Episode 1: How Myths Drive Our Understanding of History in the Present

Welcome to Talking Memories, the podcast of the School of European Memories. This season, we explore historical revisions and ask a [music] bold question. Who owns the past? Join us as we listen, question, [music] and rethink the stories we thought we knew. Let's get into it. Episode 1. How myths [music] drive our understanding of history in the present. >> In this episode, David, Louisa, Iram, Alyssa, Ognjen, and Ellie will interview Matteo Bassoli from the University of Padua. Now, let's jump right into our questions. >> Hello, Matteo Bassoli. >> Hello. >> We are very pleased to have you here today. And I'm going to ask the first question, and which would be how academic face myths, if they face them, and how the general public or associations react. >> Okay, um let's start telling the audience that I'm a political scientist and therefore my take on this issue's from the political side. So, from a political science perspective, myths are embedded in what we call symbolic policies. They're policies developed and created by the state in order to create, to provide some kind of an idea. And symbolic policies can be of different nature, and of course myths are part of symbolic policies or at least can be linked to this type of policies. Or myths are also the finding moments of our own countries or for the European Union. I mean, the Schuman Declaration is is a myth, meaning that it exists, of course, but all the meaning we attach to it somehow a social construction. And so, when Rome was founded, of course, there is a date for Italians that is considered the founding date of Rome, but of course, this date is completely arbitrary. But still is something that we call whenever you see a flag of Rome and you see the wolf, you relate to that specific myth. >> How do you think these political myths have actually translated into policy-making and strategic communication? Can you name us maybe an example of how these politics translated into policy? >> I mean, I already mentioned a couple, I would say, but then I think the issue of how myths change policies, I mean, myths themselves are policies because whenever you decide that something deserve to play a role within your country and the government decide that a specific historical event, better, a specific narration of historical event is coherent with idea of a nation-state you want to produce or to perpetrate, then you select specific aspect of event and you portray it in your own speech, symbol, monuments and therefore our cities, our countries are full of monuments which narrate a story which is somehow mythical and this constant reproduction of myth is itself a policy in the making. >> You think it is a democratic process then? >> It depends by which regime is doing it. As any policy can be implemented by a democratic country or not, so the authoritarian regime would do policy-making and symbolic policy-making in which myth plays a major role as well as there are democracies who do symbolic policies and myth perpetration. Now, what does it mean democratic? As long as the government is formally elected in a democratic manner, all the policies are democratic because the government is accountable for the specific policy. The problem is that rarely symbolic policies are challenged by non-state actors or better are challenged by minorities or by small fraction of a society and it's very hard that an issue that is symbolic in nature reach the level of protest large enough to make the government accountable for it. >> You have a deeper knowledge in the genocide of Roma and Sinti and I would like to ask you if you could give us a concrete example of a myth in relation to this >> The for example one myth is the fact that there were no Roma involved in the resistance movement and if you talk with everyone in your own country no one will ever acknowledge the presence of Roma people in the anti-fascist or anti-Nazist movement. On the contrary there are historical proof that this happened simply the history and the school books never provide evidence or never told this story to the wider audience. Of course going back to the previous question there was a minority challenging this narration but the minority was Roma activist. They were not able to reach the institutional agenda to make a change in the public discussion and therefore if you read books on the topic then you realize that this happened but it never really reached the wider debate. And also this the same genocide persecution of Roma people during World War II. I mean it's really recently was acknowledged by European countries and therefore you may feel like this minority has been neglected by European societies. Last but not least I would say the fact that slavery was ended when the Western European countries abolish slave trade was I think is the common sense of relationship between European Union and slavery, but this is not true because in Romania Roma were enslaved until the end of 19th century and therefore also this is part of our myth or the way we interpret our own history. >> Is the exclusion of ethnic minorities like Roma and Sinti a result of the consolidation of national political myths or is there rather a different factor involved? >> I do think they're related and the unlucky aspect of Roma non-Roma relationship is that their arrival in European Union was at the end of Middle Age when with the beginning of the creation of nation-state begun and therefore the problem was that while before the empire were able to include people with different background, different languages, different culture, different religion, nation-state were less able to do so because nation-state itself as a social construction requires some share aspect that was challenged by the Roma presence. >> Thank you so much for these great answers, Matteo. One last questions perhaps to end is how these political myths or minorities, those genocides that you work on is related to memory policies. >> Oh, this is a very good question. Thanks a lot. I think the crucial aspect of memory policies is that we constantly need some sort of memorialization and we do some sort of memorialization and therefore what is included and what is excluded by our process of memorialization is a a aspect of our democratic fabric. And this is the reason why I do think that the Roma issue is important from a mnemonic perspective, because if we decide that in a specific date we celebrate the importance of freedom or importance of the creation of a certain state or the founding day of a city, and we lack the remembrance of what happened to the Roma people during World War II or we lack the Roma pride day, that we forgot about the only rebellion that happened during in the concentration camp by Roma and convicted there, we leave our fellow citizen without a proof of their belonging to our societies. >> Thank you very much for coming to us and for sharing your knowledge. >> Thank you for inviting me. It has been a pleasure. >> So, let's move on to the discussion part. We are going to speak about the different myths from our own countries. I'm going to start. I am Luisa and I come from Spain. When I think of political myths, I immediately think on Franco's dictatorship and the revisionist discourse taught in the schools during that era. For instance, it was claimed that thanks to Franco, Spain avoided involvement in the Second World War. However, the reality is very different. Spain was neutral. Indeed, it provided logistical support, resources, and even soldiers to the Axis powers. Furthermore, Hitler himself eventually decided against Spain's entry due to the country's post-Civil War devastation. What surprised me the most is how this pro-Franco narrative deeply permeated society. Even some individuals on the political left took years to realize how reality had been distorted. And I believe this is a clear example of how myths that warp history becomes myths of the present and future if there are no critical voices to question and debunk them. >> Hello, I am Iram and I'm from Turkey. The myth I would like to talk about today from Turkey is perhaps can be named as the Lausanne myth. It is a conspiracy based myth that centers around this anxiety on Turkey's independence. Following the World War I, Turkey fought the war of independence against British, French, Italy, Greece, etc. And following this Treaty of Lausanne, which is a peace treaty, it was signed on 1923 that recognizes sovereignty of this new republic. However, the myth is that public started to speculate that the treaty had certain secret clauses that will be that would expire after 100 years. Even I myself as someone who is taught but this in schools that there are no secret clauses and there's no expiration date for the agreement. I was confused and I needed to dig in a bit more. Speaking from the memory of sources and the mistrust towards European powers, public carried this anxiety for 100 years. When 2023 came, people started to protest and create events on Facebook and search the web if the peace agreement is over, which was quite funny. Rather than functioning as a misinformation, it kind of worked as a symbolic narrative where memory of empire and anxiety of independence are expressed. Its persistence for 100 years shows how memory is producted not only through official state narratives but also through political culture, social media and emotional storytelling as Mateo was also saying. As a result, the myth of Lausanne in a way, became a contested site of memory where past, present, and future of Turkey was projected. >> That was a great point. And to add on to that, what Matteo said about the fact that within nations and nationalism, minorities often get left out, I feel that from a perspective that I have, descendant of Vietnamese immigrants, I can see that with the story of German reunification, which as a myth is seen as like this all-encompassing happy event that sealed the fate of Germany for it to become a liberal democracy in the state it is right now. But what is often not talked about is the story of how Vietnamese migrants to East Germany suddenly overnight lost all of their job and had to experience racism. For example, the pogroms in Rostock-Lichtenhagen or in Hoyerswerda, where cities where entire housing complexes burned. And the interesting thing about this history is much like how memory is selectively remembered, it is also selectively forgotten. So, the myth is that many migrants are seen as not working as hard as Vietnamese people, and that's why they experience racism. Yet, we can see from the past it is not that, but the selective remembrance also about what you remember and not just what you choose to remember. >> I'm Ellie. I'm a history student from Finland. I sort of have a niche example, a case study I came across during my studies. In Finland, there exists this pseudo-historical myth that there were kings and kingdoms in the geographical area of Finland before it was a part of the Swedish kingdom. Although there is archaeological evidence that shows there's no real support for this fact. The myth is based on like saga literature, and uh tract translation process has played a part in the myth-building process itself because the Finns as a term that refers in the saga to the indigenous Sami people of Finland and the kings refer to the Sami leaders. So, there has been some translation problems as well, but albeit being more of a marginal or a niche than some other myths, the conversation of this myth have taken place online and uh these conversations have had many overlapping so-called themes that uh not limited to but like nationalism, conspiracy theories, far-right thought, racism, historical realities have been shadowed and individuals have utilized this pseudo-historical sentiment to, for example, cement thought of this homogeneous nation and normalizing xenophobia and trying to reinvent a nation's history. >> Hi, I'm Alexia. I'm from Romania. I'm a student at political sciences and I'm going to talk to talk about promises versus reality. When we talk about myths, influence politics, and communication strategies, one important example is the way communist regime created myths in order to control society and shape public opinion. In Romania, communism was built around the myth that the regime represented equality, progress, and the good of people. Through propaganda, the government tried to create the image of a perfect society while hiding violence and repression. A clear example is the Pitesti Experiment where political prisoners, especially students, were tortured and reeducated in order to destroy any opposition to the regime. At the same time, communist communist government promoted the myth that it was creating equality and unity. Fear became one of the main communication strategies of the regime, especially through the security or securitate, the secret police that constantly surveilled citizens, censored free speech, and punished anyone considered politically dangerous. This is why the idea that life was better during communist regime is largely a political myth. While the regime promised stability and security, people actually lived without freedom of speech, without free elections, and in constant fear of being monitored or reported. Many Romanians faced shortage of food, electricity, and heat, while thousands were imprisoned, deported, or intimidated by the state. The regime used propaganda to create an idealized image of society, but that image ignored the suffering happening be- behind it. >> Hello everyone. My name is Srdjan and I'm going to conclude on to all these previous examples and to provide a sort of differing perspective coming from a country that is contextualized in a bit of a different situation. I'm from Bosnia and Herzegovina and because of the history of the country and the way it was relatively recently gained its independence and the way it was war, there is an overarching dominant political myth that pertains public sphere, but we have sort of three differing groups of political myths that each of three main ethnic groups is attached to. So, basically these myths are connected to the period of socialist Yugoslavia and feeling of victimization and self-victimization between these three dominant ethnic groups as well as the period in the 1990s where these political myths about the period in former socialist Yugoslavia were used to mobilize and rally people in order to support dominant political actors and mobilize them to act in a certain way. So, the political myths in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not striving to gain whole wide or comprehensive popularity or support among the whole population of the country, but they sort of have their niche groups that they are aiming to target and they are aiming to mobilize. So, political myths in Bosnia and Herzegovina are relatively divided into three target groups and these myths all have a competing version of what the past of the country is. >> Thank you so much everyone. I think it is a highly engaging episode on how political myths and how they are used as an apparatus of memory politics and how our personal stories matter as well in that sense. Every country or everyone here has some kind of a story to tell. Thank you so much. Talking Memories is a production of the School of European Memories. >> [music] >> Produced by Fernanda Zanussi, Moritz Hercog, and Natalia Butkiewicz for your EU. Original idea by Fernanda Zanussi and Czesław [music] Miś. Recording and post-production, Benjamin Samama. All episodes were recorded at the Jean Monnet House from May 4th to 6th, 2016 [music] during the 4th School of European Memories. This podcast was made possible with the support of the European [music] Commission and the European Parliament. However, the views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions.