I think there is also a problem of not looking at the past in a way that distorts it? Ignoring the bad in favor of the positive isn’t history - it’s propaganda. It can be a fine line between propaganda and historical accuracy, I think. Just go pick up many books on the history of the Balkans/Yugoslavia… there are some great works out there, but lots of books that cherry pick to make an argument in favor of one ethnic group or another. Writing history in the Balkans is a fraught political process.
Or looking here, it’s like the neo-confederate narratives about the antebellum period and the CW that started being employed on Southern history almost as soon as reconstruction ended. The fact that much of that has seeped into current history taught in some schools is telling.
