ABSTRACT
People live in a world in which words spoken and written pervade every aspect of their lives. They define them on identity documents and the Internet, they determine what they know and do not know of the world, they purport to tell them how they should live and what will happen when they die. Most people have little idea when or how they will die, or what words will pass through their lips with their final breath. Even the terminal patient cannot be sure until perhaps the last moment, and accounts of genocide are sprinkled with cases of miraculous instances of individual survival when death appeared imminent. Those people who have encountered genocide denial at its deepest levels, not as the ravings of irrational haters but as a necessary foundation of personal identity as it derives from group status, understand the value of looking directly at reality, however painful, revolting, and alienating.
