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Nicolás Rapetti, Daniel Feierstein, Horacio Pietragalla Corti, Valeria Thus and Alejandro Kaufman.
In the Month of Memory, the Human Rights Secretariat presented the publication denialism, intended to promote debate and reflection on the phenomenon of denialism and ways to address it on the public agenda.
The event took place at the “Haroldo Conti” Memory Cultural Center, in the former ESMA, and was attended by Secretary Horacio Pietragalla Corti, along with authorities and officials from the area. Representative Hugo Yasky, Buenos Aires legislator Victoria Montenegro and members of human rights organizations were present.
denialism is the first number of the collection “Repertories. Perspectives and debates in the key of Human Rights”, an editorial project of the Secretariat aimed at reflecting and disseminating the contributions and central discussions of the academic and dissemination field on issues of the human rights agenda. The The first issue of the collection aims to provide a historical and sociological view of the phenomenon in Argentina, establishing dialogues with the problem of genocide denial from an international perspective.
The chief of staff of the Human Rights Secretariat, Nicolás Rapetti, was in charge of presenting the panel made up of Pietragalla Corti, the sociologist and researcher Daniel Feiersteinthe professor at the UBA and the National University of Quilmes Alejandro Kaufman and the doctor in criminal law and director of Human Rights of the UBA, Valeria Thus.
“It is very important to be able to generate these spaces for reflection that can bring clarity to those of us who have political responsibilities,” Pietragalla pointed out, referring to the debate about how to deal with the phenomenon of denial speeches that threaten the consensus reached by society about what what state terrorism meant and its consequences.
“Human rights are not won forever, it is a constant battle that we have to carry on,” he added, calling to be alert “against the maneuvers of real power and the hegemonic media that seek to stigmatize national and popular militants.”
During the meeting, one of the main axes of discussion was related to the debate about the relevance of advancing in a legislation that penalizes speeches and denial behaviors as a way to face this problem. Likewise, the characteristic discursive operations of negationism and its impact on society were analyzed.
During her speech, Valeria Thus stressed that “in times of resurgence of hate speech, particularly in our country, even with candidates and public officials who have expressed denial speeches, I think we deserve a deep reflection on the scope of these practices, define their contours, and think about what we can do to dismantle them, not only in the academic sphere but fundamentally in the political spheres, projecting towards society as a whole”.
“Through negationism there is an intention to influence the struggle for hegemony”, Feierstein highlighted during his speech and analyzed the fundamental mechanisms of what he defined as an “ideological construct”. Likewise, he spoke out against advancing in the criminalization of denialism and stated: “I think we have to fight denialism, but my conviction is that this fight is carried out from the bottom up and in the field of politics, of day-to-day dispute and the conceptual dispute”.
Kaufman argued that “the State cannot stop pointing out denialism as a crime in an institutional manner.” And he remarked that “denialism comes from genocide, which consists in denying the existence of a group and making the crime be forgotten, with the consent of a population.”
denialism can be downloaded for free.