"A lot of young people who feel lost would respond positively if they were exposed to how remarkable the journey of human civilisation has been. There’s a lot to fight for."

"Ever since the 1970s, there’s been a cumulative process whereby Western society – particularly in the Anglo-American world – has become more and more distant from its own past. ...
    "Now even the elites are increasingly disenchanted and estranged from history. What we have is this very one-sided war against the past with very little pushback.
    "It began as a quite specific, targeted attack on things like slavery in America or how the British Empire behaved in the 19th or early 20th century. Then suddenly every dimension of the Western experience was rendered toxic. It’s almost as if activists are trying to quarantine that legacy of the past – to suggest that there is no redeeming feature, that this is a story of shame. ...
    "There is a struggle for historical memory here. In the course of erasing important achievements of the past, what you’re doing is encouraging people to forget what the past was really all about. There’s that famous quote from George Orwell’s 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' in which a man from the Ministry of Truth makes the point that, by 2050, people will no longer remember who Shakespeare was. They will no longer remember who all the important philosophers were. People will simply not know the writings and the arguments of all these great figures from the past.
    "We’re actually running ahead of that schedule by a good 20 or 25 years. Already we have a situation in which people no longer remember who the real Aristotle is, because we’re told that he was this founder of white supremacy. Kids going to school today might be told that Churchill was a war criminal. When you have such a warped vision of one of the greatest icons of 20th-century British history, then you can’t remember very much about where you’ve come from. ...
    "You’re certainly not providing people with ideals that can inspire them, particularly the younger generation. ...
    "A lot of young people who feel lost would respond positively if they were exposed to how remarkable the journey of human civilisation has been. There’s a lot to fight for."

~ Frank Furedi from an interview about his new book The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight For Its History