Breakfast

Denial is a very normal, human response. As a defense mechanism it can help us deal with all sorts of difficult circumstances, until we're ready to deal with things head on. Denial might even be a useful form of self-deception in the short term.

But as history shows, denial can be a very powerful and destructive political tool when it's used by one group of people against another. For example, the denial of Thabo Mbeki and his government that HIV-AIDS was a serious issue in South Africa affected large numbers of that country's population, the denial of the Holocaust, the denial of the rape of Nanking by the Japanese, or the denial of the dispossession of Indigenous Australians.

Guests

Tony Taylor
Associate professor of history from Monash University.

Publications

Title: Denial: History Betrayed
Author: Tony Taylor
Publisher: Melbourne University Press

Reporter

Gail Boserio

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