The terror of the days gone by

Studying history is essential in these uncertain times

We must study the past to learn from it.

History needs to be elevated as a subject and treated with the same reverence as language and mathematics. In this time of great geopolitical uncertainty, the past has much to teach us. However, an ignorance of history’s catastrophes means we are in danger of repeating them.

The return of extremist politics on the Left, the Right, and in religious form, are back. They are not new problems. They might as well be, though, given the poverty of most people’s historical knowledge.

Our schools and universities have failed us. Culture War propaganda has filled traditional and social media with lies and agendas. Our universities have become more like Chinese re-education camps than centers of higher learning. The quality of our political discourse has been stained.

Not knowing or believing the Holocaust happened, or how appeasement failed to stop World War Two, or how Israel was created, or how Communism plunged states into repression and poverty are some obvious examples. Few are fully cognizant that the Chinese Communist Party, which still governs the rising superpower, is one of the 20th Century’s great mass murdering organizations.

The lack of awareness that Far Right ideologies led to the Nazi death and concentration camps, and that Far Left ones led to the Soviet gulags, Cambodia’s killing fields, and China’s Cultural Revolution, is disturbing.

This has had a knock-on effect in the media where many journalists, mal-educated and ignorant of history, are more cultural warriors than reporters. Many are committed to narrative over truth.

All this makes the world’s geopolitical state look precarious.