Remembering to forget: Supporting and opposing the war on terror through the myth of the Blitz spirit after the July 7th bombings

Abstract

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE The ‘Blitz spirit’ is a popular story about Britain during the Second World War; the country uniting together with defiance to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. This paper approaches the Blitz spirit as a myth before a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) examines how this myth was retold in British newspapers after the July 7th bombings. I firstly analyse Blitz spirit discourses that evoked unity between Britain and America in the war on terror. I then argue that evocations of this myth became more complex, often criticising Tony Blair for his moral incompatibility with Second World War or Churchillian analogies. Both discursive positions featured a myth that remembers and forgets details in a popular story from the past. This paper argues that whilst the Blitz spirit was a problematic feature of post-July 7th media, it did not serve one ideological purpose. Through a nuanced approach to Roland Barthes’ model of myth, I argue that an ideological battleground occurred when a myth from the 1940s recurred in 2005.

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