Can commemorative practices such as memorials, museums, and national remembrance days effectively transform attitudes and behaviours to deter violence? Despite the proliferation of memorialisation practices globally, their tangible impact on reducing violence or fostering reconciliation and healing is often assumed rather than rigorously demonstrated.
Digital memory scholars highlight a shift to “connective memory”, which connects individuals to a multitudes of users as opposed to the memory of a collective. Additionally, the importance of forgetting has become an essential demand of participants in digital communication, which leads to the importance of understanding “disjunctive memory” as well. Undermining the hopes for progressing empathy and understanding in the digital age, its disruptive effects materialize in Russian digital media discourse in the 2020s.
In an era where Large Language Models increasingly shape how societies remember and interpret history, it is crucial to recognize their potential impact on the diversity and plurality of collective memory. By implementing regulatory frameworks, fostering digital literacy, and prioritizing ethical AI development, we can ensure that these technologies enhance rather than homogenize our shared narratives, preserving the richness of human history for future generations.
The “politics of forgetting” – as I call the political strategy of omitting or marginalising key historical events in official memory – influences both domestic and foreign policy. Its effects on foreign policy are multifarious. Not remembering a historical event, or selectively forgetting parts of it, enables a certain foreign policy posture. A further issue arises when an event that is “forgotten” or marginalised in national narratives plays a major role in the political constructions of another country.
The German debate on whether and to what extent Germany should support Ukraine in its war against Russia with arms supplies is closely linked to Germany’s collective memory. For a long time, Germany's guilt for the crimes of occupation during the Second World War was largely associated with Russia – and not with Ukraine and Belarus. It is only since the Russian invasion in 2022 that the highest levels of the German government have begun to recognize the special responsibility Germany has towards Ukraine, a responsibility that also stems from the memory of the Second World War. Along with this change, it can be observed that the imperative of ‘never again’, closely tied to the German memory of the Second World War and especially of the Holocaust, is gradually being formulated in more abstract terms in historical-political debates, despite some resistance.
Will the Russian war against Ukraine prove to be a watershed moment for the implementation of international criminal law on the aggressor? This contribution focuses on the Baltic states’ accountability-seeking for Russia as the politics of deterrence by legal means and a struggle for historical justice.
In the years following the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests in Belarus in 2020 and 2021, a wave of politically engaged Belarusian artists — visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets and novelists — have been driven into exile. Scattered abroad, these artists not only use their work to reflect on the repression at home, but also seek new ways to keep the spirit of resistance alive.
In this contribution, I am analysing the reasons for the appropriation of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. I argue that these reasons are four-fold: First, the memory of 1956 has been divided from the start. Second, half of the population, namely women, were excluded from this memory. Third, the revolution was a bottom-up event. Fourth, the transition after 1990 was built on the concept of authenticity and truth made the narrative vulnerable to illiberal appropriation.
The introduction of a legal component into the already complex and emotionally charged mosaic of memory in Poland, instead of calming and ordering the disputes, seems only to reinforce antagonistic attitudes, whether on the Polish, Jewish or Ukrainian side. In such a situation, the law can become a weapon both for and against historians and politicians alike, but it can also harm the witnesses of history, the still living victims of past crimes, or their relatives.
While France embraced the formal regulation of historical memory regarding its colonial past nearly two decades ago with the adoption of a law by its parliament, the Netherlands has opted for more symbolic recognition on behalf of the head of state. The essay argues that, despite neither approach being capable of fully satisfying all sides in the debate on how to frame colonialism in the present, the Dutch model is notably less problematic concerning its impact on freedom of expression, adherence to the rule of law, and the fit towards a unique set-up of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters