Enjoying my traditional morning overthink about bad takes on twitter and struck by this, and how false cultural memory works. In particular, I am interested in why anyone currently alive should be "proud" of a historical action on the part of the country in which they live.

(This is setting aside the fact that the Empire was an atrocity so it is, shall we say, an extremely weird flex to be "proud" of it.)

I am always interested in the conception of pride in a history because while I am an historian I am lacking any sort of "pride" in any history. I think that this comes partly from being raised in a context of recent immigrants, who had left heavily colonised countries.

So I have always had what I would call an "interest" in the cultures, history, and heritage of the places that my family immigrated from. Absolutely. When your familial traditions don't come from the place you are living, it is very common to be interested in them.

(See my areas of historical speciality for more information.) Having said this, I am not "proud" of the "history" of any of the places my family came from. Just interested and hopeful that people will pay attention to them within historical context more generally.

And I was for suuuuuurrrreeeee not proud of the country I was born in because of, you know, all of the slavery and genocide that was necessary to found it; the incredible inequality and violence perpetrated by the state; and the ongoing violent empire.

Obviously I understand *how* a consideration of "pride" in a history is transmitted: through extremely shonky history and outright lies and a desperate desire to somehow internalise that as a part of one's self. The *place* where you were born is exceptional, so you are too!

What I don't quite understand is falling for it. Choosing to live inside a false history. Choosing to be "proud" of massive violence. Absolutely rejecting all facts that show that Empire is really a bad thing for a lot of people *most likely including you if you were alive*.

I know that history tends to focus on rich people, and so everyone tends to think that in the past they too would have been the rich people. I suppose this guy thinks he would have be swanning around in a pith helmet drinking G&Ts somewhere. But bro - no.

You are not the history of Empire! Would you have benefitted from it? Sure! You still are! But it isn't actually a reflection on you in the way that you think it is. *You* did not *do anything* in order to inherit a crumbling imperial legacy. You work in IT. Calm down.

You certainly benefit from a lot of imperial violence. However, none of this is your own achievement. None of this is something you did. None of this is *you*. It is OK to admit that concentration camps and forced famines are a bad thing - because this isn't about *you*.

I think if people actually read more history, rather than simply feeling a certain type of way about what they think history is, then this could be combatted, but I am not sure how we do that. I can barely get my students to do their assigned reading, you know?

TL/DR I am trying to get out of writing so I wrote a bunch of stuff on twitter instead which can mostly be summed up as "nationalism is a hell of a drug and Empire is bad, actually".

Update: the great defender of Empire is currently crying about being bullied by teenagers because he is a dweeb. Powerful stuff.