Although I broadly agree with the author that we should remember the past, I am sad that his tone suggests we are doomed to forget it.
Edit: It's up to us all to prove the author wrong, it makes me sad when I talk to people that try really hard to wrap everything in lies to make themselves feel better. Maybe the starting point that dooms is when parents/states tries to smooth over horrible events.
Sadly, the lessons learned from the 20th century didn't even seem to survive that long. If anything, the very ideas that the 20th century utterly discredited are poised to overturn even the Enlightenment.
From an energy conservation perspective it's great. But how far should we let it go?
The most obvious example is what the jews did to palestines in palestine/israel a few years after ww2. Look at what we did in vietnam/laos/iraq/etc. Look at what the chinese are doing to their minorities. Look at what happened in rwanda. Did we all forget ww2? Of course not.
The idea that we are doomed to repeat history if we forget it is nonsense. The nazis didn't forget about the history of the native genocide in the US. They actually studied it and they learned from it and they improved upon it.
Think about it, neo-nazis want to remember the past just as much as the holocaust survivors. But for different reasons.
As long as people have their creature comforts and are well fed and content, we'll pretend to be civilized and caring and charitable. When that gravy train dries up, we just resort to our natural tribal state.
Nobody forgot the native genocides, but the holocaust happened. Nobody forgot the holocaust, but the rwandan genocide happened.