Totalitarians constantly rewrite history not only to make the past conform to Party ideology, but as a means of demoralization and control. There is nothing more dispiriting than being forced to relinquish your history and recite a false new one. Kill a tree by cutting its roots.
Controlling history lets totalitarians construct a narrative of "false consciousness" around their adversaries. Those who remember true history, and cherish traditions disliked by the Party, are treated like they're insane. Accurate memory becomes a form of mental illness.
When history is written in sand, shifting and changing as Party leadership demands, the people become anxious and fearful. Remembering the "wrong" thing can get you in trouble. You have to pay close attention to Party decrees to know today's "correct" history.
Rewriting history is a great way to separate children from their parents, which is always a high priority for totalitarians. Children are taught the latest version of Party history and told their parents are ignorant. History becomes a special bond between children and the Party.
Keeping history in flux prevents cultural traditions from taking root and threatening the authority of the State. Attacking history is a nuclear first strike against conservatism, because it erases everything worth conserving - nothing that predates the Party has any authority.
An old bit of folk wisdom says: How can you know who you are, and where you're going, unless you know where you come from? Totalitarians understand that idea, maybe even better than most conservatives - so they attack the past to make people feel rootless and easy to shape.
The past cannot be allowed to have any authority that supersedes or challenges the Party and its "progressive" ideology. Totalitarians ALWAYS claim to be "progressives" who are moving "forward" and fighting "regression." That's an explicit rejection of history and its authority.
Totalitarians worship power. What better way to demonstrate power than by conquering memory itself, rewriting the past to suit Party ideology? The Chinese Communist Party is doing it right now, with great ceremony. Challenging its new revised history will be a punishable offense.
Revising history is also a cheap way to valorize Party ideology and make its members feel heroic. The implication is that if the Party had been around 200, 300, 400 years ago, it would have prevented all the injustices it dwells upon. It would have kicked the past's ass sideways.
If only the Party and its beautiful ideology had been in power a thousand years ago, we'd be a thousand years closer to paradise! Notice how often the past is portrayed with contempt in pop culture - its dumb, bigoted, sexist authorities humbled by fictional progressive heroes.
Every totalitarian movement pushes the idea that history truly began when the Party came to power. All that went before was prologue - clay to be shaped by modern political officers to teach whatever ideological lessons they desire. The birth of the Party was the dawn of justice.
Totalitarians mock the "dead hand of the past," but there's actually something quite liberating and individualistic about knowing your history, respecting your traditions, honoring your ancestors. If there were giants before, there can be giants again.
If history is a rock, then great things can be built upon it. That's why totalitarians insist on grinding that rock down into sand. They believe ideology can triumph over everything: physics, economics, biology, human nature - and history. /end
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