The return of denialism

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By JONATHAN OF FRANCE PEREIRA*

The advance of neoliberalism has subjected education to market logic. Education has become a threat, and contempt for knowledge and persecution of those who teach have gone hand in hand.

The “new” election of Donald Trump in November 2024 and his inauguration in January 2025, marked, among other factors, by the mass deportation of immigrants, has brought the New Right and its denial practices back to the fore. This term has been so widely used that it sometimes ends up being worn out. Thus, those who use it — especially in wrestling of digital debates — runs the risk of being seen as just another “canceller” who disqualifies ideological or theoretical disagreement with the label of “denialist”. This occurs even when the phenomenon continues to be analyzed from different perspectives by scholars.

In social psychology, Kahan (2013) associates denialism with mechanisms such as confirmation bias, which reinforces preexisting beliefs, and cognitive dissonance, which describes the discomfort generated by conflicting ideas. In neuroscience, research indicates that the human brain tends to resist information that challenges previous political and ideological beliefs (Kaplan et al., 2016). In sociology, polarization and the role of social networks are pointed out as amplifiers of anti-scientific narratives, which reinforce information bubbles and create resistance to scientific consensus (Oreskes et al., 2010). In short, these studies show that people tend to believe not what has been proven, but what they already think — or simply what they want to believe.

However, scientific denialism goes further. It can be understood as the deliberate rejection of evidence-based studies, driven less by ignorance and more by the desire to challenge disciplinary knowledge, casting doubt on data and results. This phenomenon is often associated with the defense of conspiracy theories or radical positions (Lewandowsky et al., 2019). Lee McIntyre highlights that what distinguishes science from other forms of knowledge is the so-called “scientific attitude” — characterized by a concern for evidence and a willingness to revise theories in light of new findings (McIntyre, 2019, p. 45).

In the historical field, this phenomenon reflects what Rossi (2009) calls “cultural malaise,” in which traumatic events, such as state terrorism, leave marks that transcend generations, manipulating collective or individual memory to serve political or social interests. In this context, Rousso (2020) defines historical denialism as a deliberate effort to manipulate the past and avoid responsibilities in the present. Traverso (2017, p. 35) reinforces this perspective by highlighting how the very concept of “revisionism” has been distorted, with the sole purpose of distorting facts and collective memory and undermining historical responsibility. As noted, the conceptual clarity of the term has been lost, while important conventional alternatives, such as “distortionism” (Joffly, 2024), do not change the logic of rapid appropriation by deniers themselves.

Given such a broad bibliography, it makes sense, for our purposes here, to resort to a principle of “academic common sense.” In this case, a principle attributed to William of Ockham (1287–1347), a medieval philosopher and theologian, who states: “entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary.” In other words, among several explanations for a phenomenon, one should choose the simplest one, as long as it is sufficient to clarify it. Based on this, we do not intend to exhaust the subject, nor offer a general overview, but only to outline some considerations about denialism, privileging the most evident factors.

The problem of denialism in Brazil gained prominence in 2010, reaching its peak in 2020, amid an epidemic crisis and political tension, and being widely exploited by the far right. Going back in time, Lucas Patschiki (2012) observes that, at the beginning of this millennium, with the creation of “Mídia sem Máscara” by Olavo de Carvalho in 2002 — the year in which Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, from the Workers’ Party, assumed the presidency — a movement centered on confronting communism developed. However, this definition of communism encompassed any position that was even slightly inclined towards progressivism. The rhetorical discourse consisted of spreading prejudices against communists, blacks, women, gays, and indigenous people, portraying them as authoritarians and promoters of their “doctrines,” supposedly supported by an omnipotent State that would grant them privileges. This phenomenon is analyzed in studies such as the dissertation thesis by Mayara Balestro dos Santos (2021), which explores the relationship between the conservative agenda, ultraliberalism and historical denialism.

In recent years, this stance has been widely rejected by sectors of the left, mostly made up of progressive liberals, some of whom were former opponents of the left itself but have retreated in the face of radicalization. This has included university professors, whose authority has been questioned — including those who have relativized disciplinary knowledge to the extreme, seeing it, above all, as yet another form of oppression.

However, it is worth noting that evidence-based knowledge has rarely been valued in Brazil, even before the spread of fallacies about ideological indoctrination. It is important to remember the complaints of elementary school teachers, who have long denounced the disqualification of methodical knowledge. These complaints, unfortunately, were not only ignored, but, in a certain way, systematically denied over the decades. Thus, we arrive at our least extravagant assumption of Ockham's razor: when it comes to science and its popularization, until recently, there was no sin below the equator.

It is no mystery that science and education go hand in hand, although not always hand in hand. In Brazil, especially today, this relationship seems to be heading in opposite directions. However, this trajectory was not linear. During the redemocratization process, social movements, universities and unions worked hard to rebuild education, seeking to break with the authoritarian legacy of the dictatorship. This process led to the replacement of the so-called “civic education” imposed by the military regime with more plural and inclusive approaches (Cerri, 2001, p. 108). A fundamental milestone in this transformation was the enactment of the Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education (LDB) in 1996, which regulated the Brazilian education system and brought advances such as the universalization of basic education, university autonomy and the recognition of indigenous education.

However, the advance of neoliberalism, consolidated during the Collor and Fernando Henrique Cardoso governments, subjected education to market logic, promoting a technical model focused on consumption. This scenario brought challenges such as insufficient public funding, the predominance of private education, the lack of expansion of comprehensive education, and the devaluation of public education (Saviani, 1997). At the same time, accusations against schools and teachers grew, seen by some as agents of ideological indoctrination. Criticism became an insult, education became a threat. Like Siamese twins, contempt for knowledge and persecution of those who teach went hand in hand. These, indeed, go hand in hand.

Public school teachers were trapped between bureaucratic and deconstructionist curricula, while the weakening of unions left them defenseless in the face of the dismantling of education. At the same time, the cultural industry poured out irrationalist fads, selling distraction instead of real investment in schools and teacher appreciation. Ideas were deconstructed on paper.[1], but reality remained intact, subjecting education to the logic of consumption. In the end, the fight against denialism seems to boil down to a game of words: ready-made phrases against ready-made phrases, while the school rots and the teacher continues to be abandoned.

Thus, from a genealogical point of view, contemporary denialism goes beyond the simple rejection of scientific facts. In the 1979th century, it was believed that knowledge would free people, but in the end, reason, instead of promoting emancipation, was instrumentalized to serve the powerful more than the people. The rejection of grand narratives oriented towards the future (Lyotard, 1970) became even more evident from the XNUMXs onwards and has deepened in this millennium, as the institutions of liberal democracy failed to meet popular demands, intensifying the feeling of alienation of the masses.

Since the end of the Second World War (1939-1945), a rejection of the ideals of modernization has emerged, although these were already challenged in the West during the so-called “Golden Age” (1945-1973), as defined by Hobsbawm (1994, p. 13). During this period, economic growth, redistributive policies and state intervention consolidated a mixed economy, at least in the first world — while the third[2] followed, in part, in tow — seeking to balance the interests of organized labor and capital.

However, in the 1980s, the conservative wave led by Reagan (1981-1989) and Thatcher (1979-1990) marked the rise of a new right that combined traditional values ​​with neoliberal policies. The reduction of the role of the State in social areas, the punitive discourse and the opposition to civil liberties promoted revisionist narratives that aligned the past with their political interests (Lacerda, 2019).

Nancy Fraser points out that events like the Braxt (2016) and the first election of Donald Trump (2017) reflect the collapse of neoliberalism. For Fraser, Trump’s victory is not only a rejection of neoliberalism, but of “progressive neoliberalism,” which united social movements and corporations, masking predatory policies under discourses of diversity. This model neglected the demands of the working class, perpetuating economic inequalities while promoting only cultural recognition. Thus, the far right consolidated its power by exploiting social insecurities, combining conspiratorial narratives and collective resentment.

This mechanism, now adapted to liberalism, is exploited by far-right movements. A study by Engler and Weisstanner (2020) analyzed how, between 1980 and 2016, income inequality and the decline in subjective status boosted support for the radical right in 20 Western democracies, especially among white men without higher education, resentful of the loss of socioeconomic and cultural status (idem).

It is no wonder that today we talk about culture wars, which, at their core, were focused on the fight against immigrants and are now manifesting themselves as a war of identities in the cultural industry. Among other aspects, this involves adults who seek to preserve their affective memories of cartoons, games and comic books from the “barbarian invasions” or the vaunted woke culture.

At the core, there are conflicts of an ideological nature, which manifest themselves in internal clashes between the dominated classes, taking the form of xenophobia, racism, homophobia and religious intolerance. The instrumentalization of social insecurity for political ends, already observed in the 1920s and 1930s, resurfaces in this context. Hermann Goering's phrase in Nuremberg illustrates this dynamic: “People can always be made to obey their leaders […] all they have to do is say that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism […]. This works the same way in any country” (Apud Gilbert, 1947, p. 256).

Such revisionism of social and geopolitical conflicts, now from a cultural perspective, was already evident in the 1990s, with interpretations such as those of Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations (1997), who redefined global conflicts as cultural clashes rather than class struggles. Without a clear centrality, such as the exploitation of labor, the production of surplus value and the consequent alienation of the results of production — including scientific and socially produced knowledge — this framework shifted the analysis of conflicts to a supposed dispute between values ​​and identities.

In these terms, various forms of oppression came to be seen as equivalent, with capitalism reduced to just one among several systems of domination (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 46). The result is the dilution of the materialist perspective and the loss of an objective explanation for structural inequalities.

In the second half of the 1984th century, the split between instrumental reason and cultural modernity deepened (Habermas, 2016). According to Libâneo (2000), this movement disfigured educational functions. In the XNUMXst century, educational policies dictated by organizations such as the World Bank intensified the crisis. Since the XNUMXs, schools have exchanged humanistic knowledge for utilitarian metrics, distancing science from its transformative potential and the concrete needs of the working class. In Brazil, disinvestment in science, the corporate management of Capes, and the dependence on social networks as a means of scientific communication have widened the gap between knowledge and the popular classes, delegitimizing education as a tool for emancipation.

The notion of digital literacy is relevant, but insufficient to face the current crisis. As the English historian EP Thompson warns: “as the world changes, we must learn to modify our language and our terms, but never without reason” (Thompson, 1981, p.34). The problem is not in promoting new concepts, but in recovering knowledge that transcends technical immediacy and engages with the depth of human experience. A popular education is needed that revisits philosophy (beyond the Western canon) and rescues literature that illuminates the human condition.

Francis Bacon, a staunch critic of obscurantism, already highlighted that the advancement of knowledge is not limited to science, but is intrinsically linked to its dissemination. He warned that philosophy and universal studies, often considered useless, are, in fact, the foundation of all professions, without which they could not sustain themselves (Bacon, [1605] 2021, The Second Book). Top of the form Bottom of the form[3]

In contrast to this, as already mentioned, Libâneo (op. cit) points out that current educational policies promote an instrumental view of education, oriented towards immediate results and market demands, distorting its emancipatory character. For him, access to cultural and scientific knowledge is essential both for cognitive development and for reducing educational inequalities. This approach requires the integration of systematized knowledge with sociocultural practices, seeking a synthesis that transcends the local and the immediate. This error, when perpetuated, becomes a major obstacle to the progress of knowledge, since fundamental knowledge has been treated superficially. This is a historical and structural issue, which requires a repositioning of science and education in relation to the concrete demands of the working classes. Without this, we will continue to be trapped in the historical cycle of alienation, disbelief and denial.

In this context, it is remarkable how scientific denialism sometimes limits itself to countering the moral panic of deniers — sometimes with even more panic — without a categorical demand for improvements or any consistent approach in Basic Education policies. As well analyzed by Márcio Alessandro de Oliveira (2023), the constant search for novelties, combined with the rejection of disciplinary oppression, universalist discourses and traditional pedagogy, has given rise, in recent decades, to a trend that disprivileges the acquisition of knowledge and favors low-quality teaching materials, often restricted to topics such as social networks and aligned with the interests of the cultural industry, to the taste of the postmodern[4].

This transformation reflects a broader project of disqualification of teaching, which relegates teachers to the role of mere facilitators or ape of knowledge, depriving them of intellectual and scientific authority. This alienating process reinforced the separation between teaching and research, sustaining the idea that teachers are not — or should not be — researchers (idem).

As Saviani (2021, p. 35-36, apud Oliveira, 2023) highlighted, traditional teaching followed an expository method structured in five stages: preparation, presentation, comparison and assimilation, generalization, and application. This model, based on Francis Bacon's inductive scientific method, was supported by three main pillars: observation, generalization, and confirmation. These principles supported empiricism and modern science, shaping pedagogical practices aimed not only at transmitting knowledge but also at promoting comprehensive education.

Therefore, contrary to current common sense, research and teaching are not dissociated activities. As R. Brown and S. McCartney (1998) point out, investigative curiosity, essential to research, is equally indispensable to the teaching process, reaffirming the need to integrate these practices for an education that is truly based on evidence and scientific literacy.

On the report “Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policymaking” (Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017), the authors argue that tackling disinformation requires coordinated action between civil society, governments, technology companies and the media. They emphasize that there is no single solution, but rather the need for combined strategies based on education, regulation, collaboration and continuous research. Combating disinformation, according to the report, transcends the technical aspect, constituting a crucial ethical challenge to preserve democracy and social cohesion.

Wouldn't the denial of science be a rejection of the neoliberal scientific model itself? Reduced to a Fordist system, based on the incessant production of Papers endless, it has moved away from its social function, fueling denialism and popular resentment. Could it not also be a symptom of the lack of meaning in the constant acceleration of transformations, of workers challenged by liberal media progressivism and the deconstruction of discourses, often forced down their throats? In capitalist crises, fascism thrives when there is a lack of knowledge that meets popular demands and when dissatisfaction is not directed at those who hold real power. The problem goes beyond scientific communication: it requires linking knowledge to the common good.

It is important to note that, during the period in question, significant social advances were recorded, such as the increase in the presence of black people in higher education, from 20,8% in 2002 to 38,9% in 2009 (IPEA, 2024), indicating a trend towards educational democratization. However, structural inequalities between students in public and private schools persisted, as did disparities in income and opportunities, comparable to segregationist systems such as those in the United States and South African apartheid (Carpentier, 2009). The economic crisis that began in 2014, aggravated by the austerity policies implemented from 2016 onwards, resulted in rising unemployment, cuts in social policies and restrictions in the health and education sectors, reversing previous achievements (Loureiro, 2019).

Meanwhile, in academia, the critique of ideology and political economy came to be seen as an outdated orthodoxy. This movement gained strength in one of the areas most contested by deniers today: history, often reduced to a mere dispute over narratives. In the 1980s, literary critics and historians began to blur the distinction between fiction and truth, a process later imitated by ideological discourses, such as those of the deniers. By denying the existence of parameters for historical truth, these discourses claimed legitimacy for their own versions, presenting them as alternative “truths.” Eric Hobsbawm warned that the relativist perspective challenges the separation between fact and fiction, since any construction of reality could be valid as long as it was perceived as such: “Discourse is the producer of this world, not the mirror” (Hobsbawm, 2000, p. 286). However, if history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy; the second, farce.

Still, it is important to emphasize that legitimate skepticism, including deconstructionist skepticism, cannot be understood as a form of denialism, since it is inherent to all aspects of science. We recognize the advances brought about by the emphasis on the particular, which, in the case of history, has enriched empirical knowledge, translated by the discovery and use of various sources — judicial, ecclesiastical, notarial, oral, and visual archives. Our criticism concerns the rejection of generalizations without a search for synthesis, which often leads to normative empiricism, distinct from the foundation in empirical evidence. Paradoxically, by emphasizing subjectivities and meanings in “cultural plots,” many studies end up returning to the notion of “pure fact.”

It is also important to remember that, from the 1970s onwards, criticism of the reductionist mechanism of certain Marxist and structuralist currents challenged the rigid division between base and superstructure, as well as the neglect of historical subjects. However, the theoretical alternatives that were consolidated, centered on power mechanisms, cultural plots and networks of actors, also have limits (Viotti, 1994). By prioritizing invisible or diffuse structures, they end up obscuring human agency, including that of scientists, as transformative historical actors.

As a revolutionary agitator, social theorist and historian of the Russian Revolution, a dissenter from a Marxist vulgate that was prevailing at the time, stated: “Whoever is incapable of admitting initiative, talent, energy and heroism within the framework of historical necessity has not learned the philosophical secret of Marxism.”[5] This formulation reaffirms the centrality of human action in the dynamic interaction between agency and structure in the historical process.

Postmodernism, by basing models almost exclusively on subjectivity and discursive relations, despite the contrary intention of many authors, prefigures obscurantism by rejecting determining references and proposing the overcoming of modernity. Since the 1970s, the idea has spread that modern scientific rationality has been displaced by a new reality, in which reason, accused of being exclusionary and oppressive, has given way to a logic that values ​​local narratives and plurality. Although challenging rigid methods, this decentralization of science has also given “reason” to contemporary denialism, reinforced by the alienation of the masses in the face of the fetishization of science, which appears as strange and supernatural powers.

Deconstructing the elitist origins of knowledge is a relevant topic, but it must be balanced with the critical appropriation of this knowledge by the working classes. As Gramsci suggests in Prison Notebooks (Notebook 10, §6), history and its teaching must transcend class interests, building universal perspectives that promote social transformation. The democratization and qualification of formal education are essential to establish an effective relationship between science, technology and society (STS). Only a critical education can integrate scientific and technological advances with social demands, allowing us to understand contemporary complexities and act in a transformative way.

In this sense, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet had already warned — ironically, becoming a target of irrationalism himself in the future — about a logic that, in the 1980s, removed from curricula “everything that had to do with general ideas and humanistic values” (Rouanet, 1987, p. 125). Even so, he related this counterculture less to deconstructionism and more to “lack of culture”, reflecting on the irrationalism of his future critics: “The graduates of this deficient educational system simply transform their lack of knowledge into a norm of life and a model for a new form of organization of human relations” (Rouanet, 1987, p. 125).

Therefore, our simplistic explanation suggests that the fight against obscurantism must be carried out by listening to those who have been fighting it for decades: teachers. It is urgent that they take on the defense of the causes and demands of basic education in a structured way. The contemporary challenge is to balance the deconstruction of the elitist origins of knowledge with a critical and universalizing education, capable of integrating science, technology and social demands. After all, between modern dogmatism and postmodern relativism, human action continues to be the essential axis of historical transformations. If the tragedy has already been staged and the farce repeated, it remains to be seen whether we will allow an even more perverse outcome.

*Jonathan of France Pereira é PhD candidate in history at the Federal University of Paraíba.

References


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Notes


[1][1] An example of this view that blames discourses, not structures, for the problems in education appears in the statement of an acclaimed Brazilian historian: “The country is under the illusion that investing more in teachers’ salaries and in modernizing schools will solve the problems in education, just as it is believed that maximum security prisons, surveillance cameras and cell phone jammers will solve the problems in the prison system. However, these problems reside in the institutions themselves, in the modern concepts that created and sustain them” (Albuquerque, Jr., 2017, p. 64). Against this, we argue that public education is withering under technical promises, while classical humanistic teaching remains intact in private schools. The New High School is an example: sold as innovation, it has delivered precariousness. School has always served the interests of the dominant classes — and the attempt to impose the Gag Law (PL 7180/2014) proves this. Even without institutionalization, fear and censorship already shape classrooms.

[2] The concept of first, second and third world was popularized by Alfred Sauvy in 1952, comparing the non-aligned countries to the Third Estate of the French Revolution. During the Cold War, the first world included developed capitalist countries, the second world was formed by the socialist bloc, and the third world by the non-aligned countries. SAUVY, Alfred. Three worlds, one planet. L'Observateur, France, 1952.

[3] “This is because princes find a shortage of competent men to serve them in matters of state, since there is no free collegiate education where those inclined to it can devote themselves to histories, modern languages, books of politics and civil discourses, and other similar qualifications for public service. And since the founders of colleges plant and the founders of lectures water, it is consistent to address the present defect in public lectures, namely, the smallness and insignificance of the salary or reward assigned to them in most places, whether they be lectures on the arts or the professions. For it is essential to the progress of the sciences that the lecturers should be of the most capable and competent, since they are intended to generate and propagate knowledge, and not merely for passing use.”Idem).

[4] OLIVEIRA, Márcio Alessandro de. The fallacy of active methodologies. The Earth is Round, [Sl], 2023. Available at: https://aterraeredonda.com.br/a-falacia-das-metodologias-ativas/. Accessed on: 28 Jan. 2025.

[5] (TROTSKY, [sd], p. 55 apud SENA JÚNIOR, 2004).


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