Niccolo Gentile
You’ve probably heard historical analogies deployed to describe contentious events: the Russo-Ukrainian War compared to World War II or Vietnam; the Jan. 6th, 2021 Capitol Building riots in the United States paralleled the burning of the Reichstag; Vladimir Putin likened to Adolf Hitler or the War in Gaza to the Holocaust. These links have become a typical element of political discourse for millions and a rhetorical tool levied to argue opposing cases in these conflicts. However, the pervasive use of historical analogy has not always had quite the same stranglehold over public discourse as it does today. These analogies have not always been used as a central axis in massively polarizing issues e.g., Israel-Palestine and U.S. domestic politics. In light of the growing use and misuse of historical comparisons, when should they be used or avoided?
Linguists have long examined the use of analogy as a whole and how it can enhance the popular understanding of the present. In everyday communication, the use of rhetorical tricks like simile, metaphor and analogy all enhance one’s ability to understand and relate to the experiences of others. It is no surprise then that the comprehension of contemporary political matters, especially those taking place half a world away, often attracts comparisons with well-known past events. It is an innate element of the human condition that we confound the unknown with the knowable.
The specific use of analogy in regard to history complicates matters. In relation to the history of these analogies, Professor Denis Charbit, specialist of the history of ideas at Sciences Po, argues that these comparisons emerged from the “crisis of modernity, of time” that occurred around the '60s and ‘70s. Hitherto, under the sway of modernism, humanity’s point of reference was placed firmly in the future, whether that be a proletarian revolution or a homogenous ethnostate. This is not to say that historical analogy emerged, contextless from a virgin birth, in the middle of the 20th century. Doubtlessly, it was employed far before this to relate like event to like event. The inundation of this method, however, in the popular imagination seems to be a phenomenon which can be roughly dated, traced and followed in its swell of use over the past few decades.
From the historian’s perspective, analogy is a dangerously sweeping tool only to be used in the most damning of circumstances. As Dr. Augusto Petter, lecturer at Sciences Po Menton and expert in the philosophy of history, explained to me, the use of analogy in academic work is generally frowned upon today. Of course, a core element of the historian’s work is to compare events in the past. But drawing an actual link in the form of an analogy or metaphor necessitates an overwhelming, impossible burden of proof so as to make even rhetorical tricks practically absent from the field. Additionally, these analogies have the ability to imbue arguments with immense ethos, pathos and logos, often through cheap or inaccurate means. To quote Kenneth Minogue on the discourse analysis of Quentin Skinner, ‘historical’ analogies “are historical in the popular sense of referring to the past, but not historical in the sense of being contributions to the academic problem of attempting to understand some passage of events in a properly historical manner.”
The historian’s highly restrictive and critical view cannot be expected of the wider public, nor should it be sought. To apply the same rigor to popular discourse would cripple any chance such discussion has of producing productive understanding and inspiring the action needed to keep democratic institutions functioning, which discourse should inculcate. To further illuminate the point of criticism here, take one prime example of this discourse and its accuracy in some of the issues from the past few years. What I’ve chosen to examine is not the most current events but one with relevance, some temporal removal and well-established facts from which to base this analysis.
Today, commentators and politicians compare Western policy towards Russia with the policy of appeasement that much of Europe took towards Nazi Germany in the years preceding WWII. At a glance, this would seem like a cogent topic to bring into the discourse. Benoît Bréville takes a different position, stating that harkening back to events like the Munich Conference and the invasion of Poland only serves to aggravate tensions that should be soothed to bring an end to the bloodshed. Moreover, these connections simply do not stand up to deeper inquiry. For example, the war in Ukraine is isolated to one country and has dragged on for years whereas Munich and Poland were but brief glimpses of the global conflict to come—one which modern-day Russia is clearly not able to persecute given its performance in Ukraine. This is not to take away from the often rightful case made by these arguments but to encourage a greater level of discernment when choosing one’s evidence so that it holds up beyond our ephemeral present.
A couple of caveats should be mentioned. One key difference that Professor Charbit argued for is the difference between using historical analogy and collective memory. This might take the form of an Israeli comparing something to the Holocaust or a Palestinian drawing a connection to the Nakba. However, heed care even here, for as Ada Yurman formulates, such terminology can be used “by those who do not grasp the dimensions of the catastrophe.” Another is to keep in mind the difference between drawing a sweeping analogy and a specific, evidence-based comparison. Though it is ridiculous to compare contemporary French government coordination with private industry to Italian fascism’s corporatism, particular elements can indeed be likened to one another to argue a broader point.
The world is a fraught place where meaning seems increasingly intangible, even as the bonds linking our societies to the past are frayed or twisted. We are watching a large-scale military engagement take place around Kursk and Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) while far-right parties are sweeping European elections in Germany, Italy and Hungary, and multipolarity is pushing most countries into two great blocs or into a position of non-alignment. It is nigh impossible to refute the importance of recalling the past and comparing its causes and outcomes to the present. Alongside this, though, a more critical examination of how and why we use these terms to describe the present and whether they are unjustly coloring our view of current events is due to better engage with both the past and the present.