8.1. Mobilizing the Past, Defending the Present: Neofascism, Imperial Memory, and Democratic Institutions

The rise of the radical populist right in Latin America is characterized by a systematic attack on the institutions of democratic memory (transitional justice, truth commissions, academia). This paper argues that this offensive does not constitute a rejection of expertise per se, but rather a strategic "double game" to replace the critical and independent "expertocracy of memory" with a "counter-expertocracy" loyal to the illiberal project. Although articulated through a populist rhetoric that appeals to "the people," this strategy is fundamentally elitist and anti-democratic, as it seeks to concentrate the power to define historical memory along authoritarian lines. Proposing a theoretical framework that articulates illiberal memory politics with expertocracy as an ideology, this paper analyzes the process in two phases. The first is epistemic delegitimization: experts are framed as a privileged, self-interested elite ("caviar left") who benefit from a "memory industry," thereby discrediting their findings without refuting them. The second phase is the construction of an alternative knowledge apparatus, promoting "organic intellectuals" and using state power to impose an "official truth" or the logic of "complete memory." This dynamic is manifested in the capture of institutions, such as the National Center for Historical Memory in Colombia, and in the rewriting of the memory of the armed conflict by legislative means, as in Peru. The result demonstrates that populist anti-expert rhetoric is a tool for a deeper hegemonic dispute: the substitution of an epistemic regime based on evidence and human rights with one whose function is to legitimize an authoritarian order. The contest is not between experts and the people, but between competing projects of expertise. The cases of Peru and Colombia will serve as central illustrations.

This paper traces the historical and legal trajectory that has brought the United States to its current phase of executive-driven memory governance. Over the past century, the authority to shape national memory has shifted from civic organizations that once dominated commemorative culture to state and federal institutions, and ultimately to the executive branch, where presidential orders now regulate historical interpretation and public commemoration. At the center of this evolution lies the ideology of the Lost Cause, a racial narrative that rewrote the meaning of the Civil War to justify white supremacy and deny Black humanity. The enduring refrain “The South will rise again” captures this mythology’s long afterlife as a promise that white dominance would not only survive defeat but return as patriotic faith. For more than a century, this ideology has been embedded in textbooks, monuments, and national parks, transforming white supremacy into civic virtue and collective identity. In recent decades, movements for racial justice, academic initiatives in critical race and gender studies, and inclusive museum and memorial practices have challenged this mythology, fostering a more plural and honest reckoning with the past. The current wave of federal directives and state legislation represents an explicit backlash to those gains, transforming memory governance into a tool of statecraft that reasserts white nationalist narratives under the protection of “heritage” and the First Amendment. Official rhetoric now condemns progressive perspectives as “anti-American” and “toxic propaganda,” recasting education as a battleground for patriotic conformity. For the field of Memory Studies, For the field of Memory Studies, this paper challenges assumptions of U.S. exceptionalism and situates the nation within global debates on law, governance, and the politics of historical memory. This paper forms part of my dissertation, Condemnation for Preservation: The Taking of Fazendeville, Louisiana.

On 26 September 1980, the deadliest right-wing terrorist attack in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany occurred with a bomb explosion at the main entrance of Munich’s Oktoberfest. Twelve people were killed and over 220 injured. The attack aimed to influence the federal election in favor of the conservative CSU candidate Franz Josef Strauß. Although attributed to the right-wing extremist group "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann," investigations were depoliticized as early as 1982, framed as a “personal catastrophe.” It took nearly four decades for the attack to be officially recognized as right-wing terrorism, a change driven by persistent struggles from left-wing activists, trade unions, survivors, and relatives. This paper examines how the depoliticization of right-wing terrorism by state institutions can be understood as anti-democratic political practices in democratic nation-states. We interrogate whether the lack of willingness of democratic institutions and governments to critically engage with these issues serves as a measure of their capacity for democracy. While contemporary responses to right-wing terrorism in Germany have evolved—allowing for increased public criticism and recognition of survivors’ and victims’ voices—processes of institutionalization, such as the establishment of memorials and support centers, raise questions about whether these forms of institutionalisation may suppress or co-opt critical memory activism. To address these questions, we analyze archival sources (including media reports, flyers, legal documents) and narrative interviews with acteurs from activist gropus, administration, politics, arts, as well as survivors and relatives.

Attacks by far-right groups on public universities have intensified in both Spain and Brazil recently. These movements portray universities as spaces dominated by communists and their subversive and criminal ideologies that must be eradicated. Their modus operandi, marked by harassment, public disqualification, dehumanisation, vandalism, and other forms of violence, reveals striking similarities across national contexts. In the digital sphere, the production and dissemination of manipulated content on social media have become central to amplifying such narratives and mobilising hostility. These dynamics unfold at a time when both countries are confronting their authoritarian pasts through renewed efforts at restorative justice. Both countries are undertaking the exhumation of mass graves, issuing death certificates and officially recognising the victims of the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975) in Spain and the civil-military regime (1964–1985) in Brazil. Within the far-right’s cultural war, these initiatives are framed as extensions of a supposed leftist hegemony embodied by universities. Consequently, history itself becomes a contested field, where revisionism and the distortion of past authoritarian experiences gain ground. Drawing on press coverage and social media data, collected manually through keyword searches and snowball sampling, this article examines how disinformation, hate speech, and digital manipulation have fueled ideological violence both online and offline. Historically regarded as strategic spaces for social progress, democratic consolidation, and intellectual freedom, universities are now being reframed as internal enemies. This study argues that the far-right’s attacks on higher education institutions represent not only an assault on academic autonomy but also a broader effort to erode social consensus and suppress democratic dialogue through the normalization of symbolic and discursive violence.

In this presentation, I will explore the phenomenon of ethnicization of imperial pasts in collective memory, particularly in the ethno-national historical imagination, in which ethno-national groups are cast as the true subjects of history, stretching from the primordial past into the present day. While the process of ethnicization has received considerable scholarly attention, the bulk of which has focused on the construction of ethno-national identities (as alluded to in the title, an homage to Eugen Weber’s 1976 seminal work “Peasants into Frenchmen”), this presentation, in contrast, focuses on the ethnicization of imperial pasts, particularly from a position of alterity. More precisely, this presentation will focus on the processes and implications of the ethnicization of imperial pasts in the former Yugoslavia and its successor states, where the complexities of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires (among others) have been effectively obscured by simplified, ethnicized narratives of “Germanic” and “Turkish” conquest. As this presentation demonstrates, these narratives not only contribute to discourses of victimization, which both foster resentment and create a permission structure for further acts of retributive violence, but also create a discourse in which their own pasts have been “othered,” thereby transferring responsibility (or guilt) for past actions onto neighbors in the present day. The presentation concludes with reflections on the risks such narratives pose, particularly to ethnic and religious minorities, who are assigned blame for the actions of regimes distant in time and/or space, a poignant example of which can be seen in the recent rise of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic discourse.