This seems like a very obvious thing to say, but I don’t recall seeing it as yet... A society obsessed with its past glories and ancestral virtues, equally insistent on its continuing exceptionalism and fearful of moral decline? Late republican Rome. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/21/britains-pride-past-not-matched-vision-future?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Mos maiorum - the custom of the ancestors - as the only rule of proper behaviour; general hostility to innovation (at least rhetorically), taken to be a sign of decadence and weakness; disdain for other cultures, tendency to blame things on foreigners; toxic masculinity...

Faults in the system leading to crisis are interpreted solely in these terms, and incorporated into existing political divisions, which of course leaves political class incapable of grasping what’s actually going on or responding adequately...

Of course, Roman mos maiorum was actually capable of flexibility in practice, reconfiguring new forms of behaviour as being traditional honest (cf. Varro on pastio villatica), but everyone had to pay lip service at least. Is British political/cultural discourse capable of this?

Cf. recent article by Brent Shaw on whether the Romans had any proper conception of ‘future’, and how this affected their ability to cope with a world that suddenly started changing in unexpected ways...

Just to emphasise that this passing whimsy is *not* an “Oh My Gods history is repeating itself we are about to fall into civil war followed by autocracy” analogy thing, but rather an observation of possible parallels in cultural discourse that may be instructive.