Highlighting real history is not a culture war.
Being critical of your own country's past is not left, its not woke, its humane.
Pretending that what happened in the past didn't happen, is far worse.
It suggests an unwillingness to learn from the past to improve in the future.

The Sunday Telegraph is trying to frame what we are/we're as a nation.
Yes we were racist.
Yes we kept slaves and profited from it.
Yes we slaughtered millions in the name of empire.
"So what? "
In reality, only a small handful of people are responsible for these crimes.
Govt.
I don't see this country in the same way as those with a guilty conscious.
But those who bear the guilt project it onto the rest of us.
A member of my family has gone down the far right rabbit hole along with a few other members of my family (not immediate family) and part of this conspiracy is a hatred of Jews.
The one thing that stood out for me, when I tried to reason with them about why they are wrong, is the way they framed all Jewish people.
In any country, can you really smear its people on the basis of what it's govt does?
Does the govt in this country represent me and my views?
No, they don't.
They couldn't be further from my viewpoint.
Sadly, people will still judge us based on what our govt does and has done in the past.
Neither then or now, does a govt ever truly represent its people.
That's why you need to teach "all" history and not some of it.
It doesn't really matter what your political view is.
History has to be seen as a whole.
You can't pick and choose the bits you want to portray because it reflects well on you.
That's how you create hatred..
Through revisionism.
And yes, because I am English
(well half English😉)
I do have to acknowledge the awful things done in our name.
And I do acknowledge those things.
But I don't bear responsibility for those things.
The people who made those decisions do.
The people who did those things do.
Revisionism of history is for those people who bear responsibility or guilt about what has happened in the past.
That's not me.
It's not most of us.
So don't let their guilt wipe out our full history.
Teach all of it, so we can learn from all of it.
👍
See you all later, I've got a course to do.
A retrofit insulation course.
Pray for me.
👀

More from Society

Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.

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