LEARNING TO RULE OURSELVES

EVERY HISTORIAN WORTH THEIR SALT knows that historical and local specificities ultimately render all analogies inaccurate. Yet people navigating times of great change and uncertainty habitually seek reassurance from the past. In 1852, Karl Marx observed how revolutionaries “anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past … to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise.” By helping to legitimize major change, historical analogies have played a key role in the very making of modern history, including its ugliest episodes: The Nazis defended their camps, for instance, by pointing to British concentration camps in the South African War at the turn of the 20th century. Much of what has transpired in history has been justified by reference to some precedent.

Making new comparisons thus helps shift the paradigms and false equivalences through which we inherit the past so that we might make new history in the present. Despite their own inevitable inaccuracy, fresh analogies help uncover the darker historical truths obscured by the more flattering comparisons that enabled them. The question is