Donald Rumsfeld infamously distinguished between what he termed ‘known knowns’ (things we know we know), ‘known unknowns’ (things we know we don’t know) and the infinitely more dangerous ‘unknown unknowns’ (things we do not know we don’t know). To this already impressive categorisation, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek added ‘unknown knowns’: ‘the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values.’ The Abu Ghraib scandal, in Žižek’s view, forced the unknown known of the Iraq war into a public consciousness unwilling to acknowledge the violence of military occupation, a denial necessary for the belief in the ‘goodness’ of the Western powers.