(Chapter 13 of IN DEFENSE OF SPAIN: DISMANTING MYTHS AND BLACK LEGENDS – Stanley G. Payne, 2017)
POSTMODERNISM AND THE MAINSTREAM THOUGHT
The situation of the study and interpretation of history in the 21st century is anomalous and paradoxical. Numerous quality works are published and never before has there been so much valuable material to study this discipline and learn from it. On the other hand, in schools and universities, history is at a low ebb – it even threatens to disappear -, the resources devoted to it in secondary education are decreasing and it receives hardly any attention from those who decide the curricula, which discourages students who are considering enrolling in this career. Changes in culture and the economy point in the same direction. The massive use of the Internet encourages a willingness to live in the instant, collecting some data, but without going deeper. Young people seem to be dominated by “presentism” and there is hardly any real interest in the knowledge of the past, neither distant nor near.
Equally important are the consequences of certain cultural changes and of some significant political doctrines such as postmodernism and the new single-minded progressivism -also called “political correctness”-, which since the 1980s have had an increasingly prominent influence on Spanish politics. Postmodernism emphasizes relativization, subjectivism, language and deconstruction. It rejects any metaphysics, as well as the idea of “truth”, because it is based on the assumption that truth is relative and, therefore, each subject has “its” truth. History cannot offer objective data and facts that exist beyond the observer. Everything is an arbitrary and subjective construct, and any entity that does not recognize this premise must be “deconstructed.” Since objectivity is unattainable, there is not much difference between a novel and a well-researched history book. It is all subjective narrative, and the only difference worth noting is between those who recognize this approach and those who do not. Naturally, postmodernism is not a subjective “version” of things, but “the truth,” even if it does not exist. In other words, postmodernism is immune to itself, the exception, that is, a totally irrational and illogical proposition.
In its various branches, postmodernism is a concept – the custom is to speak of “theory” – while the postulates of mainstream thinking belong to the world of politics, even if they apply to all aspects of culture and society. A singularity of political correctness is that it is the first new radical left-wing ideology to originate in the United States. It is also the first major left-wing ideology to have neither an official name nor a canonical definition. Its defenders sometimes insist that it does not exist as such beyond the imagination of its opponents, while its critics use expressions such as The Silent Revolution or the invisible ideology1. It is not embodied in a single political party or in a specific cultural movement, but is multiform: there are many parties and social groups that embody it. In reality, it is a culture of elites and activists that is present in the main Western political organizations and in almost all institutions – the exceptions are very few – and, unlike previous radical movements, its aim is not to overthrow the political system, but to transform it from within democracy by means of manipulation.
Democracy, when put into practice, shows egalitarian and deconstructive tendencies, with a propensity to equalize both institutions and customs. This approach is not new, and that is why classical nineteenth-century liberalism was very careful to avoid the excesses of democracy and proposed restrictions, such as, for example, census suffrage, which limited the vote. In other eras it was possible to find oligarchic pseudo-liberal institutions that recognized some rights that were restricted to a small elite, but this is no longer the case with modern Western liberalism, which has given rise to the most dynamic political process in history, impossible to stop in the long term. Liberalism was the result of the conjunction of powerful currents in culture, in society and even in religion; hence, despite all its restrictions and the elitism of its classical form, it has not been able to avoid the evolution towards democracy and, with it, towards an egalitarianism that has become radical, homogenizing institutions and structures, and challenging and relativizing beliefs.
The natural tendency towards egalitarianism and the elimination of the most hierarchical structures, common in the West, presented serious problems when it came to putting it into practice, since egalitarianism is a concept and an objective that is not reflected in reality: human beings are not equal either physically, intellectually or morally. When the political structures of the 20th century, through governments, began to impose more egalitarian conditions, successes and failures followed one after the other with great ease. The communist experience showed this, and democratic countries also imposed certain coercive measures to achieve equality. The second half of the 20th century saw numerous changes in Western culture and society, but equality, an inherently impossible goal, was not achieved, leading to the imposition of new coercive measures in an endless vicious circle. In a contradictory relationship with the market economy and globalization, the ideology of egalitarianism produces more inequalities and, once again, the state adopts more coercive measures. This problem is clearly seen in the European Union, where it is producing much frustration and permanent contradiction2.
It is true that there has always been a tendency toward coercive political correctness in democratic society, as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out two centuries ago when speaking of the United States. The current movement emerged in the 1960s, and in the twenty years that followed it abandoned the original leftism – partly anarchist and partly collectivist – to focus first on culture and society, and then on so-called “radical individualism”, which manifests itself above all in lifestyle. Little by little it was introduced in the faculties of humanities and social sciences, becoming the dominant current in the last years of the last century. Its clearest expression in the United States and Spain occurred during the governments of Obama and Rodríguez Zapatero. The latter is the champion of political correctness and the doctrine of egalitarianism, but Obama surpassed him in his tendency to govern by decree, ignoring legislation.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE CREATION OF NEW CONCEPTS
The greatest impact of the culture of political correctness in the field of history has arisen with the doctrine of victimhood, a fundamental concept in this ideology. Victimization has characterized human history, which is above all a history of oppression and the absence of equality. Therefore, as in the Soviet Union, the function of history is to “unmask” and denounce this oppression, and to reclaim equality, criticizing the shortcomings of any historical situation. The interpretations of historicism, according to which any epoch is to be studied and interpreted according to its own mentalities, are rejected. On the contrary, the new doctrine imposes a “presentism” whose norms, however recent and uncertain they may be, must be considered valid universally and for any epoch. Its arrogance and moral superiority are total. In the faculties of history, the result has been the imposition of the holy trinity of “race-class-gender”, understood as the basic factors of oppression and the absence of equality3.
Being the product of the “culture of the adversary,” characteristic of the left in the West during the last fifty years, this doctrine especially rejects Western civilization, which has become the number one enemy. And thus, another aspect of this ideology is configured, “multiculturalism,” which is nothing more than a new oxymoron, since any society has its own culture, otherwise it would not survive as a society. The rejection of the values of traditional Western civilization causes a first contradiction, which is that it does not apply the same criteria to other cultures that, not being Western, are presumed to be allies. Multiculturalism becomes, thus, a key aspect in dismantling Western culture, because it does not seek to impose itself on other cultures.
This ideology of “goodism” and political correctness is the most characteristic and original of the contemporary era, since, compared to it, the old ideologies such as liberalism, anarchism, communism, or fascism, have precedents in history. No other civilization has projected such a powerful doctrine aimed at its simple and plain self-destruction. Probably, it is a product of both the secularization of society and cultural post-Marxism4.
As for the level of public interest in and awareness of history, it is doubtful that the situation in Spain is very different from that of other countries, although, in general terms, postmodernism and issues of race and gender are less influential. Spanish historiography is rather more traditional, at least for the epochs prior to contemporary history. Before the 1960s, the main interest in Spanish history, both at home and abroad, was medieval and modern history. A nineteenth-century Hispanist like William H. Prescott paid more attention to the great Spanish figures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than to the Spain of his own time. And that same focus was maintained for two generations. In contrast, after the Civil War and the dictatorship, interest in contemporary history increased considerably. This should not surprise us because, apart from the specific circumstances of Spain, this is the predominant trend in world historiography. The public of the 21st century is, as we say, “presentist”, and it seems that, both in bookstores and on the Internet, the best-selling history books are those dealing with the Contemporary Age.
Each country has its singularities and since the 19th century, the effort to describe and define those of Spain has become practically an industry. In this sense, as we have seen, the amount of contradictions, errors, and non sequitur conclusions are very numerous. The observation by Julian Pitt-Rivers seems valid in this regard, the best English archaeologist who has investigated the Spanish:
Being Spanish is the extreme degree of the human condition. The Spaniards themselves are not so different from the rest of humanity, but they are more… whatever that may be. That is, if they are joyful, they are more joyful, and the Andalusian revelry is the most sublime of all; if they are sad, they are more tragic and more dignified in their tragedy. If they are sympathetic, they are more sympathetic and their sympathy penetrates like a laser, but if they are unsympathetic, they are more pompous and insensitive than one can imagine. If they love, they love more, if they hate, the same, and they know how to hide their hatred better than anyone else5.
21st century Spain has changed enormously and is not the same country it was fifty years ago. The Spaniards have transformed many of their habits and customs—as in any modern and advanced country—although in what has been called “the Spanish tendency to extremism,” fewer changes are observed.
This explains its marked participation in the contemporary culture of deconstruction and denial of the past and of history. Spain is the only Western country, and probably the only country in the world, in which a considerable part of its writers, politicians and activists deny the very existence of the country, declaring that “the Spanish nation” simply “does not exist”. Even greater is the denial of other aspects of history, and the use of certain elements, whether false or true, is more exaggerated than elsewhere, while the distortions, especially of its contemporary history, are more profound. In Europe, the only country where something similar is happening is Putin’s Russia, but currently the “Russia debate” has been resolved in favor of an extreme nationalism. Fortunately, Spain, despite its political turmoil, remains a democracy with full freedom of expression.
THE CONTROVERSY OF HISTORICAL MEMORY
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During the Transition, contemporary history was treated with at least some equanimity. Few were in favor of the continuation of the dictatorship, and the conclusions of almost all the studies on Francoism were negative, with the exception of the “historicist” current, which, as we have said, insisted that any phenomenon should be analyzed from the perspective of its own time and of the alternatives that actually existed, not those that would have been desirable. Likewise, it accepted the myth that the revolutionary Republic of 1936-1939 was democratic to a certain extent and pointed out its many errors. But, at the same time, it was thought that the approaches of that time had generated too many conflicts and no one was eager for them to be repeated. In 1990 a historian as solvent as Javier Tusell stated that one could read a paper on the most recent history without knowing whether the historian tended to the left or to the right.
But, as we have seen, in the 1990s, there was a very specific shift in Spanish political reality, and the victimizing approach of the left occupied a dominant position in the postulates of political correctness.
This new orientation began to take shape while, in parallel, the “historical memory” movement was being created, made up of various groups, each with defined and different interests, some with strictly political motivations and others mainly emotional. The latter, among which is the Association for Historical Memory led by Emilio Silva, have as their main objective to satisfy the demands of a sector of the population that wishes to locate their ancestors, victims of the repressions that took place during the Civil War and the post-war period. The most extremist version demands the official recognition that the left-wing reprisals gave their lives “for democracy”, as well as the condemnation of Franco and his regime.
Frequently, the radical left parties and the peripheral nationalists wielded these concepts as a tactical parliamentary weapon against their main moderate opponent, branding as “extreme right” and even as “fascist” the Popular Party, whose dialectical clumsiness was revealed every time it tried to respond. The most radical left thus formed a new myth about the Transition, according to which the establishment of the democratic system was neither new nor original, but rather drew from the sources of the Second Republic. Certainly, as has already been pointed out, the protagonists of this historical moment—the Transition—agreed to leave history in the hands of historians, analysts, and the media, while building a new democratic regime open to all and not a sectarian and exclusive system like the Second Republic. At the time, this approach was accepted by almost all left-wing groups—except for a few Maoists, who represented less than 1% of the population—and the majority of peripheral nationalists. Contrary to what the most radical groups are saying now, a lot of attention was paid to history, but in order to avoid repeating mistakes and to discover how things should not be done6.
Along with the oxymoron “historical memory,” the term “historical justice” is used. The only justice is that which is legislated in a regular and representative manner, and equal for all, while retroactive and anachronistic “justice” is nothing more than an artificial form of injustice. “Historical justice” is relatively simple to handle conceptually, but very complicated when it is attempted to be put into practice7. It is like “social justice,” because laws created on purpose for certain political issues are rarely objective. In this sense, Spain during the Transition set a precedent, and the main exceptions are some Latin American countries, where, after initiating democratization processes, prominent figures from previous military dictatorships have been prosecuted and sentenced.
An outstanding critical position has been that of the philosopher Gustavo Bueno, for whom the concept of “historical memory” is nothing more than “an invention of the left” and a maneuver of political manipulation8. For him, memory is a subjective construction and historical memory is a social, cultural, or political elaboration.
At the origins of the creation of the concept of “historical memory,” a decisive factor was the turning point in the political situation that took place at the end of the 20th century, when the Popular Party won the elections of 1996 and 2000. By then, many important figures of the Transition had left the political scene. They were the ones who really had some personal memory of the Civil War and its aftermath. Perhaps they had not participated in it, but they were aware of its consequences. The victory of the right created the ideal situation for a sector of the left, even the most moderate, to adopt historical memory as an argument against its great political rival.
In the 2004 winter election campaign, Rodríguez Zapatero did not use it as a weapon, but he gave it priority when he was sworn in as president of the government. The following summer, he announced that new legislation on the subject would be prepared, while social unrest increased day by day. The first law was approved on July 7, 2006, and was very simple in its content: “The year 2006 is declared as the Year of Historical Memory in Spain,” in honor of “the victims” who defended “democratic values,” as well as those who contributed to the creation of the 1978 Constitution. The law provided funds and means for commemorations. Around the same time, the Ministry of Education spoke about the need to study “the reformist policies carried out during the course of the Second Republic” in the subject of Social Sciences, Geography and History of the fourth year of Secondary Education, and the preparation of a more extensive law on memory was announced.
The idea that there existed a “law of history” did not excite professional historians, whose reaction was certainly negative. The major collective event that took place in 2006 was the International Congress on the Spanish Civil War, which was convened in Madrid at the end of November. The main organizer, Santos Juliá, gave the event a professional character, and throughout its sessions, very different points of view were brought to light. Regarding the pending legislation, the most insightful observation came from Enrique Ucelay-Da Cal: “We are officially in the year of historical memory. Freud said that individual memory is not reliable and, even less so, the sum of individual memories: the collective one. The only collective memory is the ritual mediated by ideology. Power ritualizes to be power. Ritual memory is forgetfulness. Spain lacks a civic culture and if there is no culture, memory is what must be imposed on the contrary.” It is the servile “swallow it” attitude. Memory has tricks. Contemporary Spanish history is a struggle for legitimacy in which its contenders throw their dead at each other’s heads. We must avoid the intoxication of the ideology that is in personal memory. Only liquid memory exists. We can dive into it, but not walk on it9.
During those months, historians like Juliá, Carmen Iglesias, and Juan Pablo Fusi were unanimous in their rejection of the “pact of silence” cliché of the Transition, and expressed their skepticism about legislating on history. Juliá said: “Imposing a collective or historical memory is typical of totalitarian regimes or totalitarian utopias. Civil wars can only end in a general amnesty”10.
Even Paul Preston, a historian not suspected by the left, had already expressed his ambivalence when he criticized “the removal of Francoist symbols. The Valley of the Fallen should not disappear […]. In Spain, there are people who confuse forgetfulness with reconciliation and memory with vengeance […]. If it were up to me, I would never have made that law, but I am a foreigner without a voice or vote. Personally, I find it very uncomfortable that laws are starting to be made about these things”11.
The historian José Varela Ortega was even harsher in his comment on the agitation caused by historical memory and the strategy of the Zapatero Government, pointing out that this initiative “responds exclusively to a current political project, consisting of breaking the current constitutional pact with the main rival of the ruling party, which has 40% of the votes, and replacing it with another created with nationalist groups that garner 8% of electoral support and are not interested in establishing anything, but rather aspire to ‘decontract’ [sic] everything. The aim is to expel the center-right not only from power – which is what we all ask of the center-left when we vote for it in majority – but from the system, something very serious and not foreseen in the original constitutional script. In this script of rupture and marginalization, it is understood that the Transition is the historical enemy to beat.” Varela Ortega considered that Zapatero’s policy undermined the transformation of the Socialist Party itself made by González during the Transition, which was based on “acceptance of the adversary […]. There was no concealment or amnesia, but rather the decision, in my opinion very sensible, not to use history for political purposes.” Furthermore, he added, there is already “a huge historiographical material on our Civil War. Another problem is that some have not read it until now […]. So the first historical victim of this insane initiative is Felipe González and the generation he represents»12.
The final text of the incorrectly named “Historical Memory Law” 13 of October 2007 was more moderate than the drafts announced between 2004 and 2006. The expression “historical memory” practically disappeared and was replaced by “democratic memory,” which was what the law aimed to promote —the words “historical memory” only appear when the development of a new Documentary Center of Historical Memory and General Archive of the Civil War is announced14—. Speaking properly, the emphasis should be on the Transition, as the law recognizes that “it is not the task of the legislator to implant a certain collective memory,” although it then contradicts itself by entrusting the Government with the implementation of “public policies aimed at the knowledge of our history and the promotion of democratic memory,” so that “within one year from the entry into force of this law, the Government will establish the institutional framework that promotes public policies related to the conservation and promotion of democratic memory.” The main objective of the law, therefore, is to pave the way for the adoption of parliamentary measures for the compensation and rehabilitation of various types of victims.
In political terms, the Popular Party left all discourse on history to the left, despite the fact that the party’s history is closely associated with democracy. As we have already pointed out, the PP’s dialectical poverty is evident; Rajoy and his colleagues seem to be only interested in the present and the management of the economy. In reality, they have adopted the guidelines of political correctness in almost all cultural and social issues, highlighting the hegemony of this new political religion.
In the 21st century, this ideology has become dominant among most elites, institutions, and media in Western countries, with a few exceptions, and has deeply distorted the interpretation, presentation, and teaching of their history. In some autonomous communities, some of the most serious distortions of the history taught in schools can be found. Among the euphemisms used, for example, it is not said that the Arabs staged a violent invasion, but that they “entered the Peninsula,” as if they were tourists. The Reconquista must be ignored or rejected, because in al-Andalus there was “a multicultural paradise,” and the 16th-century conquerors are “expeditionaries” in search of an “encounter.”
Something that has changed in the 21st century, if we compare it with the beginning of the last century, is that now Spanish historians dominate the historiography about Spain. A hundred years ago, Julián Juderías lamented that a large part of the most important books on Spanish history had been written by foreigners15, but the great flourishing of Spanish historiography during the last third of the 20th century completely changed this panorama. Current Spanish historiography is very extensive, like the country’s history itself; there are numerous valuable studies and books, and others distorted to the extreme. Perhaps the best thing is that the single thought has not been completely imposed and, in general, there is more freedom of expression than in many other European countries. Excellent books continue to be published, and those who wish to know the true history of the country will always be able to do so.
A historiographical line characteristic of the early years of this century is one that asserts that, despite everything, the history of Spain has not been so “different,” but has always been part of the common history of the West. Despite the generalization, the statement is accurate. Spain’s history is not that of an Eastern country, although for centuries most of the territory was dominated by Islam, but an enormously complex history—more so than that of any other European country—in the most frontier corner of the West.
As we have seen, it is a story that has often been distorted—undoubtedly the most distorted in the West—that has experienced numerous extreme situations—again more than other Western countries—so simplistic narratives are inadequate. The two most important controversies of the present moment—those related to the nation and those centered on the Second Republic, the Civil War, and Francoism—perhaps do not have an immediate solution. Many disagreements are more political than historiographical and will persist for quite some time.
NOTES
1 J. Trillo-Figueroa, The Invisible Ideology: The Thought of the New Radical Left, Madrid, 2005; B. Rubin, The Silent Revolution. How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance, New York, 2014
2 In philosophical terms, this argument has been well developed by the Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: The Totalitarian Temptation in Free Societies, New York, 2016
3 See G. Gatti (ed.), “A World of Victims,” Barcelona, 2017
4 Two key books are P. E. Gottfried, “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy,” Columbia, Mo., 2002, and “The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium,” Columbia, Mo., 2005
5 J. Pitt-Rivers, “Stereotypes and the Reality about the Spaniards,” in M. Cátedra (coord.), “The Spaniards as Seen by Anthropologists,” Madrid, 1941, p. 43, cited by E. Lamo de Espinosa in A. Morales Moya (coord.), “Nationalisms and Image of Spain,” Madrid, 2001, p. 166
6 See the two best studies on the role of history in the process: P. Aguilar, “Policies of Memory and Memories of Politics. The Spanish case in comparative perspective,” Madrid, 2008, and G. Ranzato, “The Bronze Past. The Legacy of the Civil War in Democratic Spain,” Barcelona, 2007, as well as the articles by S. Juliá, “To Forget. Memory and Amnesty in the Transition,” “Claves de Razón Práctica,” 159, pp. 4-13, and J. Tusell, “Clío,” November 2002, p. 18
7 The issue has been studied in M. Khazanov and S. Payne, “How to Deal with the Past,” in Khazcnov and Payne (eds.), Perpetrators, Accomplices and Victims in Twentieth Century Politics: Reckoning with the Past, London and New York, 2009, pp. 248-268.
8 G. Bueno, The Myth of the Left, Barcelona, 2002, p. 283.
9 Quoted by A. Astorga in ABC, November 30, 2006, in R. de Mendizábal Allende, Historical Memory, Forgetfulness and Amnesia, separate from the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation, 2010.
10 ABC, July 25, 2006, in ibid.
11 ABC, August 3, 2006.
12 Cited by R. de Mendizábal Allende, Historical Memory, loc. cit., page 375
13 Its exact title is “Law recognizing and expanding the rights and establishing measures in favor of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the dictatorship”
14 The previous citations have been taken from P. Aguilar, Memory Policies, loc. cit., pages 86-89, which provides an excellent analysis
15 J. Juderías, The Black Legend. Studies on the concept of Spain abroad, Salamanca, 2003, pages 319-341