File: Michigan J Frog.swf-(2.54 MB, 640x480, Other)
[_] Historical Revisionism Anonymous 05/23/14(Fri)13:49 No.2393182
Yeah, it's pretty much like that.
Marked for deletion (old).
>> [_] Anonymous 05/23/14(Fri)13:55 No.2393188
I love this.
>> [_] Anonymous 05/23/14(Fri)14:32 No.2393220
This term makes no sense. Revision is what historians do. This is how we get history: by looking
over the evidence, and looking for new evidence, and interpreting it with cooler heads as we're
further separated from the events being studied.
It would be a sad sort of historian who only collected newspaper articles, and other contemporary
accounts, and assumed they were all honest and accurate, or as close to the truth as anyone could
ever get.
There needs to be a better term for politically-motivated distortion of history than "historical
revisionism".
>> [_] Anonymous 05/23/14(Fri)15:16 No.2393267
It's just a frog sitting by the box?
I don't get it
>> [_] OP 05/23/14(Fri)16:30 No.2393334
>>2393220
I understand what you are trying to say (and agree regarding professional historians), but it is
largely a naive argument over semantic and political correctness. Despite the misnomer, the term
makes enough sense that you were able to understand the intended usage. So the term is quite apt.
I could readily call it "negationism" or "Lost Cause (of the confederacy)", but lose
comprehension in pursuit of accuracy.
>> [_] OP 05/23/14(Fri)16:32 No.2393336
>cont'd
The other part which I find naive is the assumption that negative historical revisionism is rare
and isolated to the far corners of the earth by the most radical movements. When in fact, it is
occurring more regularly than you may think. Religious and ultraconservative lobbies find ways to
pack the jury when it comes to things like schoolboard committees on curriculum and textbooks
which are distributed nationwide. Industrial and financial lobbies do the same, not so much in
the Humanities sense, but in statistics and economics: they manage to get their likeminded
employees hired in ivy league colleges to propagate their narrative. See "The Revisionaries" and
"Inside Job" if you haven't already.
>> [_] OP 05/23/14(Fri)16:51 No.2393353
And lastly, revisionism is not a practice that is limited to academics. It was and is performed
by political leaders and a nation-state's media, arguably more effectively than the academics,
because of the former's ready access to a popular audience. Don't believe me? Think back on an
event that is remembered differently, or any misquote that keeps getting repeated, or an iconic
picture which is actually doctored. You repeat something enough and people will believe it. And
as they say, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants
on."
The reality is, historical revisionism has more potential as a political tool than it does
sitting on the shelves of scholars. Remember, we do not live in an unbiased world.
