The first step in liquidating a people,' said Hubl, 'is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.
In Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting," Hubl discusses the process of erasing a people's identity through the destruction of their cultural and historical memory. He emphasizes that by obliterating books and cultural artifacts, a society's recollection of its past can be easily diminished. This erasure leads to the creation of a new narrative that replaces the original history, resulting in a collective amnesia regarding a nation’s true heritage.
This manipulation of memory highlights how significant cultural and historical elements are essential to a people's identity. As the original memories fade, the new, manufactured history becomes the accepted narrative, both for the nation and the world around it. Hubl's quote serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving cultural identity against forces that seek to rewrite history.
