A-Infos (en) Italy, FdCA, IL CANTIERE #39 - Revisionism and Denialism: The Political Use of History - Roberto Manfredini (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

One aspect of the new historiography of the late twentieth century was 
to give voice to the defeated, the excluded, or the marginalized. The 
transition from a rural to an industrial society had repercussions that 
continue to this day, in power relations, production systems, rural 
organization, access to environmental resources, and the role of the 
state in modernization processes. The loss of reference points and 
reminders of historical memory, such as the Holocaust, the persistence 
of a potential relapse into barbarism, compounded by the political 
parties' abandonment of ideals and the crumbling of social solidarity in 
the European crisis, paves the way for falsifiers of history and ideas 
of hatred and discrimination.

Holocaust denial is an example of the political use of history. The 
responses to these falsifications have been varied.
In France, authors such as Alain Bihr, Guido Goldiron, Emmanuel 
Chavaneau, Didier Daeninikx, Georges Fontenis, Valerie Igounet, Thierry 
Maricourt, Roger Martin, Pierine Pivas, Christian Terras, and Philippe 
Videlier have answered the question: how can we deny the Holocaust after 
half a century?
They analyzed not only the political currents that spread Holocaust 
denial but also the sectors of the left that take up these themes, along 
with figures from Judaism or anti-fascism. The "assassins of memory," in 
Pierre Vidal-Naquet's expression, are gaining strength to deny the 
existence of the extermination camps or to minimize their extent. These 
white, brown, and even red groups are not only united by anti-Semitism, 
but also create an environmental, ideological, and polemical web. 
Well-known opinion leaders involved in Holocaust denial, in the name of 
absolute freedom of expression, began in France with Robert Faurisson 
and Pierre Giullaume, and then moved on to Abbé Pierre, Roger Garaudy, 
and Pierre-André Taguieff.

Historical revisionism as a general phenomenon has also been analyzed in 
lectures given at the Calusca City Lights bookstore in Milan by 
historians such as Sergio Bologna, Pier Paolo Poggio, Claudio 
Costantini, Cesare Bermani, Mimmo Franzinelli, Brunello Mantelli, Luigi 
Ganapini, Gianpasquale Santomassimo, Luciano Guerci, Francesco 
Germinario, Karl Heinz Roth, and Carlo Tombola.
According to these historians, the objectives of historical revisionism 
in the 20th century were the communist question and the reinterpretation 
of the French Revolution of 1789. If at the beginning of the century the 
goal was the recognition of the hegemony of liberalism and the 
condemnation of the resistance to the modernization of capitalism 
present in Italy after the Risorgimento, after the Second World War, the 
task of historical revisionism was to achieve the dissolution of classes 
and the affirmation of a consumerist society, the integration of the 
masses, the distancing from ideologies, and the end of history in 
post-modernism. To recreate a fracture in the Western world in the 
elaborations derived from the anti-fascist alliance, excluding communism 
and historiography as a human science. With the political use of 
history, a reactionary outlet is sought in privatization and a return to 
the sole narrative of the ruling classes. Particularly in Italy, France, 
and Germany, the historiography of Fascism and Nazism has been revised, 
often resulting in their rehabilitation, which subsequently triggered 
political repercussions. The need to revitalize the national identities 
of states often involves clearing up "guilt." In analyzing the 
relationship between the bourgeoisie and class struggle, the stripping 
of sovereignty from populations subjected to colonialism is overlooked, 
and instead, attempts are made to control the geopolitical dynamics 
resulting from anti-imperialist processes.
In German historiography, revisionist theses tend to present the 
extermination of the Jews as a sort of response to the massacres 
committed in the Soviet Union by the Stalinist regime. Revisionism, 
beginning in the 1980s, has revived the concept of mass consensus 
achieved by regimes to call into question the Nazi extermination 
process, focusing both on the singularity or unrepeatable uniqueness of 
the Auschwitz event and on situating it in an increasingly distant past, 
an era that seems increasingly distant and different from the present 
every day, and which ultimately will remain unrepeatable in human history.
There are historians and writers who have attempted to analyze the human 
condition beyond the cruel era of history centered on war. Simone Weil, 
Stig Dagerman, Camus, Sartre, and Daniel Guérin also proposed an 
existentialism that was aware of the end, yet attentive to social 
critique and injustice. They saw capitalism as an exacerbated 
competition that brought about insecurity and anguish in the individual. 
This thought focused on the morality of life, the confrontation between 
good and evil, and the use of writing to organize a fragmented world. 
Connections with historical libertarian or trade unionist themes led to 
a critique of mass society and the recognition of the failure of other 
political possibilities, "democratic" anguish, or the canonization of 
the abstract in state-controlled experiences.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
AA.VV. Denialists: The Chiffoniers of History, Editions Golias et 
Syllepse, Paris, 1997; Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semitism: Reflections on 
the Jewish Question, Mondadori, Milan, 1990;

Various Authors, Lectures on Historical Revisionism, Cox 18 Books, 
Calusca City Lights, Milan, 1999.

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