Political movements must rewrite history before they can mobilize people around a new cause

Evidence

Abortion henceforth would be the key to unlocking power for the conservative movement. But before it could be used to control the future, it was necessary first to change the past. The flock would have to learn to forget that for decades abortion was just one among many moral concerns, and it played little role in dividing the faithful from the damned. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 260

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how modern political movements engineer collective amnesia about their own recent past as a precondition for mobilization.
• XREF: connects to: Defeated cultural movements can be re-potentiated from their archives after decades — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1369; Political movements require moments of popular identification to form. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1134; Revolutionary politics requires active intervention in history rather than correct waiting. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Revolutionary politics requires active intervention in history rather than correct waiting. #expands (0.80)
• Instrumentalizing history for present politics is worse than ignoring it #contradicts (0.80) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1808
• Political movements require moments of popular identification to form. #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1134
• Political mobilization requires transforming a confrontation into a broader societal power struggle #expands (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4433
• History as ground must be conceived as an absent cause resisting reification #qualifies (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 2294
• Yearning for a precolonial essence traps politics in the past instead of the present #qualifies (0.72)