A Total War on Memory. a Three-Dimensional Model of Right-Wing Mnemonic Strategies

With the recent rise to power of illiberal right-wing governments in Central and Eastern Europe, memory politics returned atop the partisan agenda. Nonetheless, mnemonic strategies employed by right-wing incumbents reach far beyond the conventional framework of memory policy-making. These actors are not using politics of the past as a substitute topic in present-day partisan debate. On the contrary, politics of the past is now implemented as politics of the present, not instead of it. This has been made possible through a considerable extension of the mnemonic conflict. The right-wing governments expanded the array of historical events put into question and introduced an unprecedented degree of historical revisionism to the public debate. Therefore, drawing from Kubik’s (2014) typologies of post-communist mnemonic actors and Olick’s (1996) approach to collective memory as shaped by both community members and the community itself, this paper proposes a new, three-dimensional model of studying right-wing collective memory strategies. The three dimensions correspond to extending the memory battlefield in three directions: vertically (a wider time-span), horizontally (new policy areas being reinterpreted from the angle of memory), and depth-wise (contesting particular individuals and events). By enlarging the mnemonic conflict, right-wing governments exacerbate political polarisation, thus damaging social cohesion and institutional trust. Evidence in support of this thesis, with illustrations of mnemonic actions in the three dimensions will be provided through the case study of memory politics employed by the current Law and Justice government in Poland (2015-2017).