In order to truly control the population, one must deprive them of their historical consciousness. People must not know or think about being part of a chain of generations and events from the past to the future. Ideally, we should be made to believe that we live in exceptional times, free from any historical heritage – any connection between what preceded us and the situation we find ourselves in now. As rootless and freely floating, we become easy prey for all kinds of world-improving ideologies and imaginative fantasies, which those in power fully know how to exploit.

I was once a history teacher in high school but do not know what the young learn today. In the leading Western country, the USA, they seem to learn nothing.

A recent survey of American high school students’ historical knowledge yielded the following disheartening results: 72 percent did not know that the USA was at war with Hitler during World War II. 87 percent did not know that the USA entered World War II because of the attack on Pearl Harbor. 60 percent did not know which countries the USA was at war with between 1941 and 1945. 13 percent believed that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a general from the American Civil War.

On the other hand, most of them are probably well aware that the world is on the verge of collapse due to human emissions of CO2, and that the right-wing is fascist.”