Missbrauch der Geschichte, Wie Politik in Südosteuropa Vergangenheit revidiert und für Nationalismus und Populismus instrumentalisiert
Misuse of History. How Politics in Southeastern Europe Revises the Past and Instrumentalizes it for Nationalism and Populism

Summary/Abstract: In the successor states of Yugoslavia, political elites continue to use the revision of history to justify their own system of rule more than 20 years after the wars. They revise history,claiming a historical victim status for their people and a perpetrator role for all other nations.The goal is to homogenize their own people and exclude any dissenting opinion.Possible aggression is thus whitewashed as self-defense.This instrument of securing power falls on fertile ground even among young people who have not themselves experienced the wars of the 1990s. History and politics lessons in schools as well as the media reinforce these narratives and lead to the stigmatization of allegedly hostile neighbors. Social media in particular support the spread of the most unhistorical and even freely invented interpretations of the past.

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