Los Angeles Times, CA
Dec 5 2007
Legislating history
The law is too blunt an instrument to deal with a nation’s mistakes.
By Ian Buruma
December 5, 2007
In October, the Spanish parliament passed the Law of Historical
Memory, which bans rallies and memorials celebrating the late
dictator Francisco Franco. His Falangist regime will be officially
denounced and its victims honored.
There are plausible reasons for enacting such a law. Many people
killed by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War lie unremembered
in mass graves. There is still a certain degree of nostalgia on the
far right for Franco’s dictatorship. People who gathered at his tomb
earlier this year chanted "We won the civil war!" while denouncing
socialists and foreigners, especially Muslims. Reason enough, one
might think, for Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez
Zapatero to use the law to exorcise the demons of dictatorship for
the sake of democracy’s good health.
But legislation is a blunt instrument for dealing with history.
Although Spain’s new law won’t put historical discussion out of
bounds, even banning ceremonies celebrating bygone days may go a step
too far.
The desire to control both past and present is, of course, a common
feature of dictatorships. This can be done through propaganda,
distorting the truth or suppressing the facts. Anyone in China who
mentions what happened at Tiananmen Square (and many other places) in
June 1989 will soon find himself in the less-than-tender embrace of
the state security police. Indeed, much of what happened under
Chairman Mao Tse-tung remains taboo.
Spain, however, is a democracy. Sometimes the wounds of the past are
so fresh that even democratic governments deliberately impose silence
in order to foster unity. When Charles de Gaulle revived the French
Republic after World War II, he ignored the history of Vichy France
and Nazi collaboration by pretending that all French citizens had
been good republican patriots.
More truthful accounts, such as Marcel Ophuls’ magisterial
documentary, "The Sorrow and the Pity," were, to say the least,
unwelcome. Ophuls’ 1968 film was not shown on French state television
until 1981. After Franco’s death in 1975, Spain too treated its
recent history with remarkable discretion.
But memory won’t be denied. A new generation in France, born after
the war, broke the public silence with a torrent of books and films
on French collaboration in the Holocaust as well as the Vichy regime,
sometimes in an almost inquisitorial spirit. The French historian
Henri Russo dubbed this new attitude the "Vichy syndrome."
Spain seems to be going through a similar process. Children of
Franco’s victims are making up for their parents’ silence. Suddenly,
the civil war is everywhere: in books, television shows, movies,
academic seminars and now in the legislature.
This is not just a European phenomenon. Nor is it a sign of creeping
authoritarianism. On the contrary, it often comes with more
democracy. When South Korea was ruled by military strongmen, Korean
collaboration with Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the
20th century was not discussed — partly because some of those
strongmen, notably the late Park Chung-hee, had been collaborators
themselves. Now, under President Roh Moo-hyun, a new "truth and
reconciliation" law has not only stimulated a thorough airing of
historical grievances but has led to a hunt for past collaborators.
Lists have been drawn up of people who played a significant role in
the Japanese colonial regime, ranging from university professors to
police chiefs — and extending even to their children, reflecting the
Confucian belief that families are responsible for the behavior of
their individual members. The fact that many family members,
including Park’s daughter, Geun-hye, support the conservative
opposition party is surely no coincidence.
Opening up the past to public scrutiny is part of maintaining an open
society. But when governments do it, history can easily become a
weapon to be used against political opponents — and thus be as
damaging as banning historical inquiries. This is a good reason for
leaving historical debates to writers, journalists, filmmakers and
historians.
Government intervention is justified only in a very limited sense.
Many countries enact legislation to stop people from inciting others
to commit violent acts, though some go further. For example, Nazi
ideology and symbols are banned in Germany and Austria, and Holocaust
denial is a crime in 13 countries, including France, Poland and
Belgium. Last year, the French Parliament introduced a bill to
proscribe denial of the Armenian genocide too.
Even if extreme caution is sometimes understandable, it may not be
wise, as a matter of general principle, to ban abhorrent or simply
cranky views of the past. Banning opinions, no matter how perverse,
has the effect of elevating their proponents into dissidents. Last
month, British writer David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for
Holocaust denial, had the bizarre distinction of defending free
speech in a debate at the Oxford Union.
Although the Spanish Civil War was not on a par with the Holocaust,
even bitter history leaves room for interpretation. Truth can be
found only if people are free to pursue it. Many brave people have
risked — or lost — their lives in defense of this freedom.
It is right for a democracy to repudiate a dictatorship, and the new
Spanish law is cautiously drafted. But it is better to leave people
free to express even unsavory political sympathies because legal bans
don’t foster free thinking, they impede them.
Ian Buruma is a contributing editor to Opinion. He is a professor of
human rights at Bard College, and his most recent book is "Murder in
Amsterdam: The Killing of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance."