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the courage to adopt a position on certain issues pertaining to
our shared humanity which have implications for the present and
the future.
This means that when we come to recognise in any open
medium, social or otherwise, that others may be misled by a
version of the truth which has been distorted, misrepresented or
even in some cases deliberately fabricated, we have a responsibility
to at least warn those others that this is the case. Beliefs based on
false information have consequences in actions which may well
harm us all.
We believe Baron Cohen is correct when he points to Holocaust
denial as a significant problem that has led some commentators
down an offensive and demonstrably flawed path, with
unsustainable and contradictory relativistic consequences.
We know that there is a mass of exhaustive, convergent
and corroborative evidence from multiple sources, including
perpetrators, victims and thousands of witnesses, which place
the Holocaust in a situation where it does not need to defend
itself. Any published view to the contrary certainly merits a fact
check post.
Furthermore, the denial of the Holocaust is not a mere
academic position of an intellectual nature. It necessarily implies
an accusation of conspiracy and invention on the part of the
survivors, and denial of the responsibility of the Nazi perpetrators.
In other words, Holocaust denial is not only unsustainable at the
level of empirical evidence and academic expert consensus, but is
also highly offensive at the moral level.
It is also important to recognise another underlying feature of
our present circumstances that connects with Baron Cohen’s
concerns and amplifies them. We live in a society where in some
important contexts the truth is being compromised, to such an
extent that it is fair to say that it is under attack.
This attack comes from various quarters, reflecting an
increasingly polarised social and political environment; a place
where being loyal to a particular camp becomes a shield, warding
off any truths which happen to be unwanted and inconvenient,
while conversely, ‘truths’ which are welcome to that camp are
clung on to even when they turn out to be complete hogwash.
Baron Cohen has identified one important aspect of this wider
problem with truth today. The problem is not new; it didn’t appear
with the internet – though the internet has helped to facilitate its
proliferation – it is not limited to the Holocaust and it is a topic
of ever-increasing concern to many commentators. In such an
environment, fact checking warnings become more than just
useful aids in a confusing world for those who receive them;
they reflect a recognition of much needed social responsibility by
those who publish them.
There is no dispute that truth is a complex concept. We must be
on guard against dogmatic positions; it is very important to listen to
others; the emergence of new evidence may lead us to re-evaluate
certain aspects of our knowledge; knowing everything without
error is impossible; no commentator can be a completely neutral
observer; world-views influence the way events are interpreted and
presented and pure objectivity in the representation and explanation
of events past or present is beyond our human capacity.
These are all crucial and reasonable qualifying notions regarding
the nature and possibilities of knowledge of the past and indeed
the present. None of them, however, entails respect for what is
demonstrably false and/or ethically wrong.
We seem to have lost a shared sense of the
basic facts on which a democracy depends.
For this reason we are putting forward a guide for the arbitration
of truth, a view of making judgments which is theoretically sound
and practicable. According to this perspective it is almost inevitable
that our understanding of what is the truth will contain an element
of provisionality, or ‘work in progress’.
Having said this, however, it is perfectly valid – and indeed
necessary in a functioning society – to be able to compare and
evaluate the merits of different judgments. This can be done
based on the grounds that some are more coherent, consistent
and complete in their consideration of the most comprehensive
available range of relevant evidence. When this guide is
demonstrably not followed and/or deliberately avoided in the
public arena, we deserve to be warned about it when possible.
The inevitable element of subjectivity in our judgments in many
fields including history, in no way entails complete subjectivity.
There is no valid logical argument to support that position. Indeed,
that error is the basis for ‘false equivalence’, which Baron Cohen
is so concerned about. Apart from being a major cause for our
current ‘troubles with truth’ in the social and political arena, it
is also a demonstrable epistemological and logical flaw to be
found in relativism and in some forms of post-modernism. Our
judgments may be provisional because they are invariably subject
to some revision in the future, but this in no way makes them
completely subjective or equivalent.
The recognition of the existence of multiple perspectives
is very important in the critical thinking process, but that
recognition is only the beginning of an intellectual journey.
Critical thinking involves comparing and evaluating options
and forming reasoned judgments, informed by accepted
epistemological and logical principles.
Since it is impossible to think, critically or otherwise, in a vacuum,
the information upon which we base our judgements should
ideally be as close to the truth as we can get. This means that any
help we can get about assessing the veracity of that information
such as appropriate and thorough warnings and pointers, become
vital components in our capacity to think and judge. Furthermore,
such information can shed light upon certain cases such as
Holocaust denial, where universal ethical standards are also of
central importance.
There is nothing ‘closed-minded’ about acknowledging that
some perspectives are wrong and offensive. And nothing good
about a form of ‘freedom of speech’ which denies us this right.
The idea that such perspectives are just ‘the other side of the
issue’ commits the sin of ‘false equivalence’ and gives them a
legitimacy that they simply do not possess or deserve. We should
also be warned about them when appropriate because they are,
as Baron Cohen says, “crazy”. ■
Stephen Green is the author of The Coherent Past: A Guide to
Truth in a ‘Post Truth World’, 2nd ed, Boraga Academic 2019.
Ines Dunstan is a fellow in History at the University of the
Sunshine Coast.
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