How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

If one is not concerned by politicians who deliver an intentional appeal to erase painful historical memory, it is worth acquainting oneself with the psychological literature on collective memory. In their 2013 paper “Motivated to ‘Forget’: The Effects of In-Group Wrongdoing on Memory and Collective Guilt,” Katie Rotella and Jennifer Richeson presented American participants with stories “about the oppressive, violent treatment of American Indians,” framed in one of two ways: “Specifically, the perpetrators of the violence were described either as early Americans (in-group condition) or as Europeans who settled in what became America (out-group condition).”12 The study showed that people are more likely to suffer from a sort of amnesia of wrongdoing when the perpetrators are characterized explicitly as their countrymen. When American subjects were presented with the agents of the violence as Americans (rather than Europeans), they had significantly worse memory for negative historical events, and “what participants did recall was phrased more dismissively when the perpetrators were in-group members.” Rotella and Richeson’s work builds on a body of previous work with similar results.13