The Australian (Australia)
December 8, 2007 Saturday
1 – All-round Country Edition
Rewritten history risks the future of democracy
by IAN BURUMA
IN October, the Spanish parliament passed a law of historical memory
that banned rallies and memorials celebrating dictator Francisco
Franco. His Falangist regime will be officially denounced and its
victims honoured.
There are plausible reasons for enacting such a law. Many people
killed by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War lie forgotten in
mass graves. There is still a certain degree of nostalgia on the far
Right for Franco’s dictatorship.
People gathered at his tomb earlier this year chanted: “We won the
civil war”, while denouncing socialists and foreigners, especially
Muslims.
Reason enough, one may 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. While
historical discussion won’t be out of bounds in Spain, banning
ceremonies celebrating bygone days may be going a step too far. The
desire to control past and present is, of course, a common feature of
dictatorships. This can be done through false 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 Mao Zedong
remains taboo.
Sometimes the wounds of the past are so fresh that even democratic
governments deliberately impose silence 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’s magisterial
documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1969), were, to say the least,
unwelcome. Ophuls’s 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 connivance in the
Holocaust, as well as the collaborationist Vichy regime, sometimes in
an almost inquisitorial spirit. 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 only 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 Park Chung-hee, had been collaborators.
Now, under President Roh Moo-hyun, a new truth and reconciliation law
has not only stimulated a thorough airing of historical grievances
but also 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 extend even to their children, reflecting the Confucian belief
that families are responsible for the behaviour of their individual
members. 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 so, 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 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.
But 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 certain 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.
While the Spanish Civil War was not on 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 defence 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 unsavoury political sympathies, for legal bans don’t foster free
thinking, they impede them.
Copyright Project Syndicate, 2007 Ian Buruma is professor of human
rights at Bard College in the US. His most recent book is Murder in
Amsterdam: The Killing of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.