AI Says...
In contemporary history, there is a recurring and troubling phenomenon: authoritarian regimes reclaim, after their death, writers, filmmakers, philosophers, or artists they once ignored, stifled, or sometimes even persecuted during their lifetimes. These great figures become, posthumously, symbols instrumentalized in the service of nationalist or ideological narratives, even though they often embodied the very antithesis of the values and practices of those in power.
Here’s a journey through several countries and eras where we find this paradoxical scenario.
🇷🇺 Russia: The Distorted Legacy of Tolstoy and SolzhenitsynIn Russia, Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Resurrection, was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church, closely monitored by Tsarist authorities, and criticized for his pacifism, his rejection of violence, and his Christian anarchist ideas. Today, his image is widely reclaimed by the Russian state, presented as a national genius, with little mention that his ideas directly contradicted authoritarianism, militarism, and the centralized state.
Even Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, who exposed the vastness of the Stalinist camp system, is sometimes reclaimed today in a Russia nostalgic for Soviet power, where officials pretend to honor the writer while downplaying the critical legacy he carried against the totalitarian machine.
🇩🇪 Nazi Germany: Nietzsche and Goethe DistortedFriedrich Nietzsche is a famous example. A philosopher of value critique, self-overcoming, and deep suspicion toward dogma, he was co-opted by the Nazi regime as a proto-nationalist, militaristic figure. Yet Nietzsche despised antisemitism and pan-Germanism and hated narrow ideologies. His sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, aligned with the far right, helped edit and betray his texts after his death to align them with Nazi ideology.
Even Goethe, poet of humanism, inner quest, and universalism, was brandished by the Nazi regime as a symbol of timeless German genius, even though his thinking transcended national borders and exalted the individual against ideological confinement. Once again, memory was manipulated, simplified, and torn away from its true roots.
🇧🇷 Brazil under the Colonels: Chico Buarque and Silenced MusicUnder the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985), artists like Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, and Caetano Veloso faced censorship, exile, and pressure. Yet once the dark years had passed, some military figures and authoritarian politicians tried to reclaim the musical heritage of bossa nova and tropicalismo as emblems of brasilianidade, erasing the fact that they had, at the time, fought these dissident voices.
🇨🇳 Contemporary China: The Shadow of Liu XiaoboNobel Peace Prize laureate, writer, dissident, and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo died in 2017, imprisoned and deprived of freedom until the end. After his death, even as the Chinese regime continues to censor his name and writings, he paradoxically entered a kind of mythological status, where some Chinese officials try to integrate his existence into a “harmonious” narrative of the country’s political evolution, all while repressing those who still dare to speak of his legacy.
🇩🇿 Algeria: Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, a Blocked Palme d’OrThe most recent and striking case is that of Algerian filmmaker Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, who died on May 23, 2025. Director of Chronicle of the Years of Fire, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975, he brought to the screen a nuanced and human vision of the Algerian revolt, speaking not only of the fight against the colonizer but also of the human condition, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
He himself expressed it clearly:
“With this film, I wanted to explain for the first time how the Algerian war came about. This revolt, which became the Algerian revolution, was not only against the colonizer, but also against the condition of man.”
Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina succeeded in establishing a true cultural bridge between the Global South and the West, thus becoming the voice of the Third World and his country for nearly forty years, as his family also wrote. Yet during his lifetime, he saw his projects stalled, his works blocked, his influence marginalized by a regime that feared his free tone. A tragic irony: he died exactly fifty years to the day after his Palme d’Or, at the end of a screening held in tribute to that historic event at the Cannes Film Festival. His son Malik, present at the event, declared:
“Through this film, Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina extended a hand to bring people together, not to divide. He made cinema a welcoming land.”
A Homeric destiny, worthy of ancient tragedies and the profound human tension so dear to Goethe as well as to Nietzsche: the lucid, creative, universal individual confronted with collective forces that seek to reduce, instrumentalize, and capture his legacy.
A Memory to Defend
These examples reveal a constant truth: authoritarian regimes need cultural and historical legitimacy. They do not hesitate to cloak themselves in the aura of great names, even if it means betraying their message, even if it means suffocating what they denounced during their lifetimes. This is why today it is essential to tirelessly recall not only the works of these major figures but also the battles, obstacles, and injustices they endured — so that their memory remains alive and faithful to their true message.