6 - How to Deliberate with (and against) Deniers

Summary

Denial means rejecting the best knowledge we have about the state of the world. In its extreme (but not rare) manifestations, denial means that no amount of evidence or argument can change that rejection. The main forms of denial dealt with here concern climate change, Holocaust, election results, and pandemic. Chapter 6 examines the sources of denial in both the psychology of identity and in the political economy, which involves powerful interests such as fossil fuel corporations organizing denial, before moving on to the range of communicative responses to denial. The discussion here begins with the more obvious (and likely ineffective) responses of presenting the facts and promoting objectivity. More promising deliberative approaches involve communication and rhetoric that might reach denial via discursive bridges, and sometimes even draw deniers into deliberative interactions. If that fails, denial might be diverted or kept out of places in deliberative systems where it can do the most damage.