THE FREEDOM OF HISTORICAL DEBATE IS UNDER ATTACK BY THE MEMORY POLICE
Timothy Garton Ash, contact@lph-asso.fr

The Guardian
Thursday October 16 2008

Well-intentioned laws that prescribe how we remember terrible events
are foolish, unworkable and counter-productive

Among the ways in which freedom is being chipped away in Europe,
one of the less obvious is the legislation of memory. More and more
countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or
that historical event in a certain way, sometimes on pain of criminal
prosecution if you give the wrong answer. What the wrong answer is
depends on where you are. In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for
saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in
the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey,
you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth
in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia.

This week a group of historians and writers, of whom I am one,
has pushed back against this dangerous nonsense. In what is being
called the "Appel de Blois", published in Le Monde last weekend,
we maintain that in a free country "it is not the business of any
political authority to define historical truth and to restrict the
liberty of the historian by penal sanctions". And we argue against the
accumulation of so-called "memory laws". First signatories include
historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, Jacques Le Goff and Heinrich Aug u
st Winkler. It’s no accident that this appeal originated in France,
which has the most intense and tortuous recent experience with
memory laws and prosecutions. It began uncontroversially in 1990,
when denial of the Nazi Holocaust of the European Jews, along with
other crimes against humanity defined by the 1945 Nuremberg tribunal,
was made punishable by law in France – as it is in several other
European countries. In 1995, the historian Bernard Lewis was convicted
by a French court for arguing that, on the available evidence, what
happened to the Armenians might not correctly be described as genocide
according to the definition in international law.

A further law, passed in 2001, says the French Republic recognises
slavery as a crime against humanity, and this must be given
its "consequential place" in teaching and research. A group
representing some overseas French citizens subsequently brought
a case against the author of a study of the African slave trade,
Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, on the charge of "denial of a crime
against humanity". Meanwhile, yet another law was passed, from a very
different point of view, prescribing that school curricula should
recognise the "positive role" played by the French presence overseas,
"especially in North Africa".

Fortunately, at this point a wave of indignation gave birth to a
movement called Liberty for History (lph-asso.fr), led by the French
historian Pierre Nora, which i s also behind=3D2 0the Appel de Blois. The
case against Pétré-Grenouilleau was dropped, and the "positive role"
clause nullified. But it remains incredible that such a proposal ever
made it to the statute book in one of the world’s great democracies
and homelands of historical scholarship.

This kind of nonsense is all the more dangerous when it comes wearing
the mask of virtue. A perfect example is the recent attempt to enforce
limits to the interpretation of history across the whole EU in the name
of "combating racism and xenophobia". A proposed "framework decision"
of the justice and home affairs council of the EU, initiated by the
German justice minister Brigitte Zypries, suggests that in all EU
member states "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising
crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" should be
"punishable by criminal penalties of a maximum of at least between
one and three years imprisonment".

Who will decide what historical events count as genocide, crimes
against humanity or war crimes, and what constitutes "grossly
trivialising" them?

International humanitarian law indicates some criteria, but exactly
what events qualify is a matter of often heated dispute. The only
cast-iron way to ensure EU-wide uniformity of treatment would be for
the EU to agree a list – call it the Zypries List – of qualifying
horrors. You can imagine the horse-trading behind closed doors in
Brussels . (Polish official to French=3D2 0counterpart: "OK, we’ll give
you the Armenian genocide if you give us the Ukrainian famine.") Pure
Gogol.

Since some countries with a strong free-speech tradition, including
Britain, objected to Zypries’ original draft, the proposed agreement
now also says: "Member states may choose to punish only conduct
which is either carried out in a manner likely to disturb public
order or which is threatening, abusive or insulting." So in practice,
individual countries will continue to do things their own way.

Despite its manifold flaws, this framework decision was approved by the
European Parliament in November 2007, but it has not been brought back
to the justice and home affairs council for final approval. I emailed
the relevant representative of the current French presidency of the
EU to ask why, and just received this cryptic but encouraging reply:
"The FD ‘Racism and xenophobia’ is not ready for adoption, as it is
suspended to some outstanding parliamentary reservations." Merci,
madame liberté: that will do till the end of this year. Then let the
Czech presidency of the EU, which covers the first half of next year,
strike it down for good – with a dose of the Good Soldier Svejk’s
common sense about history.

Let me be clear. I believe it is very important that nations, states,
peoples and other groups (not to mention individuals) should face
up, solemnly and publicly, to the bad things d one by them or in
their name. The W est German leader Willy Brandt falling silently to
his knees in Warsaw before a monument to the victims and heroes of
the Warsaw Ghetto is, for me, one of the noblest images of postwar
European history. For people to face up to these things, they have to
know about them in the first place. So these subjects must be taught in
schools as well as publicly commemorated. But before they are taught,
they must be researched. The evidence must be uncovered, checked and
sifted, and various possible interpretations tested against it.

It’s this process of historical research and debate that requires
complete freedom – subject only to tightly drawn laws of libel and
slander, designed to protect living persons but not governments, states
or national pride (as in the notorious article 301 of the Turkish
penal code). The historian’s equivalent of a natural scientist’s
experiment is to test the evidence against all possible hypotheses,
however extreme, and then submit what seems to him or her the most
convincing interpretation for criticism by professional colleagues
and for public debate. This is how we get as near as one ever can to
truth about the past.

How, for example, do you refute the absurd conspiracy theory, which
apparently still has some currency in parts of the Arab world, that
"the Jews" were behind the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks
on New York? By forbidding anyone from saying that, on pain of
imprisonment? No. You refute it by=3D2 0refuting it. By mustering all
the available evidence, in free and open debate. This is not just
the best way to get at the facts; ultimately, it’s the best way to
combat racism and xenophobia too. So join us, please, to see off the
nanny state and its memory police.