A Tarnished Memory

The First World War remains one of the most important events in European history. Recent events in France help illustrate this. In a despicable act, vandals desecrated the graves of Muslim soldiers who died fighting in the French army. This act suggests at least two things to me. The memory of WWI continues to be active in France, and it can be used to draw attention to contemporary issues, even if they're heinous. The other thing this story describes is the state's role in protecting the memory of the war. The vandalism, therefore, is not just a hate crime, which is bad enough, it is an affront to the nation writ large. The memory of historical events is woven into the fabric of a nation-state's historical narrative. Various hot-button topic often constitute some of the most salient memory terrain. It's also important to remember that the big events only constitute part of a society's memory spectrum. In Ireland, the memory of the Great Famine, the Easter Rising, the Black and Tans, and the Troubles in the North are some of the major elements of Irish collective memory. But just as important as these memories are, other major events have their own memory legacy, such as the Great War. France is not the only nation that has had subversives make political or other statements through the prism of the Great War, and it certainly won't be the last. How this has been done in the past and what it means in and to that society remain questions that need to be answered.