In October, the Spanish parliament passed a Law on Historical Memory, which bans rallies and memorials celebrating the late Spanish 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 gathered at his tomb earlier this year chanting "We won the Civil War!" while denouncing socialists and foreigners, especially Muslims. Reason enough, one might think, for Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a socialist, to use the law to exorcize 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, 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 false propaganda, distorting the truth or suppressing the facts.
Anyone in China who mentions what happened on 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 former Communist chairman Mao Zedong (
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 former French president 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 (1968) 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 collaboration in the Holocaust, as well as the collaborationist Vichy regime, sometimes in an almost inquisitorial spirit. The French historian Henri Russo dubbed this new attitude "the Vichy Syndrome."
Spain appears 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, too.
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 the late Park Chung-hee, had been collaborators themselves. Now, under South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, a new Truth and Reconciliation Law has not only brought a thorough airing of historical grievances, but has also 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 members. The fact that many family members, including Park Chung-hee's daughter, Geon-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 very limited sense. Many countries enact legislation to stop people from inciting others to commit violence, though some go further. 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, the 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 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, for legal bans don't foster free thinking, they impede them.
Ian Buruma is professor of human rights at Bard College in New York.
COpyright: Project Syndicate
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under