Getting old and watching ones’ contemporaries die one by one is a sobering time of life and we all deal with it in our own ways. Some fall back on denial and, like Dylan Thomas, ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’, denying the possibility of death to the very end.  Some accept it as the inevitable conclusion of being born and go with the rhythm and flow of life and death. Many of us don’t think about it much at all until it is facing us front on and we are forced to decide where we stand. And, of course, there are the people who are searching for immortality in this increasingly technological world of organ transplants, gene technology, cryopreservation and whatever researchers will come up with next. All of which got me to thinking about denial and how we use it in our everyday lives and in our view of the world around us. 

Denial can be a powerful tool in the human survival kit, particularly when trying to make sense of death. Think of the people who say: ‘I’ll beat this. I’ll beat the odds. I’ll rage against the dying of the light.’ and muster the great courage required to fight against a slow progressive cancer, a long-term neurological disorder, a failing body organ. A really noble fight, that takes great courage and inner conviction, where defeat cannot be countenanced or the bubble will burst. Of course it does come with downsides, when the reality of death becomes inevitable, and often presents great dilemmas for those around the person who can see the inevitable but must continue to pretend to deny, to avoid bursting their bubble, even when the obvious is staring everyone in the face. Denial becomes a saving lie. 

Which got me to thinking about the role denial plays in the recording of our histories, in coming to terms with our pasts, in dealing with present conflicts.

In a recent article in The London Review (V.46, No.2 2024), Conor Gearty, professor of Human Rights Law at London School of Economics, wrote of the work of Stanley Cohen and his book, States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering (2000). Cohen was one of the founders of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and a sociology professor at LSE. A South African by birth, he was Jewish. In 1980, a strong Zionist, he took a post at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where his experience led him to question and reject Zionism and its outcomes. He argued that denial can masquerade as reason and reasonableness, making the unconscionable appear measured, civilised, even humane, and was very critical of the way liberal culture had accommodated Israel’s actions, and its impact on the Palestinian people. He isolated three versions of denial:

• literal denial – it never happened.
• interpretative denial – it’s not what you think it is – coming up with alternative explanations that vindicate or exonerate the wrongdoer
• implicatory denial – we have to do it/it’s terrible, but it’s not our fault

which provide a useful framework for beginning to make sense of the present-day response of Israel to the undeniably appalling terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023. The Israeli military response has led to accusations of genocide against the Palestinian people. 

Gearty gives detailed examples of Cohen’s framework in relation to the present conflict. Here are some of his examples which clarify the three types of denial. 

Given the ubiquity of today’s social media, literal denial, he points out, is now much more difficult. But he argues that it lingers on in Israeli dismissals of the dangers facing the people of Gaza. We are creating safe spaces for the innocent, they claim, as the military response moves further south towards Rafah, in spite of advising Palestinians that the south would be a safe space; and claiming there is enough food and water, or would be if Hamas was not hoarding it and denying it to the people in spite of a population facing famine conditions. But it is hard to deny the essential facts: 23,000 deaths, around one third of the population; destruction of one third of the buildings in the territory; attacks on hospitals, schools, universities and cultural centres.

Interpretive denial construes an event so as to cast doubts on its obvious explanation, instead offering an alternative that excuses or vindicates the wrongdoer. For example, Israel argues that its military actions are targeted at Hamas, not the people of Gaza. When there was an explosion in the courtyard of a Gaza City hospital killing hundreds of people who had taken refuge there, Israel was immediately blamed, unsurprising given its bombing in the area and demands that the hospital be evacuated. Shortly after, a new Israeli narrative circulated claiming the cause was a misfired rocket launched by Islamic Jihad. Doubt has been sewn, along with conflicting evidence, with disagreement on all sides.

Implicatory denial can be used when all else fails, Gearty argues, for example the Israeli attack on the Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius in Gaza City on 19 October 2023 which led to eighteen deaths among those sheltering inside. The Israeli justification was that it was the result of a legitimate effort to kill a Hamas commander in a nearby control and command centre. Sniper attacks and tank bombardment on the Holy Family Church and the convent beside it several weeks later killed an elderly woman and her carer daughter en route to the bathroom and destroyed a generator for a building where 54 disabled residents lived, some on respirators. Israeli troops, an initial IDF review argues, were operating against a Hamas threat they identified in the area of the church. 

All of this got me to thinking closer to home, about the history of denial surrounding Australia’s history since the British arrival in 1788 to establish a penal settlement in Sydney. We don’t have a good record on that front.

When historian Keith Windschuttle, and others, accused academic historians who had begun researching Aboriginal opposition to British settlement, of inventing the degree of violence perpetrated by the invaders upon the invaded, the current cultural wars began in earnest. Frontier wars simply didn’t happen said its proponents. Yet continuing research now shows that a bloody war of resistance did happen across the country. It was a violent war between two vastly unequal sides, an affront to human rights, and largely government condoned, most frequently by denying it was happening. David Marr’s recent book Killing for country documents the terrible history of the Native Police under the command of white officers who for fifty or so years were responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Aboriginal people along the east coast, the centre and the north of the country. For some two hundred years these Frontier Wars, which were sometimes seen as a way of eliminating the problem of original inhabitants who were fighting to regain access to the country and way of life that had been theirs for thousand of years, were denied or ignored.

We have little option, the alternative explanation went. They are attacking our settlements, and in the process at times killing the white settlers and squatters. A new narrative emerged. We have no choice if the colonies are to succeed. Besides,we are doing it for their own good. Civilisation will benefit them after all. 

Some liberal-minded settlers, missionaries and squatters decried the massacres which, more often than not, were simply retaliatory, directed at any group of indigenous people, not those who may have been responsible for a particular misdemeanour. Their objections were ignored. So too were their demands to abide by the requests from the British Crown that the ‘natives’ should be treated with respect. And that they should not be alienated from their own land. It’s regrettable, it’s not our fault, it was argued. This is the inevitable conclusion of colonisation. 

In the words of David Marr, this led to:

‘… the most brutal colonial invasion in the nineteenth-century Empire. So many were slaughtered. Kidnapping never ceased. Every acre was taken. None of the wealth earned on their country flowed back to its original owners. Laws counted for nothing. No treaties were made. And when the fighting was over, we set about forgetting how Australia was won.’ 

We have to constantly remind ourselves that history is in the control of who writes it. It becomes the history of the victors.  Our country’s story is full of denial. It’s time to face unlearning all those things that have kept us alive for so long. Difficult as it is, it’s finally time to burst the bubble of the saving lie.