Erasing History; How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, Jason Stanley, 2024
What does history do that is so disruptive of authoritarian goals? Perhaps most importantly, it provide multiple perspectives on the past. Authoritarianism’s great rival, democracy, requires the recognition of a shared reality that consists of multiple perspectives. Through exposure to multiple perspectives, citizens learn to regard one another as equal contributors to a national narrative. And they learn, we learn, to accept that this narrative is open to continued collective reflection and re-imagination, constantly taking into account new ideas, new evidence, new perspectives and theoretical framings. History in a democracy is not static, not mythic, but dynamic and critical.
…fascist education works by strategically erasing accounts of history and current events that include a diversity of perspectives, narrowing the scope of what can be taught until students are presented with a single viewpoint, which is formulated specifically to justify and perpetrate a hierarchy of values between groups. This narrowing is inconsistent with multi-racial democracy, antithetical to egalitarianism, and carries the possibility to conjuring mass violence.
They also sometimes employ an even more scorched earth strategy, destroying any common reality that could serve as the basis for a broad alliance between citizens against power. They seek to accomplish this by destroying the institution of public education itself.
The institution of slavery is a relatively ubiquitous feature of human societies. But perhaps there is a distinctive type of dehumanization emerging from the Enlightenment that results in particularly brutal forms of slavery and genocide. Mills, in this reading, is suggesting that we can understand the brutality of the version of slavery that emerged during the Enlightenment by reflecting on the very notion of Enlightenment personhood. In this form of slavery, the enslaved are regarded as non-persons, even in a very expansive notion of personhood. If so, the Enlightenment ideals of personhood have a central role to play in explaining the brutality of radicalized colonialism, and the underlying systems of white supremacy.
An organization like the Zinn Education Project (Howard Zinn) is on the front lines of the war to defend progressive education, seeking to preserve the history of resistance against hierarchies of class, race, and gender against those who aim to erase it. It also seeks to call attention to these attacks, and the larger anti-democratic movement of which they are a part. Even in these grim times for democracy, there remains ample room for hope.
No one thinks that Russia’s election of 2024 was free. The people of Russia have been lied to. Their acceptance of these lies is not accidental to their unfreedom. Their acceptance of these lies constitutes their unfreedom. Ignorance too hinders free, informed action. Without knowledge we cannot act. Battles over education are battles over freedom.
Living in a democracy means considering replacing traditions with new ones. Education in a democracy is an exercise for agency, for self-rule. And part of an ethic of self-rule is a refusal to be ruled by the dead…When traditions are inflated and exaggerated, and critical inquiry into them threatens to expose myths that justify power, it gives the authoritarian an excuse to crack down on democracy, via its institutions, the schools.
When we understand the mechanisms by which democracy is attacked, the way myths and lies are used to justify actions such as wars, and the scapegoating of groups, can we defend against these attacks, and even reverse the tide. This struggle is part of the action of democracy itself. If we weren’t having this struggle, we wouldn’t be living in a democracy.
Authoritarianism thrives off inequality and myths that support it. Monarchy survived by a myth of divine selection. Dictatorships survive on the myth that one single leader defines and embodies the nation. Fascism survives off myths that create an outgroup, who are relegated to second-class citizenship, at best. Schools and universities allow for critical inquiry into these myths, and so attacks on them are always the canaries in the coal mine of authoritarianism. There is a reason there are no American-style liberal arts colleges in authoritarian countries.