On History and Its Uses

Here's an article on how history is used for partisan purposes. Not a new idea but well argued.

The crimes of history are optional. We mix, match and discard according to taste and convenience. It's useful for Applebaum's Tory backers to remember Stalin's crimes because they can still use them to bash anyone who might want to beef up the National Health system with higher taxes. "Today an extra 1% VAT on my Jag convertible, tomorrow Kolyma!" is a very familiar war cry from these crusaders for human rights. Other massacres are dim stats, to be dredged up when necessary. Take, for example, all the tens of millions of dead in the Japanese occupation of China. They are rarely invoked in the West, because we don't need them. The Japanese are thoroughly spent, neither a threat nor a bad example of anything we worry about at the moment. The Chinese are more of a worry, making the invocation of their dead a dangerous concession. And in the Tory mind, those dead are connected with ignominy: the surrender of Singapore without a fight, the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales...and so it goes, with a huge number of tangential mental associations determining which of the billions of corpses clogging the earth will be dug up and flung at one's opponents at any particular moment.

Thanks to Jeff for the
article.