The Weaponization of History
What happens when history is turned into an instrument not of understanding, but of coercion, sanctification, and political legitimacy? Across continents and ideologies, regimes and ruling parties have wielded history not just to remember, but to silence, not to teach, but to control.
Across the world, history is increasingly being mobilized not as a means of understanding the past, but as a tool to shape the present and control the future. Collective memory, often rooted in real trauma and national struggle, is selectively invoked to stifle dissent, elevate certain narratives to unquestionable truths, and reinforce the legitimacy of those in power.
This trend raises difficult questions about how societies remember, who gets to decide which histories are told, and what is lost when remembrance becomes a means of political control rather than collective reckoning
History, at its best, is a collective reckoning with the past. At its worst, it becomes a liturgical performance, recited to affirm a state’s narrative, denounce dissenters, and stifle alternative versions of truth. When the past becomes a bludgeon instead of a mirror, the politics of memory slides into authoritarianism cloaked in reverence.
This is not new. From the Roman practice of damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory) to Stalin’s purging of photographs, history has always been vulnerable to revision. What is more contemporary, however, is the bureaucratization and internationalization of historical weaponization, the use of trauma to define national identity, to demand perpetual moral high ground, and to delegitimize critics.
Few historical tragedies carry the moral weight of the Holocaust. Six million Jews murdered in an industrialized genocide, this is not simply a chapter in Jewish history, but in human history. Yet the state of Israel, particularly under successive right-wing governments, has often deployed the Holocaust not just as a site of memory but as an unquestionable foundation for political immunity and the justification of their actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
To critique this weaponization is not to deny the Holocaust, but quite the contrary. It is to insist that historical memory should serve ethical vigilance, not political impunity. The Israeli state has used the Holocaust to sanctify its founding, justify security measures, and frame criticism of its actions as antisemitic or as moral betrayal.
The late Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned of this decades ago. He criticized what he saw as the “Holocaust cult,” not remembrance per se, but the transformation of Holocaust memory into a tool of nationalistic self-righteousness. The suffering of European Jewry became, in some narratives, a blank cheque for the state’s military actions in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
Consider the way critics, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are sometimes treated. The late British MP Gerald Kaufman, himself a Jewish son of Holocaust survivors, called Israeli policy in Gaza "brutal" and was immediately denounced. Organizations like B’Tselem, or Breaking the Silence, both Israeli and both critical of Israeli policy, are often accused of betraying the Jewish people. Dissent is not argued with, but instead it is excommunicated. To weaponize the Holocaust is to drain it of its ethical power. It becomes not a warning to humanity but a fortress of moral exclusivity.
In South Asia, the past is not just remembered, It is recruited into the service of political legitimacy, moral certainty, and ideological entrenchment.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Bangladesh, where the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding leader, had been elevated to a sacred national trauma. Under the Awami League, this event became more than a site of remembrance; it functioned as a litmus test of patriotism.
Dissenting interpretations of the Liberation War or Sheikh Mujib’s legacy had been treated not as contributions to historical discourse but as acts of betrayal. Laws like the Digital Security Act further codified this control over narrative, criminalizing deviations from the state-sanctioned version of history.
Even when the Awami League was not in power, the controversy of who declared the independence of Bangladesh regularly became an issue, and even the images of our currency were changed. The sensitization of our independence history is so acute that no one or no university in Bangladesh till date has produced or promoted a Ph.D program specializing in our own history. It is a narrative that has been completely hijacked by politicized discourse, and not by historians.
This strategy is not unique to Bangladesh. In India, the ruling BJP has reshaped public memory through a Hindutva lens, by recasting historical figures, selectively erasing or vilifying Muslim rulers, and appropriating the memory of Hindu kings and sages as symbols of national pride. School textbooks have been revised, monuments and cities renamed, and historical wrongs selectively highlighted to consolidate a majoritarian identity. The Mughal era, once studied as a significant part of Indian syncretic heritage, is increasingly portrayed as a dark age of foreign occupation.
In Pakistan, the state has long used the memory of Partition and the Two-Nation Theory to justify a religious-nationalist identity, suppressing alternative visions of pluralism and the secular dreams of figures like Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The memory of East Pakistan and the 1971 war is largely censored or reinterpreted in ways that absolve the military and political elite of responsibility. More recently, the narrative of martyrdom around military operations and religious conflicts has been weaponized to silence criticism of the army or calls for civilian supremacy.
In Sri Lanka, the state’s post civil-war narrative has glorified the military victory over the Tamil Tigers while marginalizing Tamil suffering and demands for justice. Commemoration of Tamil civilian deaths is prohibited or heavily monitored, and efforts to establish independent historical truth through international inquiries are routinely resisted as attacks on national sovereignty.
In Bhutan, often viewed through the lens of Gross National Happiness and peaceful diplomacy, the state’s promotion of a singular national identity led to the marginalization and mass expulsion of the Lhotshampa, an ethnic Nepali minority in the late 20th century, which has been called ethnic cleansing by many. The official historical narrative frames this as a move to preserve cultural unity, effectively silencing the experiences of over 100,000 displaced people. This selective memory serves to legitimize past policies while erasing inconvenient truths, illustrating how even omission can function as a form of historical weaponization.
Across South Asia, the state’s hold over historical narrative reveals a deeper anxiety, i.e. the fear that open reckoning with the past might weaken present authority. Instead of a contested, evolving memory, history becomes a fixed script, one that rewards obedience and punishes deviation. In this script, reverence replaces inquiry, and remembrance is tightly managed not to heal, but to harness.
In Russia, the memory of the Second World War, known there as the Great Patriotic War, has become the cornerstone of Vladimir Putin’s nationalism. The Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazism is indisputable. But under Putin, that victory has become a holy myth, divorced from nuance or critique.
Victory Day, celebrated on May 9, is less a remembrance of suffering than a celebration of imperial pride. The estimated 27 million Soviet dead are invoked not to promote peace, but to justify aggression.
In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin framed the move as a denazification campaign, invoking the ghost of Hitler to rationalize the incursion. To criticize the Soviet past, e.g. its pacts with Hitler, its repression of Eastern Europe, etc is to be labeled a traitor or Western puppet. Russian civil society has suffered as a result: organizations like Memorial, which documented Soviet-era abuses, have been shut down. History, again, becomes not a mirror but a muzzle.
In China, the Communist Party does not weaponize history by remembering, it does so by forgetting. The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 is almost entirely erased from public consciousness. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are downplayed or sanitized. Only those chapters of history that glorify the Party are permitted.
This selective memory is not passive, instead it is enforced. Censorship, surveillance, and ideological education combine to ensure that only one version of the past is available. The Party does not just own the present, it owns the past and, therefore, the future. Here, the weaponization of history operates not through sacralization but through erasure. What cannot be instrumentalized is deleted.
In the United States, historical weaponization takes a more decentralized form but is no less fierce. The legacy of slavery, the Civil War, and systemic racism is at the heart of a cultural and political struggle. Debates over school curricula and Confederate monuments reflect an ongoing battle for control over historical memory.
The political right accuses critics of "rewriting" history to shame the country, while the left argues that the sanitized narrative of American exceptionalism is itself a revisionist lie. Both sides recognize that whoever controls the past shapes the moral boundaries of the present.
The backlash against critical race theory, largely misrepresented, is a clear example. By framing honest historical reckoning as indoctrination, opponents sought to prevent students from engaging with the complexity of the American past. Here, the fight is not just over history, instead it is over the national imagination.
Living in Canada, I often reflect on the stark contrast between the country’s squeaky-clean image abroad and the uncomfortable truths buried beneath it. While Canada is widely seen as a global symbol of tolerance and human rights, its own history tells a different story, particularly in relation to Indigenous peoples.
For generations, the brutal legacy of residential schools was downplayed or ignored, framed as well-meaning policy rather than cultural genocide. Today, land acknowledgements and reconciliation efforts are part of public life, but I sometimes wonder whether these acts, while necessary, risk becoming performative gestures that smooth over rather than confront the deeper injustices.
Canada’s example shows that even nations admired for their moral standing are not immune to the selective use of history to protect their national myths. In fact, it underscores a global pattern, i.e. that the past, far from being a settled record, is often curated to serve the present and to shield the powerful from deeper accountability.
What, then, is to be done?
We must separate memory from manipulation. Honouring the past does not require policing the present. Reverence must not mean repression. When history becomes scripture, it stops being scholarship. Societies must cultivate a pluralism of memory.
Every national narrative has fissures, contradictions, and competing voices. A mature historical culture does not eliminate these but embraces them. We must defend the autonomy of historians, educators, and journalists.
History should not be dictated by parliaments or politburos. It must be the domain of those willing to ask uncomfortable questions. Finally, we must remember that to weaponize history is to betray it. The past is not a tool, it is a teacher. And its greatest lesson is that it should be left alone.
In Bangladesh, the Liberation War, the assassinations of Presidents Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman, and the traumas of military rule are not merely remembered, they are deployed to their fullest extent.
However, the past should not be an arsenal. Instead, it must be a space for reckoning, not rigidity. To truly honour Bangladesh’s complex history is to embrace its contradictions, the triumph of independence alongside the failures of governance, the heroism of its leaders alongside their very human flaws.
Remembering well in Bangladesh means resisting the urge to canonize or criminalize memory. It means protecting the right to ask uncomfortable questions, even about the nation’s founding myths.
The weaponization of history here is not just a political tactic, it is a moral danger. For when history is wielded as a weapon, truth becomes a casualty, and the future, especially for new generations of Bangladeshis are held hostage to a singular, unquestionable narrative.
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