It’s long been said that “History is written by the victors”, but I never really appreciated how deeply true that statement is.
I used to just think it applied to big civilizational wars — and usually in the distant past. You wage a war, wipe out the enemy, then you get to be the ones left alive to write up how good and noble and virtuous you and your cause were.
But seeing what all the major “newspapers of record” and their televised brethren have done over these last 8 years or so makes me wonder if we ever get anything like the truth when we read history.
The “official” history that has been written about the Trump/Russia collusion hoax, the “fine people” hoax, the “drinking bleach” hoax is riddled with lies. And much, much, worse, virtually every piece of “news” about the Covid hysteria has been all government-bolstering propaganda.
Counter-narratives to these lies also exist, but in much smaller and more “fringe” papers. And of course there are podcasts that tell a more truthful story about all these things.
But there are also podcasts telling people that the earth is flat, so…
I honestly wonder: What will humans 100 years from now think about the history of the period we are living through right now?
And what does it mean about the history you and I read from 100 years ago?
Does history get more or less accurate as various historians dig through various records and construct their own interpretive narratives to make sense of what they investigate?
There is a growing “revisionist history” movement, and I’m glad to see it. It’s just not the case that the “official paper of record” interpretation of events is the most accurate one.
The “official” types like to harumph revisionist historians. But I don’t think I want to settle on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s interpretation of Abraham Lincoln. I’d also like to hear what Thomas DiLorenzo has to say about the man.
Here’s an even better one: What in the world was the “official” history of the Panic of 1819 or the Great Depression before Murray Rothbard came along and weighed in on these historical events? What is the “official” history now?
I encourage you all to dive into the world of history and examine the past through various different filters. Everybody agrees (roughly) about the major events that occur: a person dies, a war is fought, a volcano erupts, etc.
But it’s the how and the why and all the disputed details that really matter to make sense of history, and on that front, all our modern papers are just full of regime propaganda. I’m guessing it’s always been that way.
So, a good historian has to be a rather impressive person. They have to sort through all manner of known facts and conflicting narratives to try to suss out the most likely-to-be-true pieces of all the various narratives and spin that they encounter.
I hope they are up to the task. Figuring out the truth of things is only going to get harder going forward, I fear.
If you want to view the past through a narrative filter that I’ve found very illuminating over the years (as well as a ton of great economics and philosophy) I highly recommend Liberty Classroom. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.
Naturally,
Adam
you may appreciate this:
"....Written by John Dos Passos, a man of the radical left in his youth who later moved to the sensible right, it is from a 1941 essay, “The Use of the Past,” and it is uncannily relevant to the present:
'Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on. In spite of changing conditions of life they were not very different from ourselves, their thoughts were the grandfathers of our thoughts, they managed to meet situations as difficult as those we have to face, to meet them sometimes lightheartedly, and in some measure to make their hopes prevail. We need to know how they did it.
In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. That is why, in times like ours, when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by new institutions not necessarily in accord with most men’s preconceived hopes, political thought has to look backwards as well as forwards'...."
From <https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/rediscovering-wisdom-american-history/>