"The President of Forgetting"

As we risk obliviously repeating catastrophic mistakes others have already made, Spencer Critchley has some thoughts about memory and freedom, from people who know the precious value of both.

Excerpt: "Most of us in the U.S. have been spared the necessity of knowing history, and instead have been able to live as if the world was created at our birth. But people in Central and Eastern Europe have already been trammeled by the history that has just now caught up with us. They’ve been trying to warn us for decades."

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Dastardly Cleverness in theService of Good, I'm Spencer Critchley.
A short episodethis time, with some thoughts
about memory and freedom,as we risk obliviously
repeating catastrophic mistakesothers have already made.
This episode is also availableas a video on YouTube.
Just search therefor Dastardly Cleverness.

(00:20):
You can find links and a transcriptat dastardlycleverness.com.
I hope you like it.
Most of us in the US have been sparedthe necessity of knowing history,
and instead we've been able to liveas if the world was created at our birth.
But people in Central and Eastern Europe
have already been trammeled by the historythat has just now caught up with us.

(00:43):
They've been trying to warn us about itfor decades.
Back in 1979,
Czech writer Milan Kundera warnedwhat it’ s like to live under what
he called a “President of Forgetting,”
the Soviet-controlled Gustáv Husák.
Husák knew that in order for Czechsto believe in totalitarianism

(01:05):
as their future,they had to forget their history.
This is from
Kundera’ s The Book of Laughterand Forgetting:
“If Franz Kafka is the prophet of a worldwithout memory,
Gustáv Husák is its builder…
You begin to liquidate a people…by taking away its memory.
You destroy its books,its culture, its history.

(01:29):
And then others write other books for it,give another culture to it,
invent another history for it.
Then the people slowly beginsto forget what it is and what it was.
The world at large forgetsit still faster…”
Our President of Forgetting is every bitas hostile to history as Husák was.

(01:51):
He invents an alternative“great America” — one that no one
who believes in the foundingvision of America can ever call great.
And in one of history’s notorious rhymes,
our President of Forgettingis also obedient to a Russian dictator.
The distinction between them,without much of a difference,
is that Husák answeredto a communist Russian dictator,

(02:13):
while Donald Trump is ever so eagerto please a fascist Russian dictator.
And yet
Trump commands theloyalty of tens of millions of Americans,
who are descended from a generationwilling to die free
rather than live under fascism.
The Polish writer Csezlaw Miloszwatched friends
— highly educated,apparently free-thinking friends —

(02:37):
embrace authoritarian rule,under both Nazi
and communist occupation.
In The Captive Mind, Milosz describeshow it happened,
one convenient step after another:
“One compromise leads to a second,and a third,
until at last, though everything one says
may be perfectly logical, it no longerhas anything in common with the flesh

(03:02):
and blood of living people.”Because forgetting is easy
and remembering can be very hard,people will cooperate in their oppression,
and even assist in the oppressionof their neighbors.
Václav Havel watched it happen,
as an author, poet,playwright, and resister,
before he became the first presidentof a free Czechoslovakia.

(03:26):
In his essay “The Power of the Powerless,”he describes
how a “ posttotalitarian” system succeedsby simply training people
to accept pervasive dishonesty —how many of us do that every day?
Havel writes:
“Individuals neednot believe all these mystifications,
but they must behave as though they did,or they must at least tolerate them

(03:49):
in silence, or get alongwell with those who work with them.
For this reason,however, they must live within a lie.
They need not accept the lie.
It is enough for them to have acceptedtheir life with it and in it.
For by this very fact, individuals
confirm the system, fulfill the system,

(04:09):
make the system, are the system.”
To keep freedom alive,
Havel tells us,we must continue to live truthfully.
Even when that isn’ t allowed,we can find small parts of our lives
where it’ s possible,and try to make them bigger.
We can — and must — remember
what freedom is like,and remind each other, day by day.

(04:33):
As Kundera wrote, also in The Bookof Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle
of man against power is the struggleof memory against oblivions.”