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The return of the Repressed: Collective Memory and the Revival of Nationalism and
Authoritarian Politics

Peter Dan, Long Island University, USA

peterdan13@hotmail.com

Paper presented at the ASN World Convention

Columbia University, 4-6 May 2017

Abstract

A cursory look at the political map of Europe will show that right of center governments
are in power in ex-communist countries like Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic,
and Poland. The right is on the rise even in countries with a strong democratic tradition such as
France, Austria and the Netherlands. The present paper is trying to elucidate the dynamic by
which present political events affect the respective national identities, and by extension collective
memories, and which may be responsible for this rightward shift.

Collective memory is undistinguishable from group identity. Todorov considers collective

memory “not a memory per se, but a discourse that takes place in the public sphere, which
reflects the self-image that a society or a group within the society tries to project.” (Author’s
translation) Collective memory is a consensual convention which allows for the integration of
recalled events in a manner consistent with the agreed upon distortions and the rejection of
events not consistent with it. At the level of the group, the mechanism equivalent to repression at
the individual level, responsible for keeping unwanted content out of awareness, is making the
discussion of an unwanted subject impossible in the public sphere. This is achieved by the re-
positioning of the Overton window for that particular subject. In turn, the characteristics of the
public sphere are determined by the type of liberty the society is based on, namely positive or
negative (Berlin) and by whether it occurs in an open or closed society (Bergson). Two forces
described by Barber, one of transnational integration and homogenization (McWorld) and one
of increased fragmentation and tribalism (Jihad) also play a significant role in defining the
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public sphere. Several shared distortion mechanisms: self-deception, truthiness, poetic truth,
representativeness, pluralistic ignorance and stereotype threat play a role in shaping the public
discourse about collective memory and identity and at the same time insure its self-consistency.
These mechanisms are similar to the ones employed at individual level for identity maintenance
and insure the linkage between the individual and the collective processes. The social
interdiction to discuss a subject excluded from the public sphere is internalized and becomes
self-censorship. The hypothesis we are trying to prove is that there is a link between the nature of
the material excluded from the public sphere in post-communist societies and the rightward shift
in politics. The examples will be drawn from contemporary events in Romania and Eastern
Europe.

Key words:Populism, collective memory, collective identity, totalitarianism, Overton window,

ketman, self-deception, truthiness, poetic truth, psychic doubling, doublethink, groupthink,
agentic state,

We are in the midst of a populist surge in most of the Western democracies. The causes
include perceived threats to national and cultural identity, to national independence, a weakening
of the concept of nation state with its “inviolable borders” and a general dissatisfaction
accompanied by a feeling of being wronged and of losing control. From a social psychological
standpoint, at the individual and small group level, the social trends named above are mediated
and integrated by using the constructs of collective identity and collective memory. This is the
perspective of the present paper, which continues my efforts to propose a framework integrating
the individual, small group and societal levels.

Mudde has identified three essential characteristics shared by all populist philosophies:
anti-establishment animus, authoritarianism and nativism. Those are the necessary components;
specific populist movements may differ in many other respects. The right and left wing populist
parties share of the popular vote in European countries with democratic governments,
committed to free trade has been steadily increasing, as can be seen from the following figures
(Inglehart and Norris, 2016):
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Figure 1: Share of vote won by populist parties in European elections.

In countries with a strong democratic tradition such as Austria, Switzerland,

Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands the popularity –and share of the vote- of
the Austrian Freedom Party , the Swiss People’s Party , the Danish People’s Party,
the Swedish Democrats, the Northern League and the Party For Freedom have
increased. In France Marine Le Pen’s Front National is favored to win the first round of
the elections. Right of center parties with authoritarian leaders are in power in Poland,
Croatia and Slovakia. In Hungary the ruling Fidesz party has made an alliance with the
neo-fascist Jobbik. Romania seems to go against the trend for reasons which will be
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discussed later. The share of all the populist parties in national and European
parliamentary election is illustrated below:

Figure 2: Mean share of the vote by populist parties in European elections 1960-2010

This tendency can be traced back, at least in part, to the decreasing attachment
to democratic values, as demonstrated by the work of Foa and Mounk (2016): the
fundamental beliefs regarding the importance of democratic values are weakening all
over Europe and in the US., as can be seen by the following figure (Foa and Mounk,
2016):
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Figure 3: Importance accorded to living in a democratic country by cohort

In fact not only do citizens attach less importance to living in a democratic
society, but they are also increasingly critical of democracy as a governing system:
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Figure 4: Percent of people who hold negative views about a democratic political
system.
In fact, democracies seem to decay toward one of two solutions: “illiberal
democracy”- the will of the majority loosely determines public policy but individual
rights are regularly violated “(as for instance in Hungary) or ““undemocratic
liberalism” -individual rights are respected but the mechanism for translating the will of
the people into public policy has broken down” (as for instance in those European
countries where the majority opposition to admitting new refugees is overlooked.)
Populism naturally fills the void left by the weakening commitment to democratic
values.
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Barber (1996) has described two “axial principles of our age”: tribalism and globalism,
two forces in conflict he named “McWorld” and “Jihad”. The former represents a centripetal
force for transnational and cross-cultural homogenization and integration, and tends to occur
more in open societies while the latter is a centrifugal force for fragmentation, separatism and
tribalism, occurring more often in closed societies, often based on national or religious identity.
For example, transnational companies and the European Union represent McWorld, and have
been dominant for the last decades. However, when the national identity of the citizens of the
member states came under pressure because of the massive influx of Middle Eastern refugees,
because of a perceived loss of autonomy caused by an overbearing EU centralized bureaucracy,
and because of the perceived attack on morality and cultural values, the centrifugal force of
“Jihad” has become prevalent. As Michta (2017) notes, the decline of Western values is not due
to the rise of an alternative civilization or to economic decline, but to” a failure to reach
consensus on shared goals and interests.” He writes: “The problem, rather, is the West’s
growing inability to agree on how it should be defined as a civilization. At the core of the
deepening dysfunction in the West is the self-induced deconstruction of Western culture and,
with it, the glue that for two centuries kept Europe and the United States at the center of the
international system. The nation-state has been arguably the most enduring and successful idea
that Western culture has produced. It offers a recipe to achieve security, economic growth, and
individual freedom at levels unmatched in human history. This concept of a historically anchored
and territorially defined national homeland, having absorbed the principles of liberal democracy,
the right to private property and liberty bound by the rule of law, has been the core building
block of the West’s global success and of whatever “order” has ever existed in the so-called
international order.” Pan-European, transnational, multicultural identity proved to be no
substitute for national identity and it did not fit any collective memory or identity narrative.
Furthermore, the perceived attack on traditional moral and cultural values fostered a siege
mentality. Conditions of perceived threat to identity tend to strengthen group cohesion by
emphasizing within group similarities and accentuating between groups differences. If we
combine the Jihad versus McWorld division with the one between rich versus poor countries we
get a more nuanced representation of the possibilities:
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Figure 5: The effects of Jihad and McWorld on poor and rich countries.

If Foa and Mounk’s suppositions are correct, in rich countries the increased tendency to
fragmentation, isolationism and tribalism results in a shift from “Undemocratic Liberalism”
toward “Illiberal Democracy,” which then further decays into authoritarianism. When one adds
the strong nationalist component, the resulting trend is toward right populism.

Individual Identity, Group Identity and Collective Memory

One of the essential dichotomies by which we structure our world is “Me/Non Me.” As
Redfield (1953) states, “We/They” is another essential dichotomy. The individual sense of
identity is the decision criterion for the first dichotomy. Group identity is the criterion for the
second one.

According to Erikson (1994), identity is a state of self-sameness and continuity,

integrated both longitudinally (historically) over the life cycle, and horizontally across situations.
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Identity is internally consistent and it is validated through interactions with others. It provides the
point of view, the perspective from which we observe the world. The sense of identity is present
in all our activities, it is the basis on which we decide the relevance of all our experiences, and
information related to it is embedded in all our memories. However, we are not aware of how
and when identity is generated or of how the sense of self is maintained. The sense of self is our
longest permanently running mental process and it exerts a permanent influence over all our
conscious decisions, yet an overwhelming proportion of it is taking place outside our awareness.

We evolved in small groups of hunter-gatherers and eusociality (Wilson 2012) is the key
of our evolutionary success. The necessary social cohesion within the group was enhanced by the
emergence of a common frame of reference. Initially the commonality consisted of familiarity
with the faces, noises and smells of other group members. But we are a symbol-making species
(Langer, 1948). The mental images dominate our inner world and prepare and motivate our
actions. The development of language allowed the sharing the mental imagery, which in turn
lead to the emergence of storytelling and to the invention of myths of creation. The myths played
an essential role in structuring the universe into realms, (this world and the spirit world, this
realm and the one beyond) and in the emergence of ideas about transcendence, mortality and
immortality.
The different aspects of reality were integrated by incorporation in the same overarching
universe of meaning, which Berger and Luckman (1966) named the “symbolic universe”

The emergence of collective identities is a consequence of belonging to the same

symbolic universe.
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Figure 6: Individual, group and national frames of reference and the symbolic universe.
(From Dan, 2015)

One of the paradoxes of individual identity is that it is an integrated conglomerate of a

multitude of shared collective identities. This quality is similar to recursiveness in linguistics,
and it indicates that identity has a fractal quality. One can identify as a Romanian of Greek
Orthodox religious affiliation, who is Transylvanian, living in Bucharest, speaker of French, a
theater lover, who is a fan of a given soccer team and loves red wine etc. Collective memory also
has a kaleidoscopic quality: depending on the situation, any of these collective identities may be
perceived as the salient one. As Todorov (2004, 2010) writes: “Individual identity stems from the
encounter of multiple collective identities within one and the same person; each of our various
affiliations contributes to the formation of the unique creature that we are. Human beings are not
all similar, or entirely different; they are all plural within themselves, and share their constitutive
traits with very varied groups, combining them in an individual way. Individual identity results
from the interweaving of several collective identities”

Collective identity, be it group, ethnic, religious, ideological or national (or combinations

of the above) is part of individual identity. The social factors involved in defining the moral
norms and in creating and maintaining the individual identity provide the linkage mechanisms
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between individual and collective identities. Morality, by definition, shapes interpersonal

behavior, first by creating an internalized moral code that is culturally defined, and second by
providing the basis for supervision and feedback by others in the community. In turn, the norms
and values shared by the community shape the public sphere and determine which topics can be
discussed within it. But while the sense of self is vaster than the group identity and it
incorporates it, in a situation where, let’s say, the national identity becomes more salient, it is
subjectively perceived as being superordinate. Overlapping group identities can also be used to
define social differences: the mid-19th century poet and nationalist Alecsandri complained than
when he asked a Moldavian nobleman “Are we all not Romanians?” the latter answered
“Romanian is the peasant. I am a Moldavian Boyar.”

From the point of view of agency, the “I” imbedded in the narrative of the self, the
identity, is the source of awareness. At individual level, there is a clear distinction between
identity and the sections of memory which constitute the narrative of the “I”; the latter is the
organizing principle of the former. They are the answers to different questions: identity answers
the question “Who?” while the narrative answers the questions “How?” and “Why?” The
repository of both identity and memory are physical, namely specialized neural networks. While
individual memory is distinct from individual identity, some researchers believe that collective
memory is identical to group identity. As Rusu (2013) notes“for Fabian (1999), the“concept of
memory may become indistinguishable from either identity or culture” while Boyarin concurs,
asserting that “identity and memory are virtually the same” (Boyarin 1994) I disagree to some
extent, based on the fact that, just like at the individual level, the collective identity and the
collective memory are the answers to the different questions listed above. There is no
physiological repository of the collective identity and memory, only remote ones (books,
artifacts, myths, etc.) At the individual level the collective identity is a fragment, a component of
identity, learned through interaction with others and immersion in culture. Integrated at the group
level these fragments generate and modify the collective identity which becomes part of the
group’s symbolic universe. The collective memory is the narrative which serves as a universe
maintenance mechanisms, providing the “How” and “Why” to the “Who” of the collective
identity. Hewson (1999) distinguishes between individual, proxy and collective agency. I believe
that the relation between collective identity and collective memory involves both proxy and
collective agency. Halbwachs (1980, (1950)) emphasized “the illusion” of the continuity of the
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collective identity and/or memory, which provides a narrative of a shared past that the group
accepts as his own. The key element is not verifiability but belief. As Hoffer (2016, (1951))
observed "The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its
certitude.”

The sense of identity is the result of ongoing self-assessment, selectively recalling from
memory material that is consistent with the demands of continuity and integrity, and tailored to
meet the demands of a given situation. Achieved by the extensive use of self-deception, it
consists of multiple layers of truths, half-truths and falsehoods, forging coherent versions of the
present and the past distorted as to provide satisfaction and a justification for one’s actions. A
number of cognitive distortion mechanisms - Orwellian double thought, Milosz’ ketman,
groupthink (Janis), psychic doubling (Lifton) are used both in order to achieve internal
consistency and to facilitate integration into the group and/ or society. The psychological
principle of doubling described by Lifton is “the division of the self in two functioning wholes.
In that way, a part-self becomes, in effect, an entire self” (1986). Totalitarian groups and
societies facilitate, almost require, doubling: a doctor performing experiments on humans in a
concentration camp or a KGB interrogator had to be able to go home and lead an apparently
normal existence. This required them to keep separate and independent value systems and
identities for “work” and home. Doubling differs from splitting or dissociation because there is
continuity between the two selves; the compartmentalization allows one to keep the actions taken
in one of the situations from affecting the actions that take place in the other. It means , in fact ,
keeping two separate moral registers. This process is facilitated by “psychic numbing”, the
toning down of the experience as not to feel the pain associated with it. As Slovic (2007) has
demonstrated our capacity for empathy is dampened by the number victims and by the fact that
violence is becoming an everyday occurrence. The combined use of doubling and numbing affect
the emotional thresholds and tone of the public dialogue.

Political commentator Steven Colbert coined the term “truthiness” which the American
Dialect Society defined as “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes or believes to
be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.” I believe truthiness plays an important
role in the dynamic of self-deception, facilitating the distortion of reality in favor of more
emotionally satisfying versions, which are then used as a base for decision making. Since the
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maintenance of identity is an iterative process, the distortion is incorporated in the narrative of

the self, and deceptive strategies – what Goffman calls “facework”- are used in the presentation
of the self in interpersonal interactions. A corollary of truthiness is “goya” an Urdu word which
“describes the suspension of disbelief that can occur, often through good storytelling.” As Mark
Twain said “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” “Goya” facilitates the transition
from truthiness to what Steele (2015) defined as “poetic truth”: “similar to “poetic license
where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic
truth… bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important
truth.” Substituting truth with poetic truth in the collective memory is at the core of religious and
ideological distortions in both the assessment and the recall of a given situation or a series of
events.

Todorov (2004) makes a distinction between literal memory and exemplary memory.
Literal memory is a straightforward recording of the event without connections or empathy,
while exemplary memories permit generalizations and comparisons as well as the derivation of
moral judgements. Truthiness and poetic truth are the cognitive strategies used to transform
literal memories into exemplary ones in order to construct a more emotionally satisfying, less
conflicted, version of the past. They are the transition mechanisms which facilitate the
integration of individual and collective memories, since they are used at individual, group and
societal levels.

Overton Window and Overton Space

The rise of populism led to the development of the Post-truth society and the
accompanying epidemic of “fake news,” in which the emphasis is on the poetic rather than the
factual truth, on emotional satisfaction rather than rigorous fact checking. Substituting the latter
with the former is at the core of understanding the dynamics and the ideological distortions of the
public discourse in a post truth society. There are, however, some limits on just how far from the
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truth one can stray. In the public sphere, the degree of the distortion of the factual truth is limited
by the Overton window:

Figure 7: The Overton Window

The repositioning of the Overton window is achieved by changing the collective

morality. In fact, all morality is collective since it consists of shared principles which are
internalized by individuals. The relationship between individual morality and collective morality
is similar to the one posited by Todorov regarding individual and collective identity, namely
individual morality is an integrated amalgam of collective moralities and collective morality is
an integrated amalgam of individual moralities: each is a combination of intertwined fragments
of the other. The dynamic unfolds as follows: perceived threats to the collective identity cause
changes; for example increases in group cohesion and suspicion and hostility directed to other
groups or individuals seen a the source of the threat. In turn the changes in collective identity
cause changes in the collective memory and in the collective morality. These changes are
reciprocal and self-reinforcing, and result in the repositioning of the Overton window, modifying
the range of acceptable behaviors. The process is illustrated below:
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Figure 8 The repositioning of the Overton Window

In fact, the vertical axis along which the Overton window and the levels of acceptability
“slide” can be defined according to the process one wants to represent: Less Freedom to More
Freedom, Intolerance to Tolerance etc. By using three axes of coordinates one can create a
tridimensional Overton space (Dan 2016) that constitutes a better representation of the manner in
which the Overton window is placed in the public space. The Overton Window within this space
is defined by its coordinates on these three axes. The coordinate on each axis represents the
resolution of a conflict. There are also possible conflicts between the processes represented on
different axes. The position of the window within the Overton space represents a possible
solution that satisfies all the conflicts. The constructs of Overton space and window can be used
at different levels of social complexity.
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At the societal level The Overton Space can be defined by three axes: Closed Morality to
Open Morality (Bergson), Forbidden in the Public Sphere to Permitted in Public Sphere, Less
Freedom to High Degree of Freedom. The range of degrees of acceptability is the same one
shown in above arrayed symmetrically around “desirable”: unacceptable, barely acceptable,
acceptable, desirable, acceptable, barely acceptable, and unacceptable.

Figure 9: The Overton space and Overton window at societal level

At the small group/individual level, the three axes are Hidden Desires/ Authentic Self, Group
Expectations/False Self, and Moral Duty. Again, the Overton Window within this space is
defined by its coordinates on the three axes. Each coordinate on a given axis represents the
resolution of a conflict within that dimension. There can be also between axes conflicts like for
instance between Hidden Desires and Moral Duty or Hidden Desires and Group Expectations.
The range of degrees of acceptability is the same:
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Figure 10: The Overton space and Overton Window at small group level

At the Self or intrapersonal level the three axes are The Reality Principle, The Pleasure Principle,
(both as defined by Freud) and the Internalized Moral Code. Again, you may have conflicts
within a given dimension, or conflicts between axes, for example between the Reality Principle
and the Pleasure Principle, or between the Pleasure Principle and the Internalized Moral Code.
Like in the previous examples, the positioning of the Overton window represents a compromise
solution. The range of degrees of acceptability remains the same.
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Figure 11: The Overton space and Overton Window at the Self level

Finally, if one considers all levels at the same time, as it usually occurs when the
individual behavior must satisfy simultaneously the internalized value system, the small group
demands, and the societal demands, the range of possible behaviors can be found at the
intersection of the respective Overton Windows. Please note that it is possible that the windows
do not intersect at all or that the resulting range may include behaviors with different degrees of
acceptability, which in turn may lead to conflicts. This is the situation in which cognitive
distortion strategies used at all levels, namely self-deception, sliding scale assessment (Dan,
2013), truthiness and poetic truth are used to reposition the windows so that a solution becomes
possible. This solution has the characteristics of a Nash equilibrium: it is not optimal at any of
the levels but it is stable.
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Figure 12: Range of behaviors acceptable at all levels.

In such situations, how is an individual decision reached? Because individual identity and
collective identity are intertwined, the decision will affect both.

Gazzaniga (2005) has proposed that since we have an overwhelming need to feel that our
actions make sense: a brain structure in the left hemisphere he named “the interpreter” has the
function to explain our own behavior to ourselves. In this context, “making sense” means that the
behavior has to conform to logic and to internalized norms. Using neuroimaging Westen et al.
(2006) compared the functioning of self identified Republican and Democrat subjects who were
asked to make a decision after being confronted with facts contrary to their beliefs. Westen
described the findings in an interview with Emory University press as follows:

“We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during
reasoning. What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits
hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in
resolving conflicts. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until
they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the
elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”
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Also using brain imaging, Berns et al. (2012) have shown that decisions made based on
principle are processed differently from decisions made on the basis of cost-benefit analysis.
Ruff et al. (2013) studied the processes involved in both voluntary and punishment induced
compliance with societal norms and found “a neural mechanism …that aligns behavior with
social norms when punishment is possible.” These findings suggest the strategy of guilt free
self- deception: It is enough to consider the decision as one made “on principle” and to anticipate
suffering possible punishment; the subjects’ brains will do the rest, deceiving them to perceive
things according to group norms and societal demands. The key is the systematic distortion of
the appraisal of situations in order to sanction otherwise unacceptable behavior (Dan, 2013): if a
situation is perceived as threatening or implying loss of face, the spectrum of acceptable
reactions shifts towards less nuanced, otherwise less acceptable options. This repositions the
Overton window. In the case of individual identity, its integrity and consistency are the validated
by interaction with others. Events that receive approval from others are integrated in the
narrative of the Self; those that are met with disapproval result in guilt and shame and can be
distorted by using defense mechanisms or repressed. But what constitutes a check on validity in
the case of collective memory? If a fact affirmed by another group is seen positively, its
integration in the collective memory is conflict free. However, if a fact liked by the group in
question is contested by other groups, or a fact disliked by the group is affirmed by other groups,
confrontation occurs because the challenge is constructed as a narcissistic injury, a threat not to
the collective memory but to the group identity itself. Like in the case of individual identity, self-
consistency is more important than objective reality, and the brain rewards you more for it. A
principled decision based on ideology it is processed differently and subject to different
validation criteria. Furthermore, agreement with one’s own group is rewarding and reinforced,
while disagreement runs against the social pressure to conform, whose power is proven by
numerous experiments (Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo.) This indicates that the validity checks on the
accuracy of collective memory are few and weak, while the distorting mechanisms are more
powerful and self-reinforcing.

In the case of individual identity, information that is discrepant with the narrative of the
self is repressed. Aside from validation by others and self-consistency, repression, guilt, and
shame are the internal control mechanisms ensuring that the discrepant content is kept out of
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awareness. In the case of collective memory repression takes the form of relegating questionable
issues outside the public sphere, so they cannot be debated. The mechanisms that distort the
collective memory also define which topics can be addressed in the public sphere. In fact,
especially in closed societies, the public sphere acts as an echo chamber for the officially
sanctioned version of collective memory. The value system shared through public dialogue is
internalized, driven by the need for internal consistency, the need for acceptance, and, in the case
of totalitarian societies, by fear. The use of groupthink, truthiness and self-deception provide the
necessary rationalizations. Once the value system has been internalized, the individual starts to
self-censor, becoming a de facto enforcer of conformity. In time, a false Self (Winnicott, 1960)
develops and even the thought of an act of challenging the system- what Orwell called
“thoughtcrime” triggers signal anxiety or “crimestop.” By using psychic doubling, the false Self
assumes the dominant position, and the true Self is silenced and relegated to the preconscious.
The entire structure is reversible: should the conditions change, the selves and value systems can
switch places. The cognitive adjustment needed to maintain a sense of continuity throughout this
process is the Orwellian “doublethink.”: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete
truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which
cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic
against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was
impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was
necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed,
and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself
—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to
become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word
“doublethink” involved the use of doublethink." (Orwell 1949) The moral scruples of those who
conform are, according to Milgram (1969), overridden because of the “agentic state”, which is
the opposite of autonomy, and depends on the person’s willingness to accept both the definition
of the situation and the person’s self-definition within that situation by those in authority. In turn,
this results in the subordination of the individuals’ value system to that of the authority, and
leads to self-censorship in case the values conflict. Zimbardo’s (1973) view is that repressive
behavior is a distortion of the desire to conform to moral rules. But even in the agentic state,
protected by numbing and doubling, the individual remains aware of his actions. The
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requirements of maintaining a sense of self one is comfortable with, one that also has continuity
and is validated through interaction with others, force a person to rely on self- deception. In the
end, the individual embraces the new ideology, which connects him/her to the group beliefs and
collective memory.

I believe that there is a similarity between the role of ideology and religion: they both
require devotion to the cause and purity of faith; they are processed largely by the same neural
networks and become part of the normative structures that manage social behavior. Both
facilitate the bypassing of reasoning in favor of emotionally satisfying solution (poetic truth),
making the hatred against those with different beliefs a moral imperative and their destruction a
laudable goal, while maintaining the illusion of rationality. Haidt (2012) calls this process “the
rationality delusion. I call it delusion because when a group of people make something sacred,
the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds.”

Similarly, in the case of collective memory, the content banned from the public sphere
does not vanish from collective awareness; rather it is simply not mentioned. A good example is
political correctness. As stated above, individual identity is an aggregate of many collective
identities and collective identity is an aggregate of many individual identities. The individual
knows that painful, shameful or dangerous events from the collective memory are shared,
therefore he cannot fully banish them from awareness. However, he does internalize the
interdiction of mentioning them in interactions. In addition we have to take into account the
effect of “ignorance as an active construct” (Proctor,2008), of ignorance “made, maintained and
manipulated…that certain people don’t want you to know certain things, or will actively work to
organize doubt or uncertainty or misinformation to help maintain (your) ignorance. They know
and may or may not want you to know they know.” The flow of information is illustrated below:
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Figure 13: Repressed content and collective memory

The public dialogue taking place in the public sphere is also a universe maintenance
mechanism, intimately connected to the value systems and shaped by them. The “permissible”
and “forbidden” topics are culturally shared and, in the case of the forbidden ones will lead to
self-censorship.

For example, under the communist regime, the topic of Romanian participation in the
Holocaust was simply absent from official version of historical events and was eliminated from
the collective memory. Two “thought stopping clichés” (Lifton, 1989), namely “No Jews were
deported to concentration camps from Romania” and “the proverbial tolerance of the Romanian
people” were very effective conversation stoppers, and in time were internalized and became
Orwellian “crimestop” devices. Yet, the facts were known. In the library of my Romanian future
father in law was Carp’s “Black Book” which detailed the crimes against the Jews, as well as a
novel set in the concentration camps of Transnistria, published in 1946 or 47, which described in
graphic detail the conditions prevailing there. The facts had once been in the public sphere, yet, I
felt unable to present an argument based on them, and nobody else was mentioning them. The
topic and the framework for such a discussion simply did not exist in the public sphere during
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the years of the communist dictatorship and consequently it could not be debated. It was very
effectively repressed and I learned to self-censor and not try to discuss it. This conspiracy of
silence lasted as long as the communist regime and continues with diminished efficiency today.
The same social factors that kept the facts out of the public sphere also made overt anti-Semitism
impossible. The price of being able to openly discuss today the Romanian role in the Holocaust
was the revival of overt anti-Semitism. However, a full recognition of that role was never
acknowledged and included in the collective memory, and it remains a source of conflict to this
day, because it is discrepant information that challenges truthiness and poetic truth and it is met
with reactions of anger and aggression. Examples in Romania include the reaction to the works
of historian Lucian Boia, the reaction to the book of Manu and Buzdughina (2010) which
disproved the claim that virulent anti-Semite and iron guard ideologue Paulescu was “robbed” of
the Nobel prize for medicine, the reaction to Radu Ioanid’s book and interviews about the
Romanian participation in the Holocaust, the reaction to the work of Adrian Cioflinca, which
uncovers new evidence of mass killings of Jews perpetrated by Romanian troops during WW II,
or the reaction to Iepan’s documentary regarding the atrocities committed by Romanian troops in
Odessa . Each of the above was labeled “anti-Romanian” because they challenged the
conventional wisdom and punctured sacred cows, contradicting the collective memory narrative.
Norman Manea’s (1994) essay “Felix Culpa” regarding Eliade’s lack of public repentance about
his support for the Iron Guard was met with sharp criticism from the intellectuals of “the new
Romanian right” and with anti-Semitic slurs and thinly veiled threats. A similar reaction
accompanied the publication of his critically acclaimed novel “The Return of the Hooligan,”
which described from a very intimate point of view his experiences during the Holocaust, during
communism and the reaction to bringing those memories back to life in the post-communist era.

There are, in fact many mechanisms that enforce conformity with the collective memory
of the group. The most general of those is what the citizens of Athens called “me mnesikakein,”
an oath not to remember past wrongdoing. For a modern version see Spain’s “pacto de
olividado” regarding the Civil War. Coman, Stone et al. (2014) have shown that trying to justify
atrocities committed in war alters the memories of those who committed them. "What we learn
from this research is that moral disengagement strategies are fundamentally altering our
memories…More specifically, these strategies affect the degree to which our memories are
 25

influenced by the conversations we have with one another." Coman, Momennejad et al (2016)
also found that those sharing memories of an event tend to synchronize them. Since collective
memory is by definition shared, this means that it tends to become more and more self-
consistent.

Todorov defined collective memory as “not a memory per se, but a discourse that takes
place in the public sphere, which reflects the self-image that a society or a group within the
society tries to project.” (Author’s translation) Collective memory is a consensual convention
which allows for the integration of recalled events in a manner consistent with the poetic truth
and the rejection of events not consistent with it. The same cognitive distortion mechanisms
which mold individual identity are used to modify the collective memory: truthiness, poetic
truth, doublethink, groupthink, self-deception. Taken together these strategies facilitate the
construction of a false but coherent version of past events, which is then used to interpret and
integrate present events. The individual then internalizes the parts of this narrative considered
salient, including them into the narrative of the self.

When two groups have divergent or conflicting collective memories, competing versions
of the truth are set against each other. For example, during the 1882-1883 blood libel trial of
Tisza Eszlar, Hungary, the accusers of the Jews fabricated a coherent narrative that integrated all
the facts and pointed to the guilt of the Jews, while the defenders offered a contrasting narrative
which also integrated all the facts and exonerated the Jews. The 1920 Trianon peace treaty is
seen as a historic injustice by the Hungarians, but is celebrated for the creation of “Greater
Romania” by Romanians. Having a public dialogue in the public sphere including opposing
points of view proves next to impossible, since diverging conflicting memories generate
diverging public spheres: there is no common “neutral ground.” Mungiu-Pippidi’s (1999) study
“Subjective Transylvania” has shown that the ethnic Romanians and Hungarians living side by
side have widely diverging collective memories. Conflicts regarding the status of World War II
monuments commemorating Russian troops in Estonia and Poland, for example the moving of
the “Bronze Soldier” statue in Tallinn and the destruction of the “Brotherhood-in Arms of the
Polish and Red Army Soldiers” monument in Nowa Sol have been described by Russian officials
as “unfriendly moves” and resulted in diplomatic protests and retaliations. In Croatia the
appointment of cabinet minister Hasabegovic a known denier of the atrocities committed by the
 26

“Ustasha” regime during WWII has provoked a protest by the Simon Wiesenthal Institute. The
fight around this issue has a ritualistic aspect: A significant figure of the Romanian Iron Guard
movement is being honored; the Wiesel Institute protests, an attempt at whitewashing the record
follows, and a protracted conflict ensues. This pattern is by no means limited to Romania. In
neighboring Hungary the controversy regarding the erecting of a bust of noted anti-Semite Balint
Homan in Székesfehérvár followed a similar trajectory and it took an intervention of the US to
stop it. “It’s why, when a statue of an anti-Semitic leader from World War II was planned in
Hungary, we led the charge to convince their government to reverse course…This was not a side
note to our relations with Hungary, this was central to maintaining a good relationship with the
United States, and we let them know. “(President Obama, in a speech at the Israeli embassy on
Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2016) This was followed by an almost identical
incident in Budapest regarding the unveiling of the bust of Gyorgy Donat , another anti-Semitic
politician.

In all of these cases the highly emotional reaction is explained by the fact that the
versions of the past, meaning the collective memories of the groups involved are polar opposites,
and each group is heavily invested in its own version. Under these conditions there is no place in
the public sphere where a discussion of the facts is possible and compromise cannot be reached.

Why right Populism?

The difference between right and respectively left populism can be represented in a tri-
dimensional space whose axes are Negative Liberty to Positive Liberty (Berlin), Economic well-
being (Haves versus Have Nots), and More Nationalist versus Less Nationalist:
 27

Figure 14: The difference between left populism and right populism

As illustrated there is no overlap between the respective Overton windows in this perspective and
it would take a significant effort of distortion to push the Overton windows to overlap.

Let us return to the three essential characteristics Mudde states are common to all
populist philosophies, namely anti-establishment animus, authoritarianism and nativism. To
these I propose to add a fourth one, namely nostalgia/ national renewal: the longing for idealized
older times and the fervor for the revival of the values and virtues which made the nation great
once and will do so again. This is essentially realized by manipulating the collective memory and
together with the anti-establishment animus provides the necessary emotional energy. The anti-
establishment, “people” versus the “elite” component was shaped by the perception that
“faceless European bureaucrats” are dictating people how to live their lives. It is hard to
underestimate the negative effect the perception that the rules regarding the export and sale of
agricultural produce are tilted to discriminate against poorer countries or of rumors that
“Brussels” wants to forbid traditional Romanian foods. ”The free movement of goods, services
and people” one of the cornerstones of the EU, was perceived as being rather unidirectional,
 28

facilitating a transfer of wealth from the poorer to the richer countries. After the Brexit vote, the
abusive treatment of citizens from EU countries residing in Great Britain was widely reported
and reinforced the perception that those coming from poorer countries are resented and seen as
inferior. The “elite” was seen as a force for trans-national integration, and a threat to national
identity. In addition, the de facto disappearance of the borders generated considerable anxiety,
specially so in countries like Romania and Hungary, locked in centuries old territorial disputes.
Paradoxically, while, as previously noted, national identity is almost infinitely divisible, the
concept of national territory attached to it in the collective memory is almost indivisible. This is
the source of many conflicts. Even before the fall of communism there were persistent rumors
that “the Powers” are plotting to dismember Romania; since December of 1989 there is a steady
stream of conspiracy theories on this topic.

The cultural identity of less modern societies was also threatened by “Western” issues
such as women’s rights, gay and LBGT rights, sexual freedom, substance abuse, which were
seen as contaminating traditional values. The Russian Duma recently legalized “moderate” wife
beating. The Polish parliament, under popular pressure, recently rejected a citizens’ bill calling
for a near total ban on abortion. In Romania, also recently, the archbishop of Constanta wrote a
letter stating that all public school teachers of religion are obliged to participate in anti-abortion
demonstrations and to disseminate material related to them in schools. Following the 2015
catastrophic Halloween fire in the “Collective Club” disco, the Romanian Orthodox Church
declared that “All the youth who were there have celebrated the Devil himself, they sang death
and found death”

In developed countries with a stronger democratic tradition, the assault on cultural values
was perceived from the opposite perspective: the influx of foreign, often Muslim immigrants and
refugees who “refused” to integrate was seen as endangering the cultural traditions and way of
life. Alien, identifiable by sight, the refugees were the ultimate “other,” seen as a significant
danger to national identity. This triggered a tremendous surge of nationalism (already on the rise
because of the perceived threat from multinationalism) even in nations which did not have any

significant refugee population, such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
However, as Michta (2017) writes “National communities cannot be built around the idea of
collective shame over their past, and yet this is what is increasingly displacing a once confident
 29

(perhaps overconfident, at times) Western civilization. The increasing political uncertainty in

Europe has been triggered less by the phenomenon of migration than it has by the inability of
European governments to set baselines of what they will and will not accept. Over the past two
decades Western elites have advocated (or conceded) a so-called “multicultural policy,” whereby
immigrants would no longer be asked to become citizens in the true sense of the Western liberal
tradition. People who do not speak the national language, do not know the nation’s history, and
do not identify with its culture and traditions cannot help but remain visitors. The failure to
acculturate immigrants into the liberal Western democracies is arguably at the core of the
growing balkanization, and attendant instability, of Western nation-states, in Europe as well as in
the United States.”

The magnitude of the refugee influx caught the European Union quite unprepared. It
could be argued that it was a “black swan” event i.e. predictable in hindsight (like rise of the
Internet or the dissolution of the Soviet Union) or a “dragon king” which cannot be predicted
(like the Fukushima disaster or an uncontrollable forest fire.) Be that as it may, the tensions it
created exploited the fissures already existing in the European Union. France and Belgium had
been hit by terrorist attacks; aside from facilitating the rise of the nationalist right in France, the
attacks provided justification for anti-refugee animus and measures. Hungary fenced off its
borders, Romania declared that it was unable to accept even 1700 refugees. Slovakia, Poland, the
Czech Republic joined them in defying the European Union. The dispute was framed in terms of
maintaining national independence and took the form of a nationalistic surge. It was
accompanied by a rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Roma sentiment, xenophobia and various forms
of intolerance. The argument for overtly exhibiting prejudices was that it represented”fighting
political correctness,” and it proved effective even in Western democracies such as France,
Austria and the Netherlands. In April 2017, the Jewish Community Center of the Swedish town
of Umea was forced to close as a result of threats from Neo Nazis.

The rise of nationalism all but insured that the prevailing type of populism will be of the
right leaning variety. There are, of course left leaning nationalist populist movements in Greece
(Syriza) and Spain (Podemos) for example, but the “controlling image” of leftist populism is
what Kundera calls “the leftist kitsch of the Great March: the rosy vision of people of all kinds
walking together hand in hand toward a better future,” which emphasizes internationalism rather
 30

than isolationism, McWorld rather than Jihad. On the other hand, nationalism is intrinsic to
rightist populism, the controlling image being “one great nation, taking charge of its destiny.” In
ex-communist countries this theme resonated with the collective memory content repressed
during the dictatorship period, and was not in tune with the prevailing zeitgeist in Europe after
the fall of the dictatorship. For example, Hungary is trying to close the Central European
University, a Soros funded institution, and Romania’s ex-Premier indicated that a desire to do the
same. As Cas Mudde commented on 3/3/2017 “This is in itself not that surprising, as CEU is
everything Orbán detests: it is critical, global, independent and multicultural. In addition,
Hungary is calling for a “ 2017 National Consultation” to “Stop Brussels.”

In the case of Romania the ultra-nationalist right has been replaced by a communist
dictatorship, which in the Ceausescu years veered more and more towards a cult of personality
and nationalism. Romanian national identity –and collective memory- is to great extent a modern
construct, undertaken after the emergence of modern Romania, the result of the efforts of the
intellectuals of the 1848 generation for whom defining the Romanian national character became
an important project. As Trencsenyi (2005) writes, one of the essential components of this
undertaking was ideological: the clarification of the connections between individual
psychological traits and ethnic and cultural characteristics, linking political programs and the
problem of national identity.

For those involved in the creation of the national identity, the significant delay compared
with the rest of Europe presented generated a feeling of inferiority which, in turn lead to efforts
to compensate. Almost from the beginning, the works of Densusianu and B.P. Hasdeu have
resulted in protochronism: the tendency to ascribe to Romania a mythical and grandiose past.
Thus the ancestors of Romanians, the “Dacians” are said to be the world’s oldest culture, to have
invented monotheistic religion, the first form of writing, the Latin language which the Romans
learned from them later etc. The term “Protochronism” has been coined by Edgar Papu in the
mid 60’s but it only defined a tendency that has been supported by some of the Romanian
historians of every generation and which has been amplified by the re-emergence of nationalism
under Ceausescu’s rule. After the fall of communism, protochronism underwent a revival and
enjoys a great popularity-and increasingly absurd claims- on the Internet today. (This is by no
means an exclusive Romanian trend. Albanians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Estonians, Georgians
 31

and Chechens have their own versions.) One of the corollaries of protochronism are the
conspiracy theories, due to the need to explain how and why the ancient grandeur was lost,
generally involving the intervention of shadowy forces, and why modern Romania is not getting
the recognition it deserves. I already mentioned the debunked theory that Paulescu was “robbed”
of the Nobel Prize. More recently, Funar, the ex-mayor of Cluj asserted that (national poet)
Eminescu was the true discoverer of the theory of relativity (also quantum physics, black holes
and the Big Bang) and that he has been murdered “by the Jews” so that Einstein –whom he
characterizes as retarded- could steal it. Never mind that Eminescu died in 1889 and Einstein
published the special theory of relativity in 1905; logic clearly does not apply. As a belief system
protochronism has developed the characteristics of a religion. The relationship between its
pathology and the pathology of reason is one of reciprocity: the former causes the later, but then
the pathology of protochronism becomes hidden from reason. In some ways it acquires the
characteristics of a defense mechanism: it functions reflexively, mostly outside awareness. As a
result, rationality is undermined, resulting in a “fragility of reason” (Morar ,2006). In turn,
paradoxically, this process increases the vulnerability for an excessive attachment to the “facts”
included in the collective memory. As Todorov (2004,2010) has written “The cult of memory is
a partial answer to the destruction of traditional identities and the inclusion into collective
memory.” Hoffer’s (2016,(1951)) describes a somewhat similar dynamic: “A mass movement
attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but
because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.” In both cases individual identity is
diluted by incorporation into collective identity. Elements of protochronism unavoidably found
their way into the collective memory and have become a major distorting factor by the use of
truthiness and poetic truth. As such they came in conflict with the objective reality of Romania’s
delay compared to the rest of Europe.

Modern Romania has undergone a very rapid transition from one form of totalitarianism
to another. As Boia (2011) notes, a (relatively) democratic period until 1937 was followed by
“the personal regime of King Carol II from February 1938 until September 1940.The nationalist
Legionnaire state from September 1940 until January 1941. The concentration of power in the
hands of the Leader general (and later marshal) Antonescu (who has been associated with the
legionnaires in the previous months) from January 1941 until August of 1944. A short
 32

democratic period (with many limitations) followed from August 1944 until February 1945, then
Petru Groza’s communist leaning governance from March 1945 to the end of December 1947.
December 30 1947, with the proclamation of the Romanian Popular Republic, marks the start of
the completely communist system. In only ten years, a succession of seven regimes covering the
entire political ideological spectrum from the extreme right to the extreme left, from democracy
to totalitarianism. “

These changes were accompanied by a dizzying array of political positions taken by

intellectual groups from the far right to the far left and everything in between, creating a
veritable smorgasbord, where individuals could pick and choose according to their convictions.
As the dictatorship changed from a right wing one to a left wing one, previously dominant
groups were driven into the underground and vice versa. As Bernays (1928, 2005) remarked, “As
civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been
increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which
opinion can be regimented”

The widespread use of conflicting deceptive and self-deceptive individual survival

strategies during the almost successive dictatorships created huge zones of ambivalence and
moral ambiguity which facilitated the public sharing of the essential lie (lebenslűge) on which
such societies are based. In turn, this process was reflected in the distortions the collective
memory, with protochronism being one of the few constants. Romania had a burgeoning right
wing nationalist movement” The Great Romania” but it petered out. One of the reasons, I
believe, is that the changes brought by the 1989 “revolution” were relatively superficial: the true
power structure, the “deep state” remained by and large the same. In addition, the corruption at
all levels of the government reached such proportions that it generated and continues to generate
a great deal of skepticism and cynicism about politics.

Is the shift to right populism reversible?

The vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump were the first large scale political
victories for populist nationalism and they appeared to portend a seemingly unstoppable
progression of the movement to the right. However, as problems emerged in both, the
 33

momentum seems to have slowed down. The vacuous callousness and mendacity of Brexit
leaders such as Neil Farage and Boris Johnson, the xenophobic incidents, the rise and acceptance
of intolerance, and the perception that the entire process has not been well thought out rankled
the rest of the EU. Brexit leaders did not estimate the effect of Scotland and Northern Ireland
opting for independence and staying in the EU, and resorted to saber rattling about the status of
Gibraltar. The British negotiating position seems to be that they want to retain all the benefits of
being a member of the EU without any of the obligations.

In the US it became clear that under Trump’s legislative agenda the key group that
brought him to power, namely working class whites, will be massively disenfranchised by a
projected transfer of wealth to the rich. Having famously promised to “drain the swamp’ he has
selected the richest cabinet in history. His reckless behavior, blatant disregard for the truth, lack
of knowledge of the issues, his small minded vindictiveness and his grandiosity have given pause
to those who observed this experiment in nationalist populism. As of this writing, Geert Wilder’s
Freedom Party has lost in the Netherlands’ election, and while Marine Le Pen’s National Front
may win the first round of the French presidential elections, she seems headed for defeat in the
second round run-off. This means that the momentum of right wing populism has been slowed
down. The recent massive anti-corruption demonstrations in Romania, the demonstrations in
favor of the Central European University in Hungary, the fact that popular opposition forced the
Polish Parliament not to adopt their draconic anti-abortion bill, even the recent protests in
Moscow indicate the presence of a democratic opposition.

The experience of losing freedoms to authoritarian regimes may outweigh the benefits of
nationalism. If the importance accorded to democratic values starts to increase again, as the
shortcomings of Nationalist populism become more apparent, a shift toward the center is
possible.
 34

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