I Take My History Straight:
The Pitfalls of Weaponizing the Past
Weaponized history distorts truth—turning grievance or nostalgia into a political tool that obscures reality and impedes progress.
The tendency to weaponize the past to attain one’s aims is neither a novel nor a parochial vice. Yet claiming victimhood and/or glorifying the past to empower one’s political objectives is tragically more prevalent than ever.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has made avenging a “century of humiliation” both a sword and a shield to destroy its opponents and perpetuate its totalitarian rule. The CCP does not deign to mention its less-than-stellar role in avoiding combat with the invading Japanese army, while letting the Kuomintang exhaust itself defending China. Nor does the regime allow its more recent sins, such as Mao’s Great Famine or the Tiananmen Square massacre, to be discussed. No, the CCP claims it is best to look ahead at how it is building a glorious future—at least for the CCP.
Equally, Mr. Putin and his siloviki cronies have harkened back to the “Great Patriotic War” in their propaganda to justify invading Ukraine, arguing they are engaged in de-Nazification and pushing back against the West, in particular the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Of course, the Kremlin is engaged in the very territorial conquest Nazi Germany attempted and has even incorporated a “Sudetenland Germans” riff regarding ethnic Russians living in Ukraine as yet another bogus justification for their waging aggressive war for territorial expansion. Within Russia, the regime harkens back to the “glories” of imperial Russia and, yes, the Soviet Union.
Regrettably, as noted, such weaponization of the past is not limited to America’s enemies. It is a common practice here at home, engaged in by both the Left and the Right sides of the political spectrum.
In weaponizing the past, the American Left hopes to paint our republic’s past sins with a broad brush to turn the freest and most prosperous nation in human history into an irredeemably racist, colonial, and inequitable nation. Doing so, the Left wants the public to cease clinging to the myth of American exceptionalism and embrace the Left’s purported path for progress—socialism with an intersectional priority empowering and institutionalizing preferences for some citizens at the expense of others.
On its part, the Right weaponizes the past by glossing over and glorifying it, attempting to minimize and erase its sins. It is no mystery why the inherently conservative Right would want to preserve the past; however, a true conservative movement seeks to conserve and build upon what is beneficial from the past while, as ably as fallible humans can, ending harmful practices. To pretend the past is beyond reproach is to abnegate the responsibility to learn from and improve upon it.
In sum, then, both sides of the American political spectrum have crafted strawman arguments: America is evil versus America is perfect. Both false arguments hinder our country’s ability to create a more perfect union and to counter our nation’s enemies. (Importantly, our Founders understood imperfectible human beings could not create utopia on earth; hence, the phrase “moreperfect,” because America, indeed, no nation, can ever be perfect.)
There are patent pitfalls in either demonizing or aggrandizing the past. Most immediately, both distort the baseline necessary for measuring real societal progress. Understanding where our nation began, how it has evolved, and how it has continually recalibrated the inherent tension between liberty and equality is essential to guiding each generation of Americans in its civic duty to forge a more perfect republic. Again, it is a duty that will never be completed. But as the rabbinical teaching reminds us, “The day is short; the task is great. You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it.” If Americans come to believe the republic must be scrapped or is optimal as is, they will feel no impetus to work for its betterment.
In performing our task, it is equally critical not to diminish the courage and determination of our predecessors who did help to forge a more perfect union—such as abolitionists, civil rights workers, and suffragettes. Dismissing their heroic work in achieving significant societal advances not only demeans their achievements; it also serves to sap the resolve of today’s Americans to emulate their inspiring examples and deeds and perform our own duty to forge a more perfect union.
By continuing this consensual recalibration of liberty and equality—undertaken by sovereign citizens exercising our God-given rights within our constitutionally prescribed order of liberty—we constitute an existential threat to our nation’s enemies, for we continue to inspire the world with what free people can achieve.
That is why I take my history straight and urge all other Americans to do the same. The People’s Republic of China and Putin’s Russia are autocracies that manipulate and weaponize the past to justify their unconscionable aims and obscure their abuses, actions, and existence. The truth about these regimes’ past and present will erode the lies propping up their rule and help to liberate their people, even as it continues to protect and inspire our own.