The historical narrative of a nation (and the identity of its population) must be disrupted and destabilised

Article in The Independent (website) by Owen Jones on the evils of British imperialism:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-william-hague-is-wrong-we-must-own-up-to-our-brutal-colonial-past-8101370.html

The article is provocative and highly tendentious, and at several points seems to equate British imperialism with Nazi Germany.

On the one hand, radical reinterpretations of history can be useful.  New evidence comes to light on a continual basis and needs to be integrated into the historical record.  Owen Jones studied History at Oxford and must be allowed an opinion on areas of valid debate.

However I do not think this article is entirely an impartial attempt to contribute towards historical research and review.

Socialists (true socialists, not social democrats) believe that bourgeois capitalist society cannot be reformed, it must be destroyed and rebuilt along socialist lines.

To achieve this the historical narrative of a nation (and the identity of its population) must be disrupted and destabilised so that the ordinary people question who they are and question whether the national myths which sustain their society are worth maintaining.

In a normally-functioning democracy such attempts to subvert the national mythus ("the inter-relationship of value structures and historical experiences of a people, usually given expression through the arts") would get nowhere.  The population would have enough collective intellectual rigour to be able to decide whether British history was no better than that of Nazi Germany.  But as the GCSE grade inflation scandal demonstrates, the way subjects are taught in schools has become corrupted, and for several decades school leavers have not had the knowledge or interpretation skills to know when they are being manipulated.