Genocide denial on the Internet: The cases of Armenia and Rwanda

Abstract

The regimes of truth within society, or those types of discourse accepted and made to function as true by truth-generating apparatuses, determine which events are classified as genocide and the types of evidence that are accepted as proof that a genocide has occurred. Genocide denial can be seen as an attempt to resist a regime of truth by putting forth an alternative analysis of a particular situation. Genocide deniers promote their discourse of denial as legitimate, scholarly efforts at historical revision with the intention of having another version of the truth exposed. Most research on genocide denial has focused primarily on the Holocaust, international debates to legislate genocide denial and the motivations and arguments used to deny genocide. This thesis qualitatively and thematically analyzes sixteen websites and twenty-eight documents to investigate the use of the Internet to produce and circulate discourses questioning the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. It argues that the Internet formulates a space and community in which genocide denial discourse is created, legitimized and disseminated. Then, through a vocabulary of motives framework, this thesis analyzes the logic of denial discourse to identify them as discursive strategies of truth production and to identify the ideological roots of denial. It is found that in Turkey's case, denial is rooted in a sense of collective victimization and nationalism and its presence on the Internet demonstrates the existence of a regime of truth denying the Armenian genocide. For Rwanda, denial is call for the recognition of victim suffering and for justice in revealing an alternative discourse that has been subjugated to the accepted history of the genocide.