Nostalgia is always false

Ah the good old days. Remember how good they were? Not like now.

Nostalgia is always a lie because it underplays the complexity of a previous time and ignores all the difficult elements of it. In addition, it presents the modern day as solely bad, a fallen age. The reality is always more complex than this. Everything-is-a-Story and an idealised past is no exception.

Remember nostalgia-is-a-fascist-weapon

References

Of course, the point of the mythic past is that it’s mythic. The desire is for a past that never existed, and to have nostalgia for a past that never existed, you must go further and further back, until the details are murky enough that you can project any fantasy you’d like onto the period.

• Rowan Lee, To Defeat Facism, We Must Reject Nostalgia