Fake news is bad. But fake history is even worse. By Natalie Nougayrède
He who controls the
past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past:
George Orwell
Orbán’s manipulations
go further, and involve completely rewriting dark chapters of the past. He’s on
the record as saying Miklós Horthy, the Hungarian leader who cooperated with
the Nazis, was an “exceptional statesman”.
Controlling memory is
at the heart of the Putin regime in Russia. Not only has Stalin been
rehabilitated, with new monuments built to honour him across the country, but
historians and human rights activists who work to document Stalinist crime have
come under political pressure. Some, like Yury Dmitriyev, have been
tried on trumped-up charges.
In Xi Jinping’s China,
any mention of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution or of the Tiananmen
square massacre is stamped out because it’s seen as a challenge to Communist
party rule. Collective amnesia is what the regime seeks on issues that risk
undermining its legitimacy. It’s not enough to throw dissidents in prison or
censor information; the past
is purged.
On 22 July, the
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán stood before university students and
delivered a speech titled
“Will Europe belong to Europeans?” It contained rambling passages about how a
“Soros plan” was in place to bring in “hundreds of thousands of migrants every
year – if possible, a million – to the territory of the European Union from the
Muslim world”. The aim was to transform the continent into “a new, Islamised
Europe”. This, Orbán argued, was what lay behind “Brussels’ continuous and
stealthy withdrawal of powers from the nation states”. Orbán has form when it
comes to this kind of paranoid vision. He’s an authoritarian populist who has
made a habit of stoking xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment. He eagerly amplifies
far-right conspiracy theories about the Christian majority being threatened by
demographic “replacement”. His message isn’t just fake news about the present,
however. It comes laced with historical distortion.
“Not since the treaty of Trianon”, he gloated,
“has our nation been as close as it is today to regaining its confidence and
vitality” – a reference to the post-first world war treaty that deprived
Hungary of two-thirds of its territory. Orbán’s guiding idea is that Hungary must seek
redress for historical humiliations. The suggestion is that, as his government
clashes with the EU on migration quotas, it is avenging grievances rooted in
the 20th century. Orbán’s manipulations go further, and involve completely
rewriting dark chapters of the past. He’s on the record as saying Miklós
Horthy, the Hungarian leader who cooperated with the Nazis, was an “exceptional
statesman”.
Of course, he’s not
alone in twisting history to further his political goals. In Erdoğan’s Turkey,
school books have been modified to de-emphasise Ataturk, the founder of the
secular republic. It’s all part of an effort to reverse that legacy and glorify
the Ottoman past, as Erdoğan carves out ever more powers for himself.
Controlling memory is
at the heart of the Putin regime in Russia. Not only has Stalin been
rehabi-litated, with new monuments built to honour him across the country, but
historians and human rights activists who work to document Stalinist crime have
come under political pressure.
Some, like Yury Dmitriyev, have been tried on trumped-up charges. And rewriting the Soviet past doesn’t just serve domestic political purposes. Negating the crimes of Soviet occupation in central and eastern Europe, and excusing the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact with the Nazis, provides justification for Moscow reclaiming its “zone of influence”.
Some, like Yury Dmitriyev, have been tried on trumped-up charges. And rewriting the Soviet past doesn’t just serve domestic political purposes. Negating the crimes of Soviet occupation in central and eastern Europe, and excusing the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact with the Nazis, provides justification for Moscow reclaiming its “zone of influence”.
In Xi Jinping’s China,
any mention of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution or of the Tiananmen
square massacre is stamped out because it’s seen as a challenge to Communist
party rule. Collective amnesia is what the regime seeks on issues that risk
undermining its legitimacy. It’s not enough to throw dissidents in prison or
censor information; the past
is purged.
And while it’s
tempting to think the rewriting of history is something found exclusively in
illiberal or dictatorial systems, it has increasingly become a feature of
democracies. Donald Trump’s speech in
Warsaw last month strove to cast Poland’s historical struggle for freedom and
independence as a “civilisational” battle for family values, “tradition” and
“God”, rather than an aspiration to democracy. The narrative entirely left out
of the rich and varied political tapestry that gave rise to the solidarity
movement. In a strange twist, Trump also drew a parallel between the threat
Islamist terrorism poses to “the west” and the “danger” of “bureaucracy and regulation”.
His nativist vision of the west as an embattled fortress of Christian nations
in cultural danger reflected not only a personal political credo, but a wider
attempt to rewrite the history of liberal democracies and the principles they
are meant to uphold.
In Britain, Brexiteers
have proven willing to supply their own version of history. Nostalgia for the
days of empire and their “swashbuckling spirit” comes accompanied with the
mantra that the European project was a tyrannical straitjacket all along.
Britain never had a say in anything the EU decided, and now it has a chance to
“free” itself, so the story goes. Never mind that Britain was at the table, a
full and influential member of a club its citizens and its economy have
benefited from. Fanaticism alters not only the perception of current realities
(as negotiations limp forward), it also adjusts the past to suit one set of
beliefs.
George Orwell’s 1984
contains a well-known phrase about history and its importance: “He who controls
the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past”.
We worry rightly about the impact of fake news, but today’s nationalist
passions are even more deeply rooted in the distortion of history, which
citizens in many countries lap up despite the fact it is poison. The past has
always been a battleground. The 20th century showed to what extremes state
control over memory could go. Primo Levi, who experienced the nightmare of Nazi
concentration camps, once wrote that the entire history of the Reich “can be
re-read as a war against memory”.
One of the blessings
of living in a democracy is that researchers, students, journalists and
citizens at large can all access the past without having to subject themselves
to any form of centralised, censoring control. The philosopher Tzvetan Todorov
has described this as “one of the most inalienable freedoms, alongside the
freedom to think and express oneself”. Yet the security of memory in democratic
societies may not be as assured as we think. Some politicians want to lead us
in a march towards forgetfulness. But that way lies a world of senselessness
and deceit. Learning about history, and being able to question some of the
narratives advanced in the name of politics is as important as knowing where to
get reliable news. “Can history save us from ourselves?” asked the historian
Timothy Snyder at a recent conference on the
nation state and the many falsehoods politicians attach to it. Perhaps it can.
see also
