Why history is most important today
The screen above is a dystopian alternative history web television series according to Wikipedia, ‘what if’ German and Japanese imperialists had won WWII and occupied North America? Social media friends posted They thought they were free excerpts by Chicago University Press, about the reality of the Third Reich for ‘the man in the street’. In 1999 film East/West directed by Régis Wargnier & starring Catherine Deneuve, communist propaganda fooled well-meaning west European leftists in post-WWII soviet Russia.
It is good that on both sides of the Atlantic we are waking up to the implications of surprise wins by populists in the US (Trump recently), UK (Brexit earlier this year) and Alberta, Canada (New Democratic Party last year). And widespread dissatisfaction with the status-quo isn’t new worldwide, viz. Thailand’s political crisis in 2013–2014, Ukraine’s Orange revolution in 2003–2004 and Venezuela’s Chavez since 1999.
Recent revisits of WWII history, provided by new information from lapsing copyrights (usually 75 years) or fallen regimes (e.g.: German Democratic Republic and Soviet Union), also revealed the wartime deals behind closed doors among Churchill, Hitler & Stalin (not the commonly known post-war Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin), as well as the reality of the Third Reich (its democratic start then ongoing propaganda fooling all but its perpetrators).
There is, however, one reality staring us in the face. Perhaps it’s so prevalent that it’s a little like explaining water to fish. We are bombarded by media clips, pics and videos. We even sing the praises of Internet activism during, say, the 2011 Tahrir Square and 2009 Iranian election protests. If it’s called Twitter revolution then let’s not forget how Trump used twitter in his campaign and even later: the media itself used the same tool to uncover how politics use it as a weapon, as in the recent spat after the Broadway play Hamilton.
Contrast this with the dearth of info at hand during WWII. The fact that it took so long to uncover many of it as mentioned above, should stop us from drawing too many direct comparisons between then and now. We have media to uncover horrific events almost in real time. We have political checks-and-balances to avoid deviation from the past. So does history not belong, well, with history?
Fear-mongering is not what we need as we try to rebuild bridges after Brexit in the UK, as well as in the US among bitter rivals across and even in-party. Media sensationalism is something the UK & US had an orgy over the last 18 months, it’s time to stop it and look at today, and not rake up fears of the past. Last but not least, too much is at stake in the upcoming French, Dutch and German elections next year to allow media extremism, don’t you think?
