The Crime of Historyrnby Tomislav SunicrnHe who writes a nation’s histon’ also controls its future—sornw rote George Orwell. During the Soviet reign over EasternrnEurope, every citizen knew who was in charge of wrihngrnhiston.’, especially that dealing with the victims of World WarrnII. Anyone professing to be a Slovak, a Croat, a Ukrainian, or arnRussian nationalist was immediately branded a “fascist spy,” arn”CIA agent,” or an “enemy of the working people”; simplyrntelling an anticommunist joke could earn one a heft}’ prisonrnterm. Communist journalists and court historians and hagiographersrndenounced free speech and dcmonized every sign ofrnEastern European nationalism. On behalf of the worldwidernproletarian revolution, ever)’ attempt to retrieve a sense of lostrnnationhood was violently repressed. Instead of providing truernbod counts of the victims of the fascist terror of World War II,rnruling party hacks and their servile scribes resorted to a surrealrngeometrv’ in which fascist crimes were disproportionately elevatedrnwhile all communist war and postwar crimes “were shovedrnunder the red carpet of historical obliviorr. During the ColdrnWar, many young Lithuanians, Serbs, Estonians, and Byelorussians,rnafter listening to communist propaganda for decades, seriouslyrnthought that their cultural memor)’ was genetically predeterminedrn”never to forget” the crimes of fascism.rnFifh’-three ‘ears after the end of World War II, Hider is alivernand well, and he appears to have a splendid semantic career: ifrnnot as an archeh’pe of goodness for a few, then certainly as anrnhistorical scapegoat for the many. Modern liberal videocratsrnand the architects of public truth resort to Hitler and his brownshirtrnconipany even- time they need to denounce a nonliberalrngovernment that dares to clamp down on illegal immigrants orrninternational drug cartels, or tries to establish more law and or-rnTomislav Sunic is the cultural counselor at the CroatianrnEmhassv in Brussels.rnder. Wliene’er some freewheeling public figure, especially onrnthe right side of the political spectrum, demands more disciplinernfrom the academy and the media, he ends up in therngarbage can of fascism. In the liberal galler’ of bad guys,rnFrench nationalist Jean Marie Le Pen is often equated withrnHitier; the Austrian liberal-nationalist Jorg Haider shares therneternal company of Herr Coebbels; some Central and EasternrnEuropean leaders are frequentiy portrayed as authoritarianrnstrongmen. Even conservatives in America are dubbed racistsrneven-‘ time the” timidly oice disapproval about the fiction of affirmativernaction, or when thev publicly oppose the flood of illegalrnimmigrants across the Rio Grande.rnDo the liberal political elite and the modern niedia, by constantlyrninvoking the specter of fascism willy-nillv, trivialize pastrnfascist horrors? Paradoxically, by resuscitating fascist crimes,rnthey seem to banalize fascism, if not make it more attractive.rnFor example, despite the torrent of antifascist invective and innuendo,rnmovements and parties of the extreme right in Europern—both East and West—are everyavhere on the rise. Revisionistrnbooks about the Allies and their role in and after WorldrnWar II are in great demand. Of course, in Europe’s politicallyrncorrect environment, they often sell in the form of cloak-anddaggerrnsamizdat publications from obscure if not lunatic editors.rnIn their paranoid fear of the possible re’i’al of fascism, thernmodern liberal media ironically end up destro’ing their ownrnimpartialit)’ and their own historical credibilit}’. ‘Thus they pavernthe way for the renaissance of real fascism.rnAntifascist slanders and historical equations —Stalin versusrnHitier-should not come as a surprise. After all, modern liberalrndemocracies draw their juridical status and internationalrncrcdibilitv from their military victory over fascism. WithoutrnMARCH 1993/19rnrnrn