Self-perception of history is the most effective tool for shaping group hatred

Evidence

The perception that people have of their own history is of course the most effective single method of inducing, exacerbating, and—one hopes—reducing hatred. In the most primitive societies it comes in the form of tribal memory, developing into balladry and saga. In modern society these are replaced for most people by the primary school where we receive some grounding in the history at least of our own people, supplemented by the cinema and television screen from which most of us derive our knowledge of the earlier as well as of the more recent past. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1047

Categorization

• SEED: The claim that democratic societies disseminate self-hatred rather than hatred of others through popular history is a provoking inversion worth an essay on liberal self-flagellation as a form of sanctioned group feeling.