Denier
A denier is a person who questions the current political orthodoxy and practices denial. A denier is "not with the program" or "not on board," that is, has an annoyingly open mind to issues currently considered closed.
Refined society is always wrestling with ways to deal with deniers and "bring them around," as well as finding important new uses for the concept. Organized political parties shun deniers, driving them into small ideological corners such as green ink brigades and, in America, the Tea Party movement.
Who is a denier[edit]
The archetypal denier is a person who believes that Hitler did not conduct a campaign to kill six million Jews during World War II.
No one knows what drives these people. It may be that this campaign to achieve a "final solution" came so close to finality that the denier, with his own solutions, feels inadequate by comparison. Deniers are often officially condemned, but they need not be. In Dachau, Bavaria, the Jew Cleanliness Museum and Interpretive Center is dedicated to demonstrating visitors that the notorious "concentration camps" nearby had no business more sinister than introducing Jews to concentrated hand and laundry soaps, striving for greater levels of cleanliness than Jews ordinarily pursue.
- Global warming deniers
In the latter part of the 20th Century and the next one, a subversive movement arose to question the received wisdom that subtle, seemingly random changes in Earth's weather were the result of excessive liberty, prosperity, manufacturing, burning of hydrocarbons, gun ownership, and waving of flags; and that Earth itself was careening irreversibly toward an unprecedented era of calamitous weather.
Some of these subversives went as far as to claim that a new, international agency that would exercise prior restraint over all Earth's commerce in order to make the weather more normal again, would be subject to the same bias, corruption, and special-interest influence as all other government has been.
These subversives were labeled "deniers," as their fakery was as dangerous to the international order as holocaust denial had been.
Deniers throughout history[edit]
- Aristotle was the world's first recorded denier, questioning all varieties of accepted truths, to the extent of eventually arguing that "A is A" when everyone knew it was really B. He was offered a position in government, but gave his signature reply, "I'd rather eat dirt." A compromise was achieved involving hemlock.
- Galileo was a notorious denier, whom we remember because of his prominent mention in the lyrics of the famous 19-minute song by Queen. Galileo claimed that the Earth revolves around the sun, when we all know that the sun revolves around Barack Obama. The Church reviled Galileo as a heretic. This is because the more pliable term "denier" had not yet been invented.
- Martin Luther famously nailed 95 theses onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as he was a denier of some of the most basic tenets of the Church. Some of his concerns, such as the lack of low-calorie and gluten-free communion alternatives, were easily resolved. However, when he got around to Papal Infallibility, it was necessary to come ex cathedra and deliver ex communication.
- Einstein developed the subversive notion that the speed of light could not be exceeded, even with hopped-up engines in Nitro Funny Cars, and that light curves around planets as though playing a cosmic game of Labyrinth. The rag-haired ne'er-do-well was shunned by polite society and now appears only on bumper stickers of Volvos driven by left-wingers.
The reader will note that the unstoppable march of progress required the silencing of these dangerous deniers.
Who is not a denier[edit]
- A man who believes that he was born to be a woman, and strives for sexual liaisons involving himself in the receptive position, is not a denier, nor doing anything abnormal. He is simply "pursuing love" in his own individual definition, which may involve house pets, large parties, outrageous claims for tax exemption, or demonstrations at the State House. Indeed, anyone who demonstrates on the other side — during a national debate limited to whether we are in favor of, or against, love — may be guilty of "hate speech." Society is actively pursuing ways in which these individuals may enjoy the joys of marriage, not to mention menstruation and pregnancy, at government expense.
- Similarly, an African American activist, both of whose parents are white folks (but who may have a photo of an actual Negro on her desktop at work), is not a denier, nor hardly an Uncle Tom. She is simply fighting the good fight for a better balance in race relations, just as Sen. Elizabeth Warren has always fought for diversity and Native American rights in academia.