Who controls the past?

Populist politics is on the rise across the globe, and it is frequently accompanied by politically motivated distortions of contemporary history. In this chapter, the authors first highlight the dangers of falsifying history, which at its worst can contribute to the dehumanising propaganda that precedes physical genocide. The notions of truth and post-truth are then discussed, followed by a definition of a new category of historical disinformation that has become prevalent today, ‘post-truth history’. After summarising the chapters in this volume, which cover theoretical analyses and empirical case studies from a diversity of nations, the authors finish with a brief survey of recent developments in the politics of history in Brazil, Hungary, Israel, Zimbabwe, and Poland.