Survey evidence suggests there is growing nostalgia toward former authoritarian regimes in a number of European countries. Diego Rubio writes that a degree of historical amnesia is now apparent in European societies, with those individuals who are too young to remember the authoritarian regimes of the past showing more openness toward the creation of authoritarian-like regimes today. He argues that strengthening historical education would help to protect European democracy against these trends.
1969: US President Richard Nixon with Romania’s Nicolae Ceaucescu, who was ousted during the 1989 revolution. Today, 66 per cent of Romanians claim they would vote for the latter in Presidential elections. Photo credits: US federal government.
Let’s face it: the rise of figures such as Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Norbert Hofer, and Gábor Vona could well be just the tip of the iceberg. Citizens’ support for strong, authoritarian-like leadership is growing in Europe, and historical amnesia is playing an important part in it.
A recent study by the University of Leipzig found that one in every ten Germans (10.6 per cent) want their country to be led by a ‘Führer to rule with an iron fist for common prosperity.’ Likewise, 61 per cent of Austrians favour supporting a ‘strong leader who does not have to worry about a parliament or elections’ and 40 per cent of the French state that their country should be put in the hands of ‘an authoritarian government’ free from democratic constraints. A similar dictatorial nostalgia is flourishing in former communist countries. The majority of Russians (52 per cent) say Stalin played a positive role in their country; 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best with Tito; and 66 per cent of Romanians claim that they would vote for Ceausescu in presidential elections, a number that represents a 25 per cent increase from 2011.
These data could be considered anecdotal if they did not reflect a wider trend of growing disdain for democracy and increasing desire to return to more dictatorial models of government. Over the past two decades, the share of the vote for populist authoritarian parliamentary parties in Europe has increased by 50 per cent, while the number of people considering it ‘essential’ to live in a democracy has sharply declined, today forming 32 per cent among those born after 1980 according to the World Values Survey.
Analysts have pointed out several factors to explain this trend, such as the public’s loss of trust in political institutions after the policies of austerity, and the cultural backlash against changes in social values. But the demographics and chronology of the phenomenon (it started twenty years ago, long before the financial crisis of 2008), suggest that there is at least one more structural driver involved: historical amnesia.
The majority of Russians (52 per cent) say Stalin played a positive role in their country. Photo: Bundesarchiv (CC BY 3.0).
The vast majority of the people living in Europe today were not born when the 20th century dictatorships reached their peak or were too young then to understand their numerous problems and contradictions. This recurrent amnesia is, of course, a common problem among human societies. To combat it, the ancient Greeks developed a brilliant device 2,500 years ago: history. But many leaders and voters in the 21st century think that in our technologically advanced and rapidly changing world, studying the past is not important. Once the core of humanist education, today history represents less than 4 per cent of total compulsory instruction in primary and lower secondary education and is not compulsory for students beyond the age of 16 in almost any country of the European Union.
The effects of this disregard for the past are already visible. According to a study by the Berlin Free University, half of German teenagers ‘don’t know Hitler was a dictator’, and a third believe he protected human rights. A quarter of British schoolchildren could not say what Auschwitz was. And 55 per cent of trainee teachers studying in Madrid can’t explain the significance of the bombing of Guernica.
This goes beyond trivial embarrassment. If people do not know these basic facts, it is fair to think that they know even less about the many drawbacks of these dictatorships, such as the brutal repressions, the constant violations of dignity and civil rights, the marginalisation of minorities, and the high levels of corruption and nepotism. Most of today’s young people and adults do not really know what it means to live under a dictatorship. For them, the old authoritarian regimes are just alternatives to the current situation, symbols of a different past – for some, a better one. This historical confusion is undermining support for democracy and increasing the longing for ‘strong leaders’ like Trump, Putin, Le Pen, Hofer, and Vona, who want to limit the rule of law and undermine the separation of powers in their countries.
What can democrats do to stop this worrying trend? The solution, as so often, depends on our schools. Research shows that, while there is not always a correlation between a country’s level of education and its support for democracy, there is a clear relation between education and its rejection of authoritarian regimes and values. For instance, polls in Latin America reveal that citizens with no formal schooling are about 20 percentage points more likely to vote for a left-wing authoritarian candidate than those who have gone to college and beyond.
This is mainly due to the contributions of the humanities and social science subjects, which help us to contextualise the virtues and flaws of our present institutions, thereby promoting a more balanced and favourable attitude towards democracy. For that sole reason, we should support these disciplines and make sure that new generations study them as much as coding, engineering and business. Otherwise they may end up repeating the mistake that their grandparents committed a few decades ago: that of preferring security and stability over justice and freedom.
Please read our comments policy before commenting.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
_________________________________
Diego Rubio – University of Oxford
Diego Rubio is an Applied Historian and a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His research falls within the fields of history of political thought and the governance of change. His aim is to improve policy and decision-making through a better use of historical data and knowledge.
Apparently, part of the intentional historical amnesia is being unable to distinguish between patriots who want to act in the best interest of their own country and focus on issues within their own borders (ex., Trump, Le Pen, Farage), and that of imperialists who want to act and forcibly spread their influence beyond their own borders (ex., Hitler, Stalin, European colonialists into Africa and the Western Hemisphere, ancient Rome, Ottoman Empire, EU, thugs in the name of religion, etc…). The mechanism of spreading their influence is done thru either violence or thru bureaucracy.
So please note, patriotism (or even nationalism) is different from imperialism/expansionism; please do not mix the two concepts as they are not the same. Hence, the problem is not strong leaders in and of itself, rather, the problem is strong leaders who want to expand beyond their borders. Trump, Le Pen, and Farage have not expressed an interest in acting beyond their borders; alternatively, leaders such as Merkel, Obama, and the other Eurorats have expressed their intention to act beyond their national borders.
Surprisingly you forgot to list Putin among the “patriots” not interested in acting beyond own borders, hahaha.
But that one would be too obvious I guess…
Intentionally not included in the list.
Also, this article states that a big percentage of children are unaware of the history of (for example) WWII and Hitler, but this may be due to a big spike of immigration from people outside of Europe whose predecessors never had direct contact with the Germans or Soviets, thus their knowledge on (for example) Auschwitz would in fact be limited to them. That is not due to ignorance or amnesia, but rather it is based on those events being less relevant to them and their own family history. Ask someone from China, and they will mention the Nanking massacre, not Auschwitz.
The author appears to read too much out of the statistics he refers to. For example (1) Stalin did indeed play a very positive role: by resisting Hitler’s invasion, driving the German army back, and in the Nazis’ final defeat. He also played a massive negative role too, but a 52% rating in his favour is not unreasonable surely. (2) Nearly all of us would be happy under a benevolent dictator, who looked after our interests more competently than most fractious democracies, leaving us to get on with our lives. Did the Austrian poll rating of 66% really say any more than that? (3) British schoolchildren spend some 12 years in school. If the quarter who know nothing of Auschwitz were all in their first 3 years, that would be not only unsurprising but quite proper – it is a topic best left until they are teenagers.
Studying history seriously inculcates an invaluable attitude of critical analysis, and I also deplore the lack of that in much modern education. But a sound appreciation of what statistics can and can’t tell us is important too.
While I agree with the author’s general stance and worldview, there are some serious problems with this kind of presentation of data
The author should be more careful, especially if he wishes to “improve policy and decision-making through a better use of historical data and knowledge”
For instance, to illustrate a larger trend the author offers a result on 10% of Germans, followed by “Likewise, 61 per cent of Austrians ” – how is that likewise? The following data points at least show a majority.
I am also missing links to most of the studies. For instance, While I do not wish to argue against the central thesis , the statistic that “half of German teenagers ‘don’t know Hitler was a dictator’” seems extremely unlikely to me (a German), unless they do not understand the meaning of the word “dictator”. Which would be deplorable as well, of course.
Another point of flawed reasoning: there might indeed be a clear relation between education and support for democratic systems. The author, however, jumps confidently to the claim that “This is mainly due to the contributions of the humanities and social science subjects”.
The correlation, however, does not yet prove this point at all.
One must be careful, today especially more than ever, not to overburden these studies, which come with limitations all their own, with too much explanatory power.
Again, I get the same feeling – but the data should not be mix-and-matched this way.
I’d like for the author to explain further what he means when we writes that “citizens’ support for strong, authoritarian-like leadership is growing in Europe,” because there is evidence to show that this is not actually true. It may be true in a broad sense, looking at data across decades, but it is likely not true that “the rise of figures such as Donald Trump […] could well be just the tip of the iceberg.”
In basically every election since Trump’s, the far right has declined in public opinion polls, and then underperformed its already low polls in the subsequent election (http://53eig.ht/2reZyk4). One can look at the most high-profile examples: Wilders lost in the Netherlands. Le Pen came in second in the early round of balloting and lost by over 30 percentage points in the second round of balloting in France. And in Austria, the far-right presidential candidate lost twice: once narrowly in an election held before the one in the US, and again by over 7 percentage points in a re-vote held after the one in the US. So while it may be true that Europeans may not be as averse to authoritarian figures as they have historically been, that hasn’t manifested itself at the polls since Donald Trump’s election. His electoral victory may not have been the tip of the iceberg, but rather the high water mark.