(Sun Zhou: doctoral candidate of Nanjing Normal University)
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, there has been a wave of exposing and criticizing historical nihilism. For a while, historical nihilism lost its arrogance. However, it does not just wait to be dried up, but with the development of social practice, it constantly adjusts the specific objects it denies and the practical strategies it adopts. In this context, a new form of historical nihilism - "soft historical nihilism" or "hidden historical nihilism" [1] is quietly emerging in the field of social thought of our country and diffused in the daily life of the public. Compared with the traditional historical nihilism, it is more powerful in "hidden" and "bewilderment", and more prominent in "ideology" and "social harmfulness" of political position. Therefore, we need to make an in-depth study of its causes, characterization, essence and countermeasures, firmly resist and oppose soft historical nihilism, and safeguard the true appearance of history. 1、 Context of soft historical nihilism in contemporary China
According to the theory of appearance, no theory can be born from "nothing", but it has a unique appearance context. Soft historical nihilism is not a "natural thing", but a product of the times under the background of complex appearance. In summary, it is mainly reflected in the following three aspects. （1） Realistic context: the strategy of "retreat for progress" should deal with the historical nihilism as an extremely wrong social and political trend of thought. Its main target is to nihilism the party history, revolutionary figures and traditional culture, and try to subvert the discourse power of the mainstream ideology, which poses a serious threat to the leadership of the party and the modernization construction of social democracy. Therefore, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, based on ideological security, the Party Central Committee has repeatedly made important instructions to resist the issue of historical nihilism, refuted many erroneous arguments of historical nihilism, and profoundly expounded the historical evaluation of heroes, the historical nature of reform and opening up and other major issues, providing a fundamental coordinate for people to correctly view history and historical nihilism. At the same time, the social forces represented by academia have done a lot of critical work on historical nihilism. In addition, the state has also deterred historical nihilism from the aspects of laws and regulations and ritual system. For example, the law of the people's Republic of China on the protection of heroic martyrs has been formulated and implemented, which makes the traditional historical nihilism easy to be recognized by people. It dare not be as explicit, straightforward and blatant as before. Therefore, it changes the old policy of "retreat for progress", that is, to convey nihilism in a more euphemistic and obscure way. （2） Historical context: the transition from perceptual ideology to soft historical nihilism is closely related to the transition of contemporary ideology from rational form to perceptual form. As the traditional carrier of ideology, the paper media is declining day by day, and the massive visual "images" such as landscape gradually become the new carrier of mosaic ideology, which makes people "want to see", "want to see" and "enjoy to see" visual images manipulate the main body through the way of Althusser's meaning of personal inquiry as the main body, making it become an "ideological animal" [2] P18. As a result, the world has become an object that can only be discovered and interpreted through new media tools, and rational literal expression gradually gives way to perceptual image, symbol and music expression. Therefore, ideology tends to present itself to the world in various perceptual forms. (WeChat official account: Ideological and political scholars) in the deep background of the ideological turn of ideology, soft historical nihilism "takes the wind and goes up", and uses the perceptual cognitive way, with the help of visual culture and images, and so on, hiding in people's daily life. However, the volume of perceptual ideology further intensifies the weakening of critical thinking and the strengthening of superficial thinking, and the audience is more willing to accept the ideology in line with intuitive experience and perception. "The intuitive appeal to experience, because it can't be denied, is absolute Such intuitionism is the most subtle and popular form of contemporary dogmatism "[3] P79. This makes the original macro and noble history excessively superficial, entertaining and fragmented, and accelerates the emergence of soft historical nihilism. （3） Theoretical context: the objective law of the demise of nihilism the demise of any ideology is not an overnight thing. The "time consumption and time inflation" based on the fact that the root of reality has not been completely cleared is the basic trend of the development of ideology, and also the objective law of the end of its demise. Marx pointed out that "all forms and products of consciousness can not be eliminated through spiritual criticism Only by actually overthrowing the realistic social relations produced by these idealistic fallacies can they be eliminated "[4] P37. That is to say, ideology is not a pure "spiritual spirit". Its elimination can not be accomplished simply by exposing it with "critical weapons", but by fundamentally breaking the realistic foundation of its existence with "weapon criticism". Therefore, the existence of historical nihilism has its long-term characteristics. In the case that the real foundation has not been completely broken, it is besieged and criticized by the mainstream ideology. It is bound to try to change its face and revive. The appearance of soft historical nihilism is the historical necessity of this ideology in the practical development. From the logic principle of materialistic dialectics, the appearance of historical nihilism in the new form of "soft" just confirms the loss of vitality of its old form of "hard". This means that historical nihilism is in the final "dying struggle" and is the "reflection" before going to the end. We should also have enough confidence in this. No matter how historical nihilism evolves, as long as we firmly fight against it, it will eventually be abandoned by history. 2、 Multiple symptoms of soft historical nihilism in contemporary China
The soft historical nihilism after mutation has different "symptoms" from the traditional historical nihilism, which are mainly reflected in many dimensions such as topic setting, nihilism technique and presentation content. （1） The first symptom of "soft" historical nihilism is the popularization and life of topic setting. Through the link with the relevant issues in life, we can further attract the attention and deconstruct the mainstream historical topics. Specifically, there are two main types. 1. Cater to the hot spots and create "pop point" type. Soft historical nihilism often makes use of hot time and hot topics to create gimmicks, and tries to spread its influence with the so-called "pop point" issues. On the one hand, at the key time nodes with specific meaning, such as the major anniversary of the party and the state, we focus on creating issues to discuss the relevant historical events and their characters, so as to attract public attention. On the other hand, it caters to the hot topics of the society and makes a great impact with the help of the new media platform of "flow is king". For example, after the video of primary school students crying because of reading Liu Hulan in class attracted public attention, some people seized the opportunity to guide the topic to "whether Liu Hulan should enter the primary and secondary school classroom" in a divergent way, and deliberately spread the parents' letter of "please Liu Hulan stay away from my children", which was produced by him. After the fermentation of cyberspace, this letter addressed to the revolutionary heroes Image has made a very bad impact. 2. See big from small, hype "selling point" type. Soft historical nihilism, in order to cater to the public's curiosity seeking psychology and daily thinking, tends to start with such topics as details of daily life or anecdotes and wild history, and hypes them up. On the one hand, in line with the public's curiosity hunting psychology, we reinterpret history in various ways of "joking", which makes the original serious and sacred history disappear in the pursuit of novelty and parody. On the other hand, to cater to the daily thinking of the public, set up the topic "from directly building a psychological space that denies the mainstream historical view to building a psychological space with daily experience and daily thinking as the main content (common sense space)" [5]. Through the discussion of daily life issues closely related to the general public, we can attract the public's participation and further guide the audience to change their views on relevant historical facts. For example, soft historical nihilism does not focus on Mao Zedong's political and ideological issues, but starts from Mao Zedong's menu, contributions, marriage, residence, poetry and calligraphy and other trivial matters of life. These topics are closely related to the daily life of the public. The audience often has rich emotional experience and direct practical experience, so their interest can be activated quickly and effectively. （2） Softness of Nihilism: another symptom of "softness" of historical nihilism is softness and diversification of nihilism. There are mainly three types. 1. The recessive technique of "hidden but not obvious". Soft historical nihilism usually uses some subtle pragmatic strategies and techniques to express the sound beyond the surface meaning of the discourse, to attract the audience's rich association and aftertaste, so as to distort the history in disguise. One is to negate history in the way of context implication. In a specific context, hint "is indirect transitive. It needs an intermediary between it and the referent, which is the reader's imagination" [6]. For example, in the study of Lei Feng's spiritual deeds by soft historical nihilism, the intention of the speaker to satirize Lei Feng's deeds as false and not as simple as hard and helpful idols is implied by the details of "Lei Feng has high-end lines such as leather jackets and watches", "there is no wrong word in the diary of more than 100000 words". The second is to divide and negate history in the way of "creating contrast". For example, when evaluating the "two thirty years", some people "disparage" the history after the reform and opening up on the basis of "praising" the history before the reform and opening up, or "praising" the history after the reform and opening up on the basis of "devaluing" the history before the reform and opening up, so as to create the contrast, the purpose is to separate and eliminate the whole history of the people's Republic of China. The third is to deny history in the way of "low-level red and high-level black". In "Anti Japanese war drama" and other film and television works, this "low-level red high-level black" approach is common. The Anti Japanese heroes are all possessed with magical skills, and the ghosts between the fingers are all destroyed. Originally full of blood and fire, the tragic history has become a crude idolized plot. 2. The neutral way of "Vagueness". The so-called neutral approach, that is, to confuse and nihilism history in an abstract way, requires that "people of abstract and universal significance replace people who are engaged in specific and special practices" [7], apply the bourgeois abstract human nature concept to the field of historical evaluation, and disturb people's objective cognition of historical features. One is to use the theory of human nature to reevaluate the historical "thousand year merits and demerits". Soft historical nihilism demands that the reactionaries should be treated as ordinary people with the attitude of "beyond class". At first glance, this kind of historical evaluation based on "human-oriented care" for some historical victims seems to be unambiguous, and it does not attempt to reverse good and evil, and confuse loyalty and treachery. However, these moral calls, which are divorced from the class position of historical materialism, will lead to the indistinguishability of good and evil