Timothy Garton Ash
The freedom of historical debate is under attack by the memory police
The Guardian. Thursday October 16 2008
The problem of governments, or individuals that think it is their business to:
"[...] to define historical truth and to restrict the liberty of the historian by penal sanctions [...]" (quoted from the link above), is closer than one often thinks.
People jeer at you, yell at you, even forbid you to speak out your mind, government can put you to jail. The easiest thing to do, instead, as the author of the article above rightly puts it, is to refute the false. I wonder why, on the contrary people want to outsource thought control?
Thursday, 16 October 2008
The memory police
Astonishing... or maybe not. Idiotic political nonsense or malice, I can't really say which. If governments really feel the need to get involved in the determination of historical truth (to the extent to which it is possible to determine such a thing), there is a simple way: collect ALL evidence, and make it fully available to everyone.
Pity that means showing YOUR skeletons to everybody as well... which I think means that's not going to happen. Anyone knows of any historian who's trying to do this?
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