A Broader View on Politics on Memory Peter Vermeersch, professor at the University of Leuven( KU Leuven) and senior researcher at the Institute for
International and European Policy( IIEB)
Peter Vermeersch highlighted the utilization of a vocabulary of morality by nationalist actors in memory conflicts in Europe. He started by reaffirming Tony Judt’ s statement, that the European project was indeed not born out of optimism, ambition, and idealism, as retroactively has been imagined.“ The ways we remember the past influence the ways we practice contemporary politics”, said Vermeersch, succinctly explaining that different memories bring out different contemporary politics.
In regards to the politics of memory, the professor stressed,“ they are as much, if not more, about making us forget, than they are about making us remember”. To illustrate, he identified three mnemonic techniques of forgetting, which are especially prevalent in national and nationalist policies: the creation of an abstract‘ we’; the simplification of history; and the
overwriting of old histories with new stories.
Vermeersch then continued by pointing to the morality insertion within these nationalist tactics through a framework of victimization and how they relate to the European Union. He stated that the notion of victim and victimizer have obtained a central position in nationalist rhetoric connecting past and present, where the majority is presented as a‘ we’ under threat, especially in the context of elections.
The notion of a stable historical‘ we’ hereby functions to legitimize a narrative where the majority once was a minority under threat, and thus still can be imagined as such. Europe in this context is transformed into a‘ they’ that is not part of the‘ we’ and thus receives the status of victimizer in contrast to the national‘ victim’. Minority groups, especially those that have been Europeanized and to whom European legislation pertains, become framed as part of the European‘ they’ and are similarly excluded from the national‘ we’.
He highlighted the shared responsibility of the EU in facilitating the move from a left / right to a we / they dichotomy, by giving the example of the EU’ s functioning as a moral agent in the EU enlargement, through policies of conditionality. Similarly, he made clear that the successes of nationalist policies cannot be disconnected from the failures of other forms of democratic attempts.