Available also via Zoom (register here)

In the past, nationalism found its justification in heroic stories of a people’s invincibility. Today, more and more states around the world are drawing their self-confidence from a history of victimhood whose status is transferrable to future generations.
Taking a comparative look at Poland, Germany, Israel, Japan, and South Korea, the historian Jie-Hyun Lim discusses the problems arising from victim nationalism when it takes the form of power politics: the falsification of the past, the overshadowing of real victims, and the legitimization of domination. Lim explores how nations from Europe to the Global East relate, compare, explain, and put into competition the world’s past catastrophes. He argues for a transnational yet historically precise space of remembrance based on sympathy and diversity.