Remembrance Day and the truths that dare not speak their name

The ritual of tribute to fallen soldiers is a tradition that stretches back to antiquity. From then to the present the exaltation of those who have died fighting in a tribe, city state or nation’s wars has been crucial in uniting said community around a common narrative of shared purpose and values.

In Britain we have the annual commemoration of Remembrance Day, observed each year on the closest Sunday to 11 November, the anniversary of Armistice Day, which brought the First World War to an end in 1918 after four bloody years of slaughter in the mud swamped trenches of the Western Europe.

Young and old, rich and poor, the message embraced on Remembrance Day is that regardless of our differences we are joined by a common nationality, heritage and history — and that those who died fighting in the nation’s wars did so in the interests of all of us and as such are worthy of unyielding esteem, admiration, gratitude and honour.

There is however an insidious and pernicious aspect to this annual ritual, one that has come to embrace a set of ironclad national truths that brook no questioning, dissent or disagreement. It is that at…