Ancestsoz

There are a few things that ought to be obvious to any student of history (...but which are apparently not.)

One of them, somewhat topical just to the north of us right now, is that nobody should be forced to apologise for the behaviour of their ancestors.

 

This is especially true of the distant kind — such that Parisians need not fret over inviting Norwegians to dinner unless they produce the magic words about how terribly sorry they are about the way Viking expats carried on around there long ago. 

 

Yet it is also true of the more recent kind, in that Jewish people ought not interview every young German they come across about their grandparents.

 

 

 

Mexico's extremely petty non-invitation of Felipe VI of Spain to the inauguration of incoming President Claudia Scheinbaum supposedly over his refusal to apologise for Cortés and the conquest back in the 16th century, is all the more silly because the King's surname, Borbón, is a bit of a giveaway here: his ancestors were busy being French at the time.

 

Should Spain in turn require some performative contrition from AMLO before he departs the scene, for all that industrial scale, ritualised mass murder the Mexica were ramping up before Europeans showed up and put a stop to it?

 

Another common piece of righteous ignorance we've seen applied to History quite a lot of late is the 'de-colonisation' fallacy, this map I came across last week being one of the most fanciful I've yet seen.

 

 

 

The basic idea here is that the Middle East can only expect to encounter lasting peace if the ascendancy of invasive Arab-Islamic civilisation (for which nobody seems to be in any hurry to apologise) is fully rolled back and the various 'indigenous' peoples of the region are permitted to reform their old ethno states (OK, in some cases, their old would-be ethno-empires).

The Turks in particular would seem to get the raw end of this deal. Do they have to set off back to the Asian steppes or would a simple 'sorry' to their resurgent Greek overlords suffice?

 

Anyway, utter nonsense, but the peak of it cannot be detected on this map, as that is the counter proposal to re-colonise Israel in the name of some sort of imagined de-colonisation.

Fanatics often reveal themselves via irate, demented and counter-productive approaches to History and culture.

At base any feigned reverence for dead people involves a disrespect for the living. History is important, and each of us has been fashioned by it, but ought to be seen as free of any moral responsibility, as individuals. 

 

All AMLO and co have revealed is the flipside of this basic common sense: the historical chip on the shoulder, which is equally unnecessary and dumb.

Common sense rarely prevails however. When not actually killing each other, the peoples and cultures captured by this alternative political map of the Middle East are likely to continue nurturing their chips and inviting each other to apologise inter-generationally, at gunpoint.

 

 In London, to grovel?