The commemorations of the bombing of Dresden and the Bleiburg massacre have both been sites and occasions for contesting basic facts and challenging the meanings of WWII-related events and their legacies. In the case of Dresden, far-right memory challengers in recent years have sought to reinterpret the meaning of the commemoration and have attempted to change the ritual practice. The commemorations at Bleiburg have been instrumentalized by Croatian nationalists. I propose to compare the discursive strategies for shifting the meanings of these two commemorations. In both cases, the discursive strategies of memory challengers have included obfuscation and manipulation of the facts about events in the past, attempts to compare or use equivalence to shift meanings of the events, and linking the past with nationalist-populist and far-right political agendas of the present.
I propose to compare speeches and counter-speeches (where available) from the commemorations, analyze the signs, symbols and slogans of protestors, and examine media coverage (German national and local; Austrian and Croatian, national and local) to understand the similarities as well as differences in discursive strategies and representations of the past.
