'A people deprived of their history are easily persuaded'.

[Animavore]

Oh yeah. We do also have an Aussie on that thread trying to blame both sides. Reminds me of Aussies who blame the Aboriginies lot on their own fecklessness, apathy, and childishness.

Fuck off, Ani. At least I'm not wilfully ignoring the other side, by letting my ideology overwhelm my common sense.

Which ideology Is that?

Israel are the ones with all the power. The ones with the massive army. The ones occupying and robbing land. The ones killing an en masse. They can't whine when the people they are oppressing to fight back.

[Svartalf]

Oh yeah. We do also have an Aussie on that thread trying to blame both sides. Reminds me of Aussies who blame the Aboriginies lot on their own fecklessness, apathy, and childishness.

l here, they are blackwashing history, and trying to make the descendants of triangular traders feel guilty... having ancestry in both Nantes and Bordeaux, I find this particularly obnoxious... the blacks should be happy to be free for 170 years now. fuck, who was the moron made thes folk citizens?

[cronus]

No land is worth killing or dying for. Unfortunately historians often make it seem there is such a place.

[Svartalf]

depends, a sense of history is kind of the basic (etymological) function of religion: tying the people of a single culture together, and few cultures are not tied to a given area...

[JimC]

Oh yeah. We do also have an Aussie on that thread trying to blame both sides. Reminds me of Aussies who blame the Aboriginies lot on their own fecklessness, apathy, and childishness.

Fuck off, Ani. At least I'm not wilfully ignoring the other side, by letting my ideology overwhelm my common sense.

Which ideology Is that?

Israel are the ones with all the power. The ones with the massive army. The ones occupying and robbing land. The ones killing an en masse. They can't whine when the people they are oppressing to fight back.

So, you are happy with the ideology and statements coming from Hamas? Not only are they willing to recycle Nazi hatred of Jews, they have their own vicious Islamic ideology, not one friendly to secular values.

Remember, in this thread I have consistently argued that the behaviour of the current Israeli government is atrocious (in particular their support of settlements by the ultra-orthodox), and that their support by Trump's Amerika is appalling. I am a long way from the positions of 42 and SD.

But then we need to have a dose of reality. Israel as a state is simply not going to go away, and the Palestinians and Arab allies have zero chance of any military victory, even without factoring in Israeli nukes...

The only way forward towards a 2 state solution involves compromise from both sides. While theoretically possible, I think it unlikely, so the current bloody stalemate will probably continue, something that the polarisation of the debate is closely linked to...

[Animavore]

Hamas aren't the problem. They don't represent most Palestinians. Israel shouldn't allow themselves get baited by them. And they certainly shouldn't be exercising a collective punishment on Palestine and using Hamas as an excuse to occupy more and more land.

The ball is in Israel's court. They hold the levers of power. Acting with massively disproportionate, blunt force against a rag-tag group in an asymmetric 'war' does them no favours. Acting as if there is equal blame in this situation borders the absurd.

A two-state solution would be great, but that's up to Israel. The Palestinians have no leverage here. Israel could wipe them all out if they really wanted to.

[cronus]

Climate change, resources depletion and population overshoot followed by collapse will resolve things. The few survivors in such a inhospitable environment will either learn to cooperate with one another or die out leaving only ruins like happens with fucked civilisations. The current bloody stalemate will go on, but not forever. The ground is moving under their feet whichever side of the fence they sit. Times will change soon enough. A way be found to live in harmony, or not.

[JimC]

I thought I was being pessimistic, then I read a crumpelian post and realised I was a fucking giddy optimist...

[laklak]

Everybody needs a dose of dystopian Crumpelianism with their morning coffee. Sets the tone for the rest of the day.

[Brian Peacock]

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

No no no. It's "He who controls the spice controls the Universe"!

[Brian Peacock]

Post-Brexit Britain doesn't know what it is, or even what it wants to be, any more than it knew what it was before the vote. The hagiography of a nation is not a fixed and finite thing set in stone but a fluid, developing narrative underpinned by the semiotic lineage of its citizens' shared experience. For a long time our national identify was tightly bound to our perceived successes - at a time when the rest of Europe was in trumoil we were the constitution monarchy who invented 'the mother of Parlianments', we beacame the first industrial powerhouse, we were the fastest on four and two wheels and the quickest middle distance runners on two legs, we were the ones who created the NHS and The Open University, who cleared the slums, gave workers rights, brought in comprehensive education and social housing, a nation of scientific innovators and society-transforming engineers, the nation of Newton, Wren, Darwin, Brunel, and Turing, of The Stones, The Beatles, Zeplin and Sabbath, we won two world wars and secured peace in Europe forever by the mutual acknowledgement that sharing resources between nations - by agreement and by regulated free trade - was a more effective barrier to warfare and a better means of raising living standards than any amount of political rhetoric could ever achieve on its own. The lie of the Brexiteers is that all this is soured and counts for naught: It's soured by allowing others to add their histories to our own, it counts for nothing because being open, fair, tolerant, welcoming, and liberal has, apparently, only dissolved society and diluted our essential Britishness rather than developing and strengthening it. The lie of Brexit is that our colonial history is grander and more emblematic of our national identity, of who and what we are, than our post-WWII history, and that we can get all that back, and more, if we bind the nation to the models from our glorious past.

Just sayin'

[laklak]

Huzzah!

[Brian Peacock]

Yep. It's always been an 'honour' to make yourself cannon fodder to someone else's ideals - some of you will die, but it's a price I'm willing to pay!

[Rum]

Post-Brexit Britain doesn't know what it is, or even what it wants to be, any more than it knew what it was before the vote. The hagiography of a nation is not a fixed and finite thing set in stone but a fluid, developing narrative underpinned by the semiotic lineage of its citizens' shared experience. For a long time our national identify was tightly bound to our perceived successes - at a time when the rest of Europe was in trumoil we were the constitution monarchy who invented 'the mother of Parlianments', we beacame the first industrial powerhouse, we were the fastest on four and two wheels and the quickest middle distance runners on two legs, we were the ones who created the NHS and The Open University, who cleared the slums, gave workers rights, brought in comprehensive education and social housing, were a nation of scientific innovators and society-transforming engineers, the nation of Newton, Wren, Darwin, Brunel, and Turing, of The Stones, The Beatles, Zeplin and Sabbath, we won two world wars and secured peace in Europe forever by the mutual acknowledgement that sharing resources between nations trade - by agreement and by regulated free trade - was a more effective barrier to warfare and a better means of raising living standards than any amount of political rhetoric could achieve on its own. The lie of the Brexiteers is that all this is soured and counts for naught: It's soured by allowing others to add their histories to our own, it counts for nothing because being open, fair, tolerant, welcoming, and liberal has, apparently, only dissolved society and diluted our essential Britishness rather than developing and strengthening it. The lie of Brexit is that our colonial history is grander and more emblematic of our national identity, of who and what we are, than our post-WWII history, and that we can get all that back, and more, if we bind the nation to the models from our glorious past.

Just sayin'

A very articulate and heart felt post, but I'm not sure it actually addresses the OP, which in summary suggests that if we do lose a national memory of some or all of the above - and perhaps we have - then we are lost and people will be easily led by those with nefarious objectives in mind.

Arguably the Brexiteers conjured up some of the rhetoric of our history - Farage an Boris attempted to anyway, but I suspect they were led not so much by dreams of returning to past glory but of a much more prosaic and alarming goal - a jingoistic England for white English people and sod the foreigners. I'm pretty sure that is what tipped the balance - well that is my conjecture anyway.

Perhaps if more time had been spent by the remainers on what really made the country what it was - liberal ideas, tolerance, the rule of law, democratic values and the all round good stuff, we might have had a rather more progressive looking outcome.

[Brian Peacock]

Post-Brexit Britain doesn't know what it is, or even what it wants to be, any more than it knew what it was before the vote. The hagiography of a nation is not a fixed and finite thing set in stone but a fluid, developing narrative underpinned by the semiotic lineage of its citizens' shared experience. For a long time our national identify was tightly bound to our perceived successes - at a time when the rest of Europe was in trumoil we were the constitution monarchy who invented 'the mother of Parlianments', we beacame the first industrial powerhouse, we were the fastest on four and two wheels and the quickest middle distance runners on two legs, we were the ones who created the NHS and The Open University, who cleared the slums, gave workers rights, brought in comprehensive education and social housing, a nation of scientific innovators and society-transforming engineers, the nation of Newton, Wren, Darwin, Brunel, and Turing, of The Stones, The Beatles, Zeplin and Sabbath, we won two world wars and secured peace in Europe forever by the mutual acknowledgement that sharing resources between nations - by agreement and by regulated free trade - was a more effective barrier to warfare and a better means of raising living standards than any amount of political rhetoric could ever achieve on its own. The lie of the Brexiteers is that all this is soured and counts for naught: It's soured by allowing others to add their histories to our own, it counts for nothing because being open, fair, tolerant, welcoming, and liberal has, apparently, only dissolved society and diluted our essential Britishness rather than developing and strengthening it. The lie of Brexit is that our colonial history is grander and more emblematic of our national identity, of who and what we are, than our post-WWII history, and that we can get all that back, and more, if we bind the nation to the models from our glorious past.

Just sayin'

A very articulate and heart felt post, but I'm not sure it actually addresses the OP, which in summary suggests that if we do lose a national memory of some or all of the above - and perhaps we have - then we are lost and people will be easily led by those with nefarious objectives in mind.

Arguably the Brexiteers conjured up some of the rhetoric of our history - Farage an Boris attempted to anyway, but I suspect they were led not so much by dreams of returning to past glory but of a much more prosaic and alarming goal - a jingoistic England for white English people and sod the foreigners. I'm pretty sure that is what tipped the balance - well that is my conjecture anyway.

Perhaps if more time had been spent by the remainers on what really made the country what it was - liberal ideas, tolerance, the rule of law, democratic values and the all round good stuff, we might have had a rather more progressive looking outcome.

My point, such that it is, was only that Brexiteers offered the prospect of regaining a national identity which they said we had either lost or, more often, which had been stolen from us. However like the toothpaste ad promotes disquieting concerns in one's mind about what might be happening on your gums without your knowing, before heroically offering you the solution to a problem you never even knew you had, Brexiteers first had to sully and taint our view of what and who we are before their promises that we could make Britain great again would take hold. It took them 30 years of pissing on our shared history, but they got there in the end - and eventually people were willing to take a bite from that poison cherry. Brexiteers now think that we're taking back control when in reality we're just handing it over to the Rees-Mogg's and Duncan-Smith's of the world.