THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Americans have a history of rejecting the facts of unjust violence abroad. The tactic is most associated with right-wing Holocaust denialism. The historian Deborah Lipstadt traces American Holocaust denialism back to interwar historians and their criticisms of America's decision to enter World War I. Unlike denialists, these revisionists had truth on their side. Britain had falsified reports of Germans' using babies as target practice, mutilating civilians, and committing other acts of brutality in order to lure America into the war.

Post-World War II critics adopted similar strategies, often portraying the Germans as victims and the Allies as aggressors. But Germany had actually committed mass murder this time. And so revisionists became denialists. They claimed that the Holocaust had been fabricated to coax America into another European war. For these right-wing denialists, the point was never about what had happened to the victims. It was about making domestic political gains. And if that involved supporting abhorrent regimes and refusing to acknowledge their crimes against humanity, so be it.

Although these denialists mostly aimed to promote US isolationism, others have followed, pursuing different agendas using the same techniques. These have included anti-imperialists on the left who, in order to critique American empire, dismiss obvious truths and question whether well-documented massacres ever happened.

Most notorious among anti-imperialist deniers are Edward S. Herman and David Peterson. In their book The Politics of Genocide, they argue that most accusations of genocide are justifications of US imperialism in the name of "humanitarian intervention." Looking for US interests behind every report of genocide, they even invert the role of victim and perpetrator in the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, portraying the post-genocide government as a tool of US empire. Noam Chomsky, despite his otherwise nuanced views on genocide, legitimized these arguments by providing a foreword to the book.

For many anti-imperialists, the need to denounce US empire is reason enough to support any of its opponents. And if those opponents commit atrocities, their abuses can be denied. Xinjiang is just the latest iteration in this pattern. The specific identities of the Xinjiang denialists don't really matter, and I have no intention of inflating their cause by naming them or linking to their work. What brings them together is a tireless effort to debunk every aspect of the "mainstream" narrative about Xinjiang, and to scream "got his ass" at anyone who refuses to debate their ludicrous ideas.

To understand the perversity of this denialism, you don't have to believe every think tank report and news item about Xinjiang; indeed, there are good reasons to approach all of these critically. Nor do you have to agree that what's happening to the Uyghurs constitutes genocide (though I do). This is because what these anti-imperialists deny is much broader than the application of a term in international law. They deny basic facts of history.

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