The growing disaffection among young Europeans toward “Never Again” narratives stems less from forgetting the lessons of history and more from the European Union’s selective application of moral principles on the international stage. The hollowing out of democracy also plays a role.

Francis Ghilès is a  Non-resident Senior Fellow of CIDOB

Cross-posted from CIDOB

Photo: Screengrab

For younger voters in Germany both communism and fascism belong to a distant past that no longer defines their political choices. The same is true in Italy and France where memories of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini have not hindered the rise to power of Giorgia Meloni who regularly invokes memories of Il Duce. The French Rassemblement National (RN) was founded in 1972 by its current leader Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, who made no secret of his admiration for Marshal Philippe Pétain, who governed France under the Nazi yoke from 1940 to 1944. The RN is fixated on immigration – its opposition to “Arab” and “Black” immigrants (the feared “Other”) eventually replacing white Christians does recall Vichy France’s hatred of Jews and Freemasons. But other equally important factors for its commanding lead in the polls include the failure of successive governments to offer reasonably priced housing, well-paid jobs, and solutions to growing drug-induced violence. The narrative of a once great nation in decline has taken hold of public discourse rather than any desire to return to Vichy France. That said, the recent allegations of crude antisemitism against the RN leader Jordan Bardella are likely to impact the appeal of the party in the run up to next May’s presidential election.

There is no denying the damage the recent elections in Saxony-Anhalt have inflicted on the “firewall” designed to keep what many liberal commentators call the “far right” from power; that same firewall against the RN has been eroding for years in France. There are deeper reasons for the current malaise. There are two possibilities here: the big rich countries suffered a drop in the quality of leaders at around the same time, or voters became harder to please. Neither suggestion is absurd, but it should be clear which is the more plausible. There is a third possibility. Neoliberalism has hollowed out democracy to such an extent that the quality of leadership is poor (having migrated to the private sector) and voters are harder to please because elections no longer have any real impact on policy. 

You cannot define the future as “Never Again” for eternity. It expires as memories fade, but there are other more recent reasons for its demise. The first is that those who grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War were inoculated by lessons of caution and moderation that taught those who experience its perils. The second is more country or region-specific, although Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) shares the RN’s fixation on immigrants and speaks to a sense of malaise in a way that establishment parties simply cannot match. One in four of the inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt has left the region since the reunification of Germany in 1989; West German carpetbaggers moved in a generation ago and bagged the best jobs and investment opportunities; they openly despised the parents of those who now vote for the hard right; and last but not least, they demonised every policy the former East German state had enacted. 

More broadly, Germany, as it atoned for its Nazi past, made the genocide of the Jews the key focus of German history (dare one remember the Roma and the homosexuals as well?). The Nazi genocide was neither the first nor the last perpetrated by or with the complicity of Europeans in modern history: to name but the most obvious cases one can include the Armenians, the people of Namibia in the early 20^th century, the Tutsis in Rwanda more recently and the ongoing events in Palestine. Younger Germans do not necessarily agree that Germany’s long and glorious history – notably where the arts and science are concerned, should be focused solely on the horrors committed by the Nazis.

The younger generation has grown up watching European political leaders invoke “Never Again” at ceremonies while treating it as negotiable in practice. War criminals are pursued when they are enemies of Western powers, but defended, excused or shielded when they are allies. Genocide is recognised as genocide when committed by unfriendly states (the Uyghurs in China) but endlessly qualified, minimised or renamed when the victims do not “fit” and the perpetrator is strategically useful (Israel and the Palestinians). Young people compare solemn speeches with images from the ground arriving directly on their phones. They can see the difference between proclaimed universal principles and selective enforcement. The master of this craft in Europe is undoubtedly the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The manner in which she responds to Palestinian and Ukrainian suffering symbolises the hypocrisy of many among the EU elite.

Perhaps younger generations are not forgetting the lessons of history; perhaps they are noticing, in real time, how selectively those lessons are applied.The danger is not simply that historical memory is fading, it is that those in power have emptied “Never Again” of its moral authority by turning it into “Never Again, unless committed by our friends”. When principles are applied selectively, young people do not conclude that history is irrelevant. They conclude that people are hypocrites.

History has come full circle in France when Marine Le Pen invokes General Charles de Gaulle, whom the founders of the RN’s predecessor (created by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen) denounced General de Gaulle in 1940, even trying to assassinate him on more than one occasion between 1958 and 1962, when he was presiding over a country which found it very difficult to end the war in Algeria and grant that country independence. Charles de Gaulle has, with time, become an icon of France’s grandeur, short few years in the country’s long history when it successfully stood up to the United States, when its voice was listened to in Moscow and Beijing. The younger generation may be fascinated by the role of Charles de Gaulle – the huge success of the two-part biopic, La Bataille de Gaulle, directed by Antonin Baudry on the general playing in French cinemas today which has been seen by more than 5 million people in France by late August attests to that. If anything, that success suggests that people, including the younger ones, appreciate a politician who spoke the truth to his country, even when it was painful as in 1940, never insulted his opponents though he could be sardonic about them, and always set his decisions in a broad historical context. The comparison with today’s politicians is painful for the political class as a whole and suggests they are quite incapable of rising to the huge challenges France and Europe face today.

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