Asking historians to dig deep into bluntly ahistorical political claims is like sending a scuba-diving team into a bathtub. But beyond fact-checking obviously false claims, of what use can professional historians be to society? In an age of denialism, one has to embrace history’s political potentials instead of reducing them to the task of safekeeping facts. In early November, a report to the United Nations written by Christian Schmidt, the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, was leaked to the press. In it, Schmidt warned that the country was in danger of falling apart, with a ‘very real’ prospect for a renewed civil war waged by armed Serb separatists. In the days after, as news about an impending threat of