“Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered,” George Orwell wrote in his landmark 1945 essay Notes on Nationalism. “He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should. It is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.”
A powerful and insightful description of people and movements that want to rewrite history to meet their own aspirations, instead of facing the reality of the present to create a better world.
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