''The Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law'' Vol. 18, No. 3
* [https://www.nizkor.org/ Nizkor Project] Web site answering Holocaust deniers
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[[Category:Historical negationism| ]]
[[Category:Pseudohistory]]