A discussion with Ron Dudai: Transitional Justice and Denial in the Age of Post-Truth

The practices and discourses of transitional justice and human rights advocacy have been shaped in response to the ways regimes have denied the factual existence of abuses, and have therefore placed a premium on credible documentation of human rights violations.

Traditional tools and formats such as truth commissions, human rights reports, or the technique of “naming and shaming” have emerged from this context. Yet in recent years, political, social, cultural, and technological developments have reshaped the landscape of denial. These include rise of populism, the explosion of social media, and the mainstreaming of fake news and conspiracy theories, emblematically captured by the phrase “post-truth”. These render some of the traditional tools no longer fit for purpose.

This talk will identifies and analyses new forms of denial, including epistemic denial, that challenges the ability to prove human rights claims, based on allegations of digital forgeries and fake news, and the logic of conspiracy theories; narrative denial, that uses narrative templates to determine what truths are accepted; and normative denial, the outright renouncement of international human rights norms.

The talk will then identifies and assesses some emerging responses to these challenges in the transitional justice and human rights world, including technologies of “fortifying truth”, the incorporation of engagement with artistic formats, and re-engagement with foundational human rights narratives.

Professor Ron Dudai teaches at the department of Sociology & Anthropology, Ben Gurion University. In 2025-6 he is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast. He is also associate member of the Centre for Criminology, Oxford University.

His work on political violence, transitional justice, human rights and denial has been published in leading journals such as British Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Criminology, Punishment & Society, Political Studies, Law & Social Inquiry, and Human Rights Quarterly, and his monograph Penality in the Underground: The IRA’s Pursuit of Informers was published by Oxford University Press (2022). He was co-editor of Journal of Human Rights Practice, and member of the International Panel of Experts on Impunity in Northern Ireland and co-author of its report Bitter Legacy. He is a board member of the of the Human Rights Defenders Fund.