Fuck revisionist history

[Eleas]

Inspired by the thread on Australia's treatment of aboriginals, I was reminded of all the other sordid facts that various nations would rather have the world forget. I can understand the notion of collective shame being so great people would rather pretend nothing ever happened - some nations seem better at this than others - but really, if you live in a country, there almost has to be a moral obligation to face its true history, not the one they'd prefer to have. Right?

So the question becomes, what unpleasant historical factoids about your country have you found that history class / the bulk of mass media like to gloss over? Here, I'll start.

• Sterilization of undesirables. Sanctioned by law, the idea of pruning unwanted traits from the Swedish population was formalized in the 1930s. The notion was to prevent the proliferation of those who were afflicted with heriditary defects - mental illness, apathy, asociality, and promiscuity. This law was practiced until formally disbanded by Olof Palme in 1976 (an event rather more embarrassingly famous than the actual existence of the law). An estimated 90% of the forcibly sterilized were women.
• The assimilation of the Sami. The Sami, the indigenous population of northern Scandinavia, were like many other aboriginal people considered in the way of proper god-fearing Abrahamites. The usual circus of encroaching on land, dividing families and prohibition of language ensued, so that Sami children would grow up outside the dangerous influence of heathen elements. Since a large part of the Sami culture involve the herding of reindeer, they were particularly vulnerable to land grabs and poaching.
  The conflicts have now abated somewhat - to my understanding there has been no actively enforced ethnic cleansing in a hundred years or so - but even today, the conflicts between Norrlanders and Lapps remain.
• Sweden's little flirt with Nazi Germany. It's not a secret that a lot of Swedes, neutrality nonwithstanding, harbored deep sympathies for Nazi Germany. Like the Swedes, the German race were a cultured people, an oasis of civilization in a sea of savagery. Or something. The notion that Swedish people were inherently of a superior breed was unsurprisingly an attractive one, and one on which Germans and Swedes were in touching agreement. Of course, the end of the war revealed that it hadn't been like that at all. Suddenly, everyone hated the Nazis, had in fact hated them all along. Nazi paraphernalia was quietly swept under the rug, and with it the dream of Swedish cultural dominion over the lesser races. C'est la vie.
• On a related note, Sweden pioneered a lot of things. Like eugenics. The State Institute for Race Biology was the first of its kind in the world. Sanctioned by all governmental parties, it was founded in 1922, and addressed what was then known as the degeneration issue, a societal topic of intense interest during that time. The perceived danger of a "poisoning of society's body" and that the "material of the populace" would be "diluted" was great, and a solution had to be found in science. And this was done until 1956, when the government saw fit to disband the Institute, to the great dismay of all who would chart the hereditary basis of alcoholism, willfulness, criminality and insanity.

There's doubtless more, but these are the skeletons in the closet I could find with a little bit of digging. So, what of your countries? Note that it doesn't have to be obscure; just unwanted, glossed over, and shameful. Any takers?

[Teebs]

Britain gassed the kurds 70 years before Saddam. If I remember correctly it also caused mass starvation in India at some points in the 19th century.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

All I have to say is. I'm American.

I'm pretty sure that's about covers it.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

America. Yep, we got skeletons in the closet for centuries, ranging from smallpox blankets and the Trail of Tears through being literally the only nation to ever attack somebody with a nuclear weapon to, well, look in Iraq.

[Glocksman]

All I have to say is. I'm American.

I'm pretty sure that's about covers it.

Hmm...
I'm sure most people know the big ones such as Slavery and the Indian wars, so I'll touch on a couple of lesser known ones.

Some factoids I *didn't* learn in school include such things as:

1. The labor unrest during the late 19th/early 20th centuries saw police and militiamen literally massacre striking workers in a manner that'd make Himmler proud.

2. Eugenics. The US was fascinated with the subject as well and many states had laws similar to the ones listed in the OP.

3. The 'Banana Wars'. Marine General Smedley Butler summed this up with his well known quote about being 'a gangster for capitalism'.

[Molyneux]

America. Yep, we got skeletons in the closet for centuries, ranging from smallpox blankets and the Trail of Tears through being literally the only nation to ever attack somebody with a nuclear weapon to, well, look in Iraq.

Er...I wouldn't say that the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki is exactly a "skeleton in the closet". We don't gloss over it or try to pretend it never happened - it was the best alternative to a long, protracted and horrifically bloody struggle.

As for the other stuff, yes, they do tend to gloss over it as much as they can, though my American History class in high school did spend about a week on the Trail of Tears.

[Crazy_Vasey]

Britain gassed the kurds 70 years before Saddam. If I remember correctly it also caused mass starvation in India at some points in the 19th century.

There were several famines in India during British rule with the last coming during the Second World War. Here, a wikipedia link about said famine. It's fairly telling that there hasn't been a famine in India since they were freed from the Empire.

[Eleas]

Another detail about Sweden: we've always been real keen on charity to the third world, and our immigration policy has been lax until fairly recently. On the other hand, we also like to trade, and the third world needs stuff we don't give out for free. Things like land mines and cluster bombs. Always a big business, that, and Bofors AB has made quite literally billions of dollars from stuff used to make the lives of peasants and shepherders around the world a little more interesting.

[Anguirus]

As for yet another American atrocity, how about invading Panama?

[Rye]

My most hated thing that the UK has been responsible for in recent history (i.e. post WW2) is the intensely depressing incarceration and suicide of Alan Turing. To cut a long story short for those who don't know, the man was brilliant, a pioneer of computing and helped win World War 2 by cracking the Enigma machine's code.

Afterwards, well, I'll just quote from the wiki:

Turing was homosexual in a period when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness and subject to criminal sanctions. In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of his, helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray, and a crime having been identified and settled, they were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted. He was given the choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on his undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. In order to avoid going to jail, he accepted the estrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including gynecomastia (breast enlargement). His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters.

On 8 June 1954, his cleaner found him dead; the previous day, he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was reenacting a scene from "Snow White", his favourite fairy tale. Because Turing's homosexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested.

[Stark]

Yeah, it's pretty depressingly hilarious that the imprisoned one of the greatest minds in their country because of something so stupid.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Turing's story is certainly the one I think of most when referring to UK atrocities because it's so recent and, frankly, so retarded it hurts. Turning down Whittle prior to WWII was a similar faux pas, though not as disastrous or tragic.

[Broomstick]

2. Eugenics. The US was fascinated with the subject as well and many states had laws similar to the ones listed in the OP.

Indeed.

My husband was sterilized as a young boy under US eugenics laws - nevermind that his birth defect is not hereditary and he is of above average intelligence. That is why we never had children. It's a sensitive subject in our household and likely I'll never mention it again, but it was so pertinent to the thread I felt I had to mention it.

My second oldest sister was almost sterilized - she suffered a febrile seizure or two as an infant. Fortunately, our pediatrician fought the epilepsy diagnosis (which was the right thing to do, as she has suffered no seizures since about 6 months of age). If she had been diagnosed as epileptic she would have been sterilized as an infant with my parents having no say in the matter. And my niece and one of my nephews would not exist.

MANY families were affected by this, but few ever speak of it because of issues of shame, and the younger generations simply never know about it. I know of instances (my husband is one, in fact) where the children were never told, grew up in ignorance, and only found out when they went to a doctor to find out why they were unsuccessful at having children.

[Singular Intellect]

As the saying goes, history is always written by the victors.

[Sabastian Tombs]

During the later part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century it used to be common to take the children of recent Catholic immigrants away from them and raise the kids in Protestant homes.

[Eleas]

Indeed. And that, more than anything, is the reason for why I started the thread.

Broomstick, I know it's a tough subject to air, so thank you for doing so.

It should be noted that the majority of forced sterilizations in Sweden looked something like this: a woman would come in for an abortion, usually the second one (a repeat offender, see?). Then, once the narcosis had taken effect, a paper was shoved under her nose and a pen placed in her hand. Convincing a drugged "patient" to sign was usually not difficult, and during the operation, the entire reproductive apparatus would be excised. Charming, innit?

[Broomstick]

Broomstick, I know it's a tough subject to air, so thank you for doing so.

I did it in part because to far too many people it's something in the history books, not someone they know. Except, since a lot of the people this was done to are still alive, they almost certainly DO know someone who was affected. Those laws were on the books through the 1960's and even in to the 1970's in some places.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Because nobody's stepped up to confessional for Canada in here yet, I may as well spill what I'm familiar with.

• The Komagatu Maru was a ship carrying Singaporean Sikhs, many of them war veterans of the British Empire they all had citizenship in, to Vancouver in 1914 when it detained in Vancouver Port and her passengers refused entry to Canada. Even departure was prohibited, and a failed attempt by Canadian authorities to seize the ship involved the Royal Canadian Navy, who replied by dispatching the HMCS Rainbow to bear it's guns at the passenger ship and anchor alongside it until the Sikhs agreed to the Canadian terms of departure and allowed the Rainbow to shadow them far out of port.
• The treatment of native tribes never reached the point of committed extermination as it did in America, but nevertheless the cruel and perhaps intentionally inhospitable treatment of the native tribes drove at least one, the Beothuk, into extinction, and many others were depopulated and impoverished, most notably by the intentional spread of smallpox.
• The Church is a contributor to this one; as in Australia, many native children were abducted and placed in boarding schools, where nuns were charged with the task of beating the sin out of them, and maybe sexaully abusing them on the side as well.
• In March of 1993, members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment captured the Somali teenager Shidane Arone and tortured him sadistically for hours before he expired. It was later revealed that some involved had affiliations with racist movements.

That's really all that comes to mind for me.

[Darth Wong]

It's not just eugenics; there were a lot of cultural similarities between pre-WW2 USA and Germany that nobody in the US wants to acknowledge. Hitler had plenty of admirers on this side of the pond at one time.

For that matter, most of the Commonwealth countries did not look too harshly upon the man so long as he was "only" persecuting Jews instead of invading other western European countries.

[Flagg]

It's not just eugenics; there were a lot of cultural similarities between pre-WW2 USA and Germany that nobody in the US wants to acknowledge. Hitler had plenty of admirers on this side of the pond at one time.

For that matter, most of the Commonwealth countries did not look too harshly upon the man so long as he was "only" persecuting Jews instead of invading other western European countries.

2 of our biggest national icons at the time, Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg were open admirers of Hitler. Hell, Ford got a medal from the Nazis and never returned it, IIRC. It was only after Pearl Harbor that either of them shut the fuck up about how great Nazi Germany was. Lindberg was so pro-Hitler prior to the war that he was (rightfully) denied a request to fly fighters against the Japanese (because he didn't want to fight the racially pure Germans, apparently).

There was also the German-American Buhnd that held rallies all over the country. Of course, many of them were rounded up and put in internment camps along with Italian-Americans and Japanese-Americans. Though we made sure to keep them segregated.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Further stuff for Canada; our detainment of Japanese-Canadian citizens was, if anything, more vigorous than that taking place in America in WWII. Also, Mackenzie King (our longest-serving prime minister and our leader in WWII) compared Hitler to Joan of Arc- and not in the way that they were both insane people.

[Lonestar]

Neo-Confederate Revisionist History:

Since the end of Reconstruction various "Sons/Daughters of the Confederacy" have managed to stamp out the idea that there was a large number of the population that was pro-Union(every state except South Carolina supplied at least a regiment of whites to the Federal Army). Stuff like the largest mass-hanging in American history(perpetrated against Pro-Union Texas citizens by the Confefderates)and various counter-secessionists movements. Of course, even places that were vehemently Pro-Union( Eastern Tennesse/Western North Carolina, West Virginia) now are filled with 'Tards who fly the flag of treason.

The Biggest one, of course, is that the Civil War wasn't fought over the right to own slaves, but "States' Rights!". Of course, when you talk about how the South forced the various Fugitive Slave Acts on the Northern States in the Pre-Civil War era you get blank looks. Also, it is merely a coincidence that the Confederate Draft specifically exempted large slaveowners. And the VP of the CSA obviously meant something else when he said that black slavery was the cornerstone of the CSA.

[K. A. Pital]

Lots. Mainly there's a tendency to gloss over things:
1) Stalin's mock trials and repressions are often "forgotten" or glossed over by the Church since he contributed to it's revival; Lenin and Khrushev are reviled
2) Crimes of the Orthodox Church, including, but not limited to, repression against heretics, witchhunts, support of slavery and monarchic dictate, are omitted in history classes. The "new Russia doctrine" is starting to take effect.
3) Crimes of Yeltsin, the oligarchic circle ("family"), and the current power of course are omitted in history class; mainly, the history of newest Russia isn't even told... or is told so abysmally bad, that it makes me cringe
4) Moral decline in the Tsar Russia army, and it's practices, including brutal beatings of soldiers, homosexual rape by superiors (under homosexuality criminalized!)
5) History of alcoholism and the effectiveness of alcohol bans in raising the life expectancy and lowering death rates - largely obscured by the enormous, now-private, but with a heavy lobby, alcohol industry...

Deportations of smaller nations under Stalin is a common theme which is always touched. However, prior deportations and forced population transfer, as well as slavery and hunger in the XIX-early XX century Russian Empire are not well researched or completely obscured by the zealot "Russian Imperials" who claim Russian empire was a land of honey and fluffy bunnies (complete with a kind and loving Tzar!) that bullshit often gets some measure of attention.

The older an epoch, the less ideology comes into play. The more recent epochs are twisted by political will: either totally demonized, or glorified, by political decree also some elements of the epoch may be glorified to the extent other things are omitted.

There's lots that people hate to think about, or seriously critically analyze.

[Flagg]

Neo-Confederate Revisionist History:

Since the end of Reconstruction various "Sons/Daughters of the Confederacy" have managed to stamp out the idea that there was a large number of the population that was pro-Union(every state except South Carolina supplied at least a regiment of whites to the Federal Army). Stuff like the largest mass-hanging in American history(perpetrated against Pro-Union Texas citizens by the Confefderates)and various counter-secessionists movements. Of course, even places that were vehemently Pro-Union( Eastern Tennesse/Western North Carolina, West Virginia) now are filled with 'Tards who fly the flag of treason.

The Biggest one, of course, is that the Civil War wasn't fought over the right to own slaves, but "States' Rights!". Of course, when you talk about how the South forced the various Fugitive Slave Acts on the Northern States in the Pre-Civil War era you get blank looks. Also, it is merely a coincidence that the Confederate Draft specifically exempted large slaveowners. And the VP of the CSA obviously meant something else when he said that black slavery was the cornerstone of the CSA.

You gotta love the irony of seeing a CSA battleflag sticker on the same bumper as an "America: Love it or Leave it!" sticker.

That and how the flag only had a resurgence during the civil rights movement, but "It's about heritage, not hatred!".

Or how they call it "The War of Northern Aggression" despite the fact that they seceded and they fired the first shots of the war.

Or how Sherman was this horrible tyrant given credit for burning down places hundreds of miles away from where any of his troops ever set foot.

How about the fact that almost every anti-drug law from the late 19th and early 20th century was passed on the basis that when black people did them they went batshit and started raping white women.

And it's not like there isn't any slavery hypocrisy in the North. From the way you hear New Englanders talk, every single person there was adamantly anti-slavery and a member of the underground railroad.

[Illuminatus Primus]

4) Moral decline in the Tsar Russia army, and it's practices, including brutal beatings of soldiers, homosexual rape by superiors (under homosexuality criminalized!)

What?! That happened? I've never heard that.