Fuck revisionist history

[Patrick Degan]

Among those little items swept under history's rug in America: the syphilis experiments on unwitting blacks in the 1920s. The effort in Louisiana in the early part of the 20th century to extinguish the Cajun culture entirely through English-only schooling and corporal punishment issued out to pupils who spoke Acadiennes-French.

[DrMckay]

In the USA, Trail of Tears, Massacre of Wounded Knee, Corruption and graft rife in the Indian Reservation system,

"The Bonus Army"

In 1932, a group of WWI veterans and their families marched on Washington to receive a recently passed bonus for their service, much needed in the time of Depression. They were hit by tear gas and cavalry, (commanded by a certain George S. Patton) and under the overall command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Macarthur's staff at the time expressed "reservations" about marching on the veterans.

America doesn't have a great history of treating its former soldiers.

-Executive Order 9066:

Placed American citizens (and a few residents) many of American birth of at least 2nd generation into concentration camps, out of fear of disloyalty. No consideration was given to their personal property and landholdings. Reparations were not made for some time, and in many cases not at all.

Despite this, many young men in the Camps joined the US Army, the best known instance of this being the 442nd regimental combat team. They were the most-decorated, and took some of the heaviest casualties in the entire European Theater of Operations.

(Translation: They were used as cannon fodder, rarely relieved, and fought like hell.)



As an American Jew reading about anti-Semitism in Poland, I am also reminded of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. They held out for 42 days. I can't articulate precisely why, yet, but it means something important to me.

[DrMckay]

They didn't go quietly. If it ever happens here, I don't plan to either.

[Mayabird]

Japan - we're all pretty aware here of how the government and their history texts are trying to white-wash their history and pretend that things like the Rape of Nanking didn't occur (or the sex slave "comfort women", and so on and so forth). These things gain traction in Japan, though, because teaching modern history, especially the bad stuff, has been suppressed for decades. My mom, who grew up in the post-war generation, didn't learn anything about the Second World War or really what Japan did between the 1920s and 1950s until she went to college in the U.S. That's five to six decades of history classes mostly reaching the end of the term only having gotten to the beginning of the twentieth century (much like how American history classes, at least, the ones I had to deal with in school, never managing to get past 1969).

[Adrian Laguna]

The United States seems unwilling to admit that its involvement in the Great War accomplished approximately jack and shit to benefit itself or the world. In fact, the only think Woodrow Wilson's cocksucking of the British Empire seems to have accomplished is getting over 300,000 young Americans maimed or killed. At least of the naked land grabs that were the Mexican, Spanish-American, and Indian Wars left the United States with something to show for it at the end.

[Flagg]

In the USA, Trail of Tears, Massacre of Wounded Knee, Corruption and graft rife in the Indian Reservation system,

"The Bonus Army"

In 1932, a group of WWI veterans and their families marched on Washington to receive a recently passed bonus for their service, much needed in the time of Depression. They were hit by tear gas and cavalry, (commanded by a certain George S. Patton) and under the overall command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Macarthur's staff at the time expressed "reservations" about marching on the veterans.

America doesn't have a great history of treating its former soldiers.

-Executive Order 9066:

Placed American citizens (and a few residents) many of American birth of at least 2nd generation into concentration camps, out of fear of disloyalty. No consideration was given to their personal property and landholdings. Reparations were not made for some time, and in many cases not at all.

Despite this, many young men in the Camps joined the US Army, the best known instance of this being the 442nd regimental combat team. They were the most-decorated, and took some of the heaviest casualties in the entire European Theater of Operations.

(Translation: They were used as cannon fodder, rarely relieved, and fought like hell.)



As an American Jew reading about anti-Semitism in Poland, I am also reminded of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. They held out for 42 days. I can't articulate precisely why, yet, but it means something important to me.

I learned about all of those in elementary, junior high, and high school. So I don't think you can really say those things were swept under the rug.

The US is surprisingly willing to admit alot of it's mistakes. Not all or even most of them, but alot.

[Adrian Laguna]

The British Empire killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu in Kenya some 50 years ago. Happy fun times.

In the words of John Dolan "One of the great mysteries of the twentieth century was the way Britain got away with pillaging nearly every country on the planet without suffering any retribution." Where I British I'd take that as a compliment.

Since Peter the Great and before 1870s, the Russian Army employed the practice of whipping soldiers for disciplinary failures of various scale. The limits could be over 5000 stick-whips. The commanders could also be brutally whipped, with limits of 3000-1500 sticks.
After 1870, the number of strikes was reduced from the atrociously high limits to 50, however, it was still in practice until the war with Japan.

Pretty sure Peter copied the practice from the Prussians. It was fairly common throughout Europe, the only thing special about the Russian version was how long it lasted.

As for rapes, it was often that a noblemen or officer in the Tsarist Army raped his platoon.

That, however, is uniquely special.

Another thing we can thank the Soviet Union for is utterly fucking up the cause of the Republicans in Spain. Good job guys!

The hell? How does giving them supplies fuck them up? Without Soviet help the probably wouldn't have held out as long as they did. Though I do agree with you that the Soviets should have stayed out of it.

Ford and General Motors both sold trucks and other vehicles to the Spanish fascists.

What's wrong with that? Fascist money is as good as anyone else's, especially if it pays the salaries of Americans.

[K. A. Pital]

Without Soviet help the probably wouldn't have held out as long as they did.

Yeah. France was a proxy war and Franco has had the clergy, Italy and Germany behind him. What did the Republicans have?

Without the InterBrigades, they'd be fucked so much as to barely warrant a footnote in XX century histry.

Fascist money is as good as anyone else's, especially if it pays the salaries of Americans.

Indeed The US not only had corporate interests in Nazi Germany proper, but also had subsidiaries of it's corporations trading with Reich satellites (whereupon the items were immediately traded to the Reich, thus making it trade with the Reich ). Didn't oil corps sell oil to Spain where it was shipped to U-Boat bases for Nazis in Atlantic and Mediterranean, basically supplying their foe with fuel?

[Darth Raptor]

The United States seems unwilling to admit that its involvement in the Great War accomplished approximately jack and shit to benefit itself or the world. In fact, the only think Woodrow Wilson's cocksucking of the British Empire seems to have accomplished is getting over 300,000 young Americans maimed or killed. At least of the naked land grabs that were the Mexican, Spanish-American, and Indian Wars left the United States with something to show for it at the end.

To expand on that a bit, most history for common consumption shows Wilson in an overwhelmingly positive light. The only thing bad about him you'll hear in a high school history class regards his naive but well-intentioned efforts in the utter failure that was postwar Europe. To read about Wilson's bigotry and extralegal bullfuckery (on a scale G.W. Bush could only dream of), you pretty much have to do your own research. He was arguably one of the most maleficent presidents the USA ever had, yet he's regarded as merely mediocre at worst.

[Flagg]

I remember being taught almost nothing about the specifics of WW1. Basically it was just "Germans bad, Allies good" and "Wilson wanted a League of Nations but his 14 point plan was rejected" along with the dates and the reasons for the start of the war. Oh, and the Lusitania. Other than that, nothing.

Which kind of pissed me off when it turns out that both sides were being idiots and the Allies were pretty much pushing for a war, anyway.

[PeZook]

I remember being taught almost nothing about the specifics of WW1. Basically it was just "Germans bad, Allies good" and "Wilson wanted a League of Nations but his 14 point plan was rejected" along with the dates and the reasons for the start of the war. Oh, and the Lusitania. Other than that, nothing.

Which kind of pissed me off when it turns out that both sides were being idiots and the Allies were pretty much pushing for a war, anyway.

My high school history class was eerily similar. It was pretty much after I started studying history on my own that I learned just how complicated WWI really was, and how it led to an even bigger, easily preventable fuckup of WWII.

[K. A. Pital]

Uncommon problem for us, that . In Russia (as far as I know) the WWI is still taught as a dumb bloodbath between angry, warmongering Empires on all sides.

[PeZook]

Uncommon problem for us, that . In Russia (as far as I know) the WWI is still taught as a dumb bloodbath between angry, warmongering Empires on all sides.

Well,it's probably because Russia got nothing but suffering and death out of it, while Poland got its independence back from the Entente, so I guess we kinda feel we owe them something

[TithonusSyndrome]

Further stuff for Canada; our detainment of Japanese-Canadian citizens was, if anything, more vigorous than that taking place in America in WWII.

Which also reminds me; numerous Italian-Canadians were detained, including my great-grandfather, and reputedly were subjected to outright abusive conditions. Her was pursuing reparations with the federal government when he died in 1991.

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.

Well, seeing as how the comparison was one of their faith, it amounts to the same thing.

[TC Pilot]

If you're dividing mainstream history and academic history, you're pretty well aware that the latter has academic standards - the use of sources, archival evidence, and so on.

No real history book doesn't rely on sources, archives, etc, mainstream or academic. The difference, again, is popularity.

Popular history books may be chock full of urban legends and bullshit - but due to them being so remote from academic history, and lacking any kind of peer review process, or any standards of evidence, which are pretty rigorous, especially for XIX-XX century history... they still sell well.

The problem is, however, that the reason they sell well is because they deal with subjects people actually care about. Unfortunately, the last thirty or forty years has witnessed a complete breakdown of what would be considered "consensus history" among historians, and even a collapse in standards. Two of the most popular American historians of the period, Stephen Ambrose and Dooris Goodwin, were rampant plagiarists, for example. I remember reading a fairly well-selling biography of Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky that made some completely ridiculous conclusions (Stalin actually loved the Orthodox Church or plotted to kill all the Russian Jews in the 1950s). But those books sure as hell weren't poorly researched or cited.

On the opposite side, you have "academic" historians (usually professors whose books never go beyond a couple hundred copies) just as prone to making stuff up. One historian (his name escapes me at the moment), misquoted old German documents to show businesses funded the Nazis. Even the Smithsonian Institute made was ridiculous exhibit for the Enola Gay that would by no means be considered "popular" (no, the Japanese weren't innocent victims of evil American racism).

"Intellectual dishonesty" in academic history is very hard to smuggle - any way you're only going to show what your historic data shows - not more and not less, unless you unwittingly or deliberately lie somewhere, or express a lack of rigor.

On the contrary, you'd be amazed how easy it is to get away with this stuff. The abovementioned Stephen Ambrose had been plagiarizing for almost forty years before he was caught. Even the British Hitler-apologist David Irving got away with outright dishonesty for almost twenty.

Sadly the professional historic community is pretty remote from it all; they're pretty bad at popularizing.

You've got that right. It doesn't help that almost no one gives a crap about the garbage they're writing about now.

[K. A. Pital]

No real history book doesn't rely on sources, archives, etc, mainstream or academic.

Misquoting and openly lying is okay in popular history books. Hearsay evidence is okayed in popular history books. You may claim those are not "real" but the only thing what separates them is popular style and erronenous claims (deliberate, or just due to lack of rigor). Their print runs are in the millions.

I remember reading a fairly well-selling biography of Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky that made some completely ridiculous conclusions (Stalin actually loved the Orthodox Church or plotted to kill all the Russian Jews in the 1950s).

Never read Radzinsky. He's a publicator, not a historian. And of course there's quite a lot of bullshit in such books. The most common shit like "Stalin, was sooo scared and shaken he fell ill in the first war days!". I can't believe I heard this shit over and over when records from Stalin's cabinet secretary logs have been available. And those people aim to "publish" history?

They'd better be off writing some fantasy cycle, like "Ring of Time"...

One historian (his name escapes me at the moment), misquoted old German documents to show businesses funded the Nazis.

That's a lie, but I doubt that shit would pass any peer review. You know, huge works like "The Ottoman micro-picro development of huffyuff in the XXX century" generally get lots of review. You can only falsify stuff like non-PR books or expositions.

The abovementioned Stephen Ambrose had been plagiarizing for almost forty years before he was caught. Even the British Hitler-apologist David Irving got away with outright dishonesty for almost twenty.

Come one, Irving didn't even have any credentials as a historian; he just thought that reading archives and writing books makes one a historian. Some historians positively evaluated his early work; so what? And no, he didn't "get away" with the shit he's been peddling, and he's a pariah in historic academia like other revisionist history bullshiters.

Are you saying Irving was accepted into academic history?

It doesn't help that almost no one gives a crap about the garbage they're writing about now.

Garbage? I'm pretty sure I found thousands of brilliant and interesting works by those people on subjects from BC to late XX century! it's just that the language and style of those works, as well as their dry factology approach doesn't satisfy "the masses" which buy histori NUVELZ! at their Barnes and Noble.

Well, here's my favourite rant part: fuck the mass customer. Fuck people who don't understand that history also has standards, which are technical and pretty much enforced as far as a humanities field can.

[K. A. Pital]

Also, the best historian are the archives anyway. If a book doesn't have notes with archival document numbers that book is going into the trashcan right now. Because that's how historic works are PRed, many historians take up even obscure history books and, upon finding out who the author is, call up the archives (or even visit) and check the documents there.

If someone doesn't give such things for his crucial evidence propositions in a book that's meant to be a 'historic" work, that person is most surely either making fantasy or deliberately spreading lies.

[TC Pilot]

Never read Radzinsky. He's a publicator, not a historian. And of course there's quite a lot of bullshit in such books. The most common shit like "Stalin, was sooo scared and shaken he fell ill in the first war days!". I can't believe I heard this shit over and over when records from Stalin's cabinet secretary logs have been available. And those people aim to "publish" history?

They'd better be off writing some fantasy cycle, like "Ring of Time"...

And yet there's still a copy of it in my university's library (though it's in Russian, making me wonder what's the point of it being there).

That's a lie, but I doubt that shit would pass any peer review. You know, huge works like "The Ottoman micro-picro development of huffyuff in the XXX century" generally get lots of review. You can only falsify stuff like non-PR books or expositions.

I just found the historian's name. He was David Abraham, and he managed to get away with it long enough to make it his Ph.D dissertation and actually got a job at Princeton before he was caught.

And no, he didn't "get away" with the shit he's been peddling, and he's a pariah in historic academia like other revisionist history bullshiters.

By "get away with," I don't mean he hasn't become a complete joke, just that it took far longer than it should have taken before he was made a laughing stock.

Are you saying Irving was accepted into academic history?

Not in the least bit. He's everything a historian should not be.

Garbage? I'm pretty sure I found thousands of brilliant and interesting works by those people on subjects from BC to late XX century! it's just that the language and style of those works, as well as their dry factology approach doesn't satisfy "the masses" which buy histori NUVELZ! at their Barnes and Noble.

I believe I'm generalizing a bit too much. But there's an undeniable shift in the focus of history away from politics, away from war, away from the "traditional" subjects. You'd be hard pressed, for example, to find a history department that still has an early modern England historian (let alone anyone who still holds to the Marxist view of history), whereas you'd probably get buried alive in teaching positions for social trends or gender relations in history. Being the military/political historian that I am, I consider things like that to be completely irrelevant compared events such as the Glorious Revolution or the Long Parliament.

Well, here's my favourite rant part: fuck the mass customer. Fuck people who don't understand that history also has standards, which are technical and pretty much enforced as far as a humanities field can.

Again, there is a problem with something even as basic as academic standards. The American Historical Association (basically, you belong to it if you're a professional historian in the United States) actually disbanded its Professional Division, which was in charge of investigating allegations of fraud and dishonesty, in 2004.

[Lonestar]

Pretty sure Peter copied the practice from the Prussians. It was fairly common throughout Europe, the only thing special about the Russian version was how long it lasted.

I just got finished reading Massie's Peter the Great. The Knout(the particular whip and technique used) was used before Peter the Great as well in Russia.

[K. A. Pital]

And yet there's still a copy of it in my university's library (though it's in Russian, making me wonder what's the point of it being there).

I bet you can find Irving, Rezun, Bushkov, and others of that ilk if you search up the libraries, too.

He was David Abraham, and he managed to get away with it long enough to make it his Ph.D dissertation and actually got a job at Princeton before he was caught.

For Christ's sake the guy's first post-PhD book totally ruined him and led to case of reviewing his work, where he was turned down from every where.

Such incidents give rant fodder only to Nazi-loving harpies at the "Institute" for Holocaust Denial, but who takes that shithole's accusations against professional history in general seriously? Nazi whackjobs? Pop historians in search of 'sensations'?

This is like saying creationist allegations against professional biology have some credency due to frauds in biology, which were exposed by science itself. I see the same here.

I don't mean he hasn't become a complete joke, just that it took far longer than it should have taken before he was made a laughing stock.

Irving wasn't even a professional scholar. What did he "get away" with. From the very first books Irving was fucked, he routinely lost libel hearings and some of his books were not just ridiculed, but withdrawn from circulation as the bullshit they are. Byt the time he wrote a Hitler asskissing ode to Nazism, he was shreds and cannon fodder. Who else is there? Nolte, the infamous Cold War rider? I don't think most of them amount to more than historical corpses now, given the views they espoused and the amount of bullshit they spouted.

But there's an undeniable shift in the focus of history away from politics, away from war, away from the "traditional" subjects.

There's lots of works about war; it's just that history is now a much more extensive field and war has become just one of innumerous subjects, as opposed to being the primary one - political and military history used to take up 80-100% of hte bulk of historic works made some century ago, but now it's not that the volume of works has decraesed - only increased - however it's size relative to overall volume decreased.

There's nothing bad about that, professionals have now other areas which are more obscure to investigate.

The American Historical Association (basically, you belong to it if you're a professional historian in the United States) actually disbanded its Professional Division, which was in charge of investigating allegations of fraud and dishonesty, in 2004.

Huh? Why? Is there no need to expouse fraudsters no more?

[Jadeite]

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.

Did he explore the option of a lawsuit against those who did it?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

What I find interesting is that in the history programmes at university, the textbooks used are often...popular history you find at B&N. It's not exactly stuffy "academic" history I think in the sense you mean.

We do read the peer-reviewed journals, but they seem to give us a lot of texts that are popular. They're written by professional historians and have sources, but would probably fall into your popular category.

[TC Pilot]

I bet you can find Irving, Rezun, Bushkov, and others of that ilk if you search up the libraries, too.

You're right. My university does have some of Irving and Rezun's books.

This is like saying creationist allegations against professional biology have some credency due to frauds in biology, which were exposed by science itself. I see the same here.

I think we're misunerstanding each other. By no means was Irving's trash ever credible, nor is it made more credible because of certain failings in the field he tried to be a part of.

There's nothing bad about that, professionals have now other areas which are more obscure to investigate.

The problem with that is that it has resulted in a compartmentalization of history, among other things. Particularly in American universities, old topics and subjects have been systematically replaced as the old professors die off. There might be a dozen, perhaps even fewer, positions in those areas open nowadays. It isn't a balance, it's just a massive shift in what respect the field is imbalanced.

Huh? Why? Is there no need to expouse fraudsters no more?

Nope. Their ability to police historians and enforce historical standards was simply too atrocious to justify the board's existence any longer.

That's what happens when the historical community gives up on von Ranke, I guess.

[K. A. Pital]

By no means was Irving's trash ever credible, nor is it made more credible because of certain failings in the field he tried to be a part of.

Indeed. If you're thinking about the lack of historians ability to decisively stop the propagation of bullshit history, one needs merely to look at creatinism and evolution again. There's no fucking way cretinism is going to force itself into science; however, in some places under public demand it can try to force itself into education. And it's sold freely, in great print runs, in the run of the mill bookstores.

History can't censor this tripe. Technically it doesn't need to - by polemicizing with bullshiters in open press, their bullshit is destroyed for all rational people to see.

As for the irrational, they would believe that tripe no matter what. I mean, could you really hope to "explain" anything to, say, Iranian holocaust deniers or neo-Nazis or their sympathizers from IHR? Hell no.

[K. A. Pital]

P.S. We really do need a history subforum I think, that's a subject many take interest in.