Reality Denial: Steven Pinker’s Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence

In an important essay, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, authors of The Politics of Genocide (2011), provide a trenchant critique of cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker’s claim that violence over the course of human history has declined. As Herman and Peterson make clear, Pinker ignores the West’s hegemonic control and use of violence for advancing its own imperialist ends through direct and indirect wars and mass killings of specific populations. The horrific, systematic slaughter witnessed during the twentieth century in many regions of the world—thoroughly documented by Herman and Peterson—shows how the perception that humans live in an unprecedented time of peace not only denies “a series of long and devastating U.S. wars” against segments of its own citizenry and around the globe, but also blatantly disregards the historical truth. Read this essay…