Milan Kundera Warned Us About Historical Amnesia. Now It’s Happening Again

"After the fall of the USSR, there was a vast outpouring of truth-telling about the fallen communist regimes in Russia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, Romania and Poland. The stagnant debt and corruption, the human rights abuses in political-prisons and orphanages, the hidden mass graves, the illegal human experiments, the secret surveillance systems, the assassinations, the mass starvations, and the overwhelming evidence of the failure in each country of “the planned economy.” The structures, too, of government-misinformation, the eradication of free speech and the re-writing of history—erasing your opponents by murdering them and then wiping all traces of their existence from the history books. In the 90s the hidden data from Stalin’s famine-genocide in the Ukraine (1923–33) was exposed. Later, the scale of Chairman Mao’s genocides staggered the world. Even the methods that communist regimes used to produce historical amnesia were exposed.

"For a brief period, the consensus was that the communist experiment had failed. Never again, said the postmodernists and historians. Never again, said the economists and political parties. Never again said the people of former communist countries. Never again.

"Fast forward 20 years and never again has been forgotten. The Wall Street Journal in 2016 asked: “Is Communism Cool? Ask a Millennial.” Last year MIT Press published Communism for Kids and Teen Vogue ran an excited apologia for Communism. Tablet announced, with some concern, a “Cool Kid Communist Comeback.” On Twitter, there is new trend of people giving themselves communist-themed names: “Gothicommunist,” “Trans-Communist,” “Commie-Bitch,” “Eco-Communist.” The hammer and sickle flag has been re-appearing on campuses, at protests and on social media.

"How could we have forgotten?"

[quillette.com]