Collective memory

In this interview, Geneviève Zubrzycki explains how invented traditions constitute a pillar of modern nations and therefore how collective memories can help us understand modern nationalism. Memory is utterly political, she told POP, since it gives an explanation to collective questions about identity, who we are are where do we go.

From there, we discuss the universalization of the Holocaust and the German process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the Polish case and the efforts of Law and Justice to remythologize collective memories through a paradigm of victimhood. We then analyze the concept of “Christian heritage” and its implications, and discuss how the election of Donald Trump and the Black Lives Matter movement reopened in the US a discussion about the legacy of slavery and reparations, the meaning of the Confederacy and its symbols in the South.

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Spain and Portugal share many things: the same peninsula, long parts of their history, and —until recently— the lack of success of far right parties. This, however, is no longer true. We try to understand the rise of the far right in Spain by asking Mariana Mendes questions about Vox and Chega, the memory of Franco and Salazar, opportunity structures and stigma.

Why populist radical right parties were not successful in Spain until very recently, and what has changed in the meantime? Will Portugal follow a similar trajectory or will it remain one of the rare “exceptional countries” in Europe where the far right is not successful?

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