A PAST THAT IS NOT EVEN PAST
A PAST THAT IS NOT EVEN PAST

Summary/Abstract: This article by Andreas Huyssen examines the new challenges facing memory politics and human rights in the context of rising authoritarianism, global protest movements, neoliberal crises, and resurgent racism. Writing amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Huyssen argues that the erosion of democratic norms in the United States and Europe exposes deep structural failures—economic inequality, institutional racism, political corruption, and the dismantling of welfare infrastructures. He highlights how right-wing populist movements, such as the U.S. altright and Germany’s AfD, rely on revisionist memory practices that simultaneously rehabilitate perpetrators and appropriate the language of victimhood. Huyssen calls for a stronger integration of memory studies and human rights discourse, noting that each field suffers from blind spots: memory politics remains overly national, while human rights discourse often ignores historical depth and economic justice. By linking the legacies of fascism, slavery, and colonialism to present-day inequalities and migration crises, the essay suggests that contemporary politics demands a paradigm shift toward distributive justice at national, global, and planetary levels.

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