We’re witnessing a rich, multi-layered period of recent social history being forcibly reconstructed as the Bad Old Days.

This shouldn’t surprise us. A shallow, moralising presentism has prevailed among our cultural elites for many years now. Large swathes of complex social, political and intellectual history are increasingly damned in terms of some present-day identity politics. The Enlightenment is now re-imagined as little more than a Eurocentric, colonialist power-play. The foundation of the United States is now reduced to an act of systemic racism. And yesterday’s heroes are now cast as today’s villains, their statues toppled, their books revised, removed or stamped with a trigger warning. …

What we are witnessing is a form of manic, crusading presentism. A form of moralising propaganda. An attempt to morally affirm elite ideology by re-casting even the very recent past as a site of evil behaviour and attitudes. Indeed, what’s striking about many of the pieces written in response to the Brand allegations is how explicitly the ‘nasty Noughties’ are being marshalled to legitimise the elite crusades of the present.

[This column is specific to the UK, but it’s applicable to the US as well. Think of the whiplash experienced when the position Barack Obama endorsed on marriage in 2008 suddenly became “bigotry” by 2013. Cultural Marxism is all about ‘presentism,’ because it allows the elites to punish competitors for cultural and political power. — Ed]