The denialism of state terrorism during the civic-military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 called the National Reorganization Process, which was part of the Dirty War, has taken different forms over time.
[1] They have included denying the existence of missing persons,[2] the justification of the acts committed,[3] and declaring that the conflict was "between two equivalent sectors that produced symmetrical damage".
[5][8][15] As in other cases of state terrorism, the National Reorganization Process planned crimes against humanity with the intention of installing these denialist discourses in the post-genocide, which is why clandestine detention and torture centres were used.
[8] Already in 1977, Jorge Rafael Videla, the then de facto president of Argentina, stated that "in every war there are people who survive, others who are incapacitated, others who die and others who disappear.
Thus, these "victims in their purest form, who showed their most innocent side: children, adolescents, nuns, pregnant women...were better suited to the collective mood", and were better accepted by broader society.
[22] The first act of denialism in a reduced sense was the book by former Buenos Aires police officer, later sentenced to life imprisonment for multiple crimes against humanity, Miguel Etchecolatz, The Other Camper of Never Again, where he stated that the CONADEP report was a lie.
[4] In the framework of the trials against those responsible for crimes against humanity, federal judge Daniel Rafecas stated that denialist speeches are "inherent to genocidal processes", and warned that such speeches seek impunity for the repressors in the exhibition "Genocide and Negationism: Disputes in the Construction of Memory", which he shared with sociologist Daniel Feierstein at the National University of La Plata (UNLP).
Among other actions aimed at making denialism prevail, they pointed to the total or partial dismantling of areas that investigated corporate responsibilities in dictatorial crimes and that provided evidence to the trials and/or assisted the victims, such as the Special Documentary Survey Group, the Survey and Analysis Teams of the Archives of the Armed Forces, the Truth and Justice Program, the Dr. Fernando Ulloa Center for Assistance to Victims of Human Rights Violations, the Sub-Management for the Promotion of Human Rights of the Central Bank, the assignment of military personnel to direct the National Witness Protection Program.
[29] In 2023, the journalist and former military officer José D'Angelo published his book The Scam with the Disappeared, where he describes cases of supposed false victims of the last dictatorship and criticizes the lack of transparency in the payment of compensation granted by the state.
[31] That same year, the former minister and then current presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich responded in an interview to the question of whether or not the number of missing people should be discussed by saying that "what we cannot say is 'either you say 30 thousand or you are a traitor to the country'... let's see... the basis is the freedom (to express an opinion)."