From How Fascism Works (Jason Stanley, 2020) pp20-1
If one is not concerned by politicians who deliver an intentional appeal to erase painful historical memory, it is worth acquainting oneself with the psychological literature on collective memory. In their 2013 paper “Motivated to ‘Forget’: The Effects of In-Group Wrongdoing on Memory and Collective Guilt,’ Katie Rotella and Jennifer Richeson presented American participants with stories “about the oppressive, violent treatment of American Indians,” framed in one of two ways: “Specifically, the perpetrators of the violence were described either as early Americans (in-group condition) or as Europeans who settled in what became America (out-group condition).”12 The study showed that people are more likely to suffer from a sort of amnesia of wrongdoing when the perpetrators are characterized explicitly as their country-men. When American subjects were presented with the agents of the violence as Americans (rather than Europe-ans), they had significantly worse memory for negative historical events, and “what participants did recall was phrased more dismissively when the perpetrators were in-group members.’ Rotella and Richeson’s work builds on a body of previous work with similar results. 13 There already is a strong built-in bias toward forgetting and minimizing problematic acts one’s in-group committed in the past. Even if politicians did nothing to stoke it, Americans would minimize the history of enslavement and genocide, Poles would minimize a history of anti-Semitism, and Turkish citizens would be inclined toward denying past atrocities against Armenians. Having politicians urge this as official educational policy adds fuel to an already raging fire.
Fascist leaders appeal to history to replace the actual historical record with a glorious mythic replacement that, in its specifics, can serve their political ends and their ultimate goal of replacing facts with power. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has drawn on Hungary’s experience fighting occupation by the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to represent Hungary in the historic role of defender of Christian Europe as a basis for restricting refugees today.14 Of course, during this time, Hungary was the border between a Muslim-led empire and a Christian-led one; but religion did not play such a major role in these conflicts. (The Ottoman Empire did not, for example, demand conversion of its Christian subjects.) The mythic history Orbán tells has just enough plausibility to reduce the complex nature of the past and support his goals.
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