Selective forgetting of a nation’s negative history is required for national identity

Evidence

What is necessary for people to have a sense of belonging to their nation? To reach optimal distinctiveness (Brewer, 1991), of course, and to perceive their nation as high in entitativity (Castano, Yzerbyt, & Bourguignon, 2003), but also to forget many of the events of their country’s history (Renan, 1882). Since the nation is an imagined community (Anderson, 1991), the selective forgetting of negative events is part and parcel of the formation and maintenance of a national identity. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2087

Categorization

• XREF: Ties national in-group maintenance to motivated forgetting; relevant to the reader’s broader thread on how collective self-narratives protect group moral image. — connects to: National identification is bound up with positive appraisals of the group’s history — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 837; National glorification but not attachment blocks critical evaluation of ingroup wrongdoing. — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 25
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2087