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Comment by biofox | Hacker News Reader

I think there is a lot of truth in that. It led to the death of patriotism (which is now considered embarrassing outside of sport), national purpose, institutions, empire, and coincided with the decline of heavy industry (which only happened much more recently in the US).

EDIT: Saying that, there is still a strong positive national identity. We're just too embarrassed to express it strongly (see patriotism), because of our fall from grace.

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I also think there is a breaking point, and we're seeing the resurgence of right wing parties in the UK and across Europe as a backlash to anti-patriotism and praise for everyone except those with a long history in their own nation.

"Anti-patriotism" doesn't really sum up the sense that many among Europe's owning and intellectual classes would prefer to "dissolve the people and elect another" via immigration. The example that shocked me, as an American, was when a story came out that certain schools in the UK had stopped teaching about World War II and the Holocaust because (second-generation, in many cases) immigrant parents objected to their kids being preached-at about the history of someone else's country. This was presented by, IIRC, the Guardian or the BBC, as a fairly reasonable objection.

To my American mind, for everything wrong with our country, come on, if you're an immigrant to the USA, it's your country. Taking on American history as your history is what it means to be part of the common civic project, and insisting that "the Allies beat Hitler and built the liberal international order and then we saw off Stalinism too" is somehow insulting to your family because those Allied soldiers weren't your blood ancestors sounds outright treasonous.

The history curriculum is (like nearly everything else) nationally set. The content of the leaving exams is also not set by the school (but by the national boards). It's possible that one school has decided to do something daft, but honestly not likely.

The story reads like ragebait, TBH. Brits are absolutely as keen on extolling WW2 heroism as anyone else.

"In England, by law children are to be taught about the Holocaust as part of the Key Stage 3 History curriculum; in fact, the Holocaust is the only historical event whose study is compulsory on the National Curriculum. This usually occurs in Year 9 (age 13-14)."

https://www.het.org.uk/about/holocaust-education-uk

So not Province of Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Note that WW2 is not a statutory requirement in any of the key stages although it does feature in the examples (which are non-statutory). And a reminder that history is a required subject only to Key Stage 3, so many students won't take it after they are 14 and won't study for an exam.

Reporting on education in the UK does tend to be rage-baity and most situations are more complex when you look at them a bit closer.

(I have never taught history and never taught in the school sector)

>"dissolve the people and elect another" via immigration

This is happening almost everywhere in the West, just at different rates.

I would really like to see the source of that because as mentioned elsewhere in the replies the Holocaust is a compulsory part of the National Curriculum and has been at least since I was in high school in the 1990s.

To the extent that the Holocaust is part of British and American history it is that we knew very well what was going on in 1930s Germany and strictly limited the number of Jewish refugees because of domestic concerns over the level of immigration.

Americans lying about Europe is common disease. That being said, right wing people lying about everything is basically a pandemic now.

WWI "coincided with the decline of heavy industry" ? I can't think of any UK-based heavy industry that didn't dramatically expand between the end of WWI and say, 1958.

The UK dominated the world in coal production, shipbuilding, factory machinery and textile mills before WW1, and went into steady decline post-war.

E.g. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mikael-Hoeoek/publicati...

Going by the variety of flags i see people flying I'd say there is quite a lot of patriotism about - just not for the UK.

To be clear - I'm in Scotland and the flags I see are the Scottish flag and the EU flag (often combined). I know there has been a spate of flag flying for other reasons but I haven't actually seen that myself.

When I visit the UK, it strikes me, the number of British flags and symbols. Perhaps most so on supermarket products. We have none of that here.

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