Worst Case of Historical Revisionism?

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SpergPatrol

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"History is written by it's winners," is a true statement as many countries and people change what happened in thier history books to justify certain events.

Question is what is the outright atrocious case of people rewriting history you have seen that can be proven?
Why do you think they re-wrote it in that way?
And worst part is it actually convincing anyone?
 
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The most outrageous example I can think of off the top of my head is when student activists at a university with an Abraham Lincoln statue wanted it removed because of his connection to the "Mankato hangings". This was an incident where, as said activists would tell you, Abe was responsible for the largest mass execution in American history, in which 38 Dakota warriors were hanged. This is technically true, but is so misleading that it's essentially a lie by omission.

What actually happened was that the US military had captured 303 Dakota men as POWs after a particularly vicious frontier conflict with settlers. The army originally wanted to hang all of them, but Abe personally intervened and commuted the sentences of 265 of them. The 38 who were left to hang were only those who had provably committed acts of rape and murder against settlers. He was actually being incredibly lenient, but by emitting key details when retelling what happened what was an act of mercy is now being used to portray him as a butcher. It's one of the few leftist lies that truly angers me because of how utterly slimy it is.
 
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The Jewish revolt in Judea, the most prominent account of which was written by the losers, in this case a former slave of Vespasian who actively participated in the Jewish revolt, Flavius Josephus. His account of the siege at Masada is markedly egregious, as the archaeological excavations and analyses of the site have not held up his claims of the fantastical last stand by the Sicarii.

There's also the myth of the 'clean wehrmacht', considering most of it came from former/serving german military or those with a vested interest in it. That one's been the most successful, considering how many wehraboos exist and its general persistence.
 
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That the insane Caligula made his horse a Senator. The writing of all the madness Caligula committed came decades after the end of his reign with most just being the publishing of sensationalist rumors and hearsay. In particular, wanting to make his horse a consul, which was not done out of madness but to insult the Senate by saying it had become so powerless that a horse could fulfill the senatorial office.
 
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There's a lot of hearsay and conflicting information about the Vlasov battalions during World War II. If you were to listen to Stalin, they were abject traitors; if you talked to Wehrmacht leadership they'd tell you that they were useful idiots; and if you listened to Solzhenitsyn they were martyrs. I couldn't tell you what is true and what isn't.
 
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Civil War states rights bullshit. It's not that it's the most harmful or offensive, just that I'm familiar enough with both sides of it to realize both how widespread it is and how easily disprovable it is too.

Leaving aside the stuff people always bitch about (noble savage Aztecs and American Indians, race and ancient/Medieval Europe, etc.), it pisses me off how Vikings are now played as heroic because they killed Catholics (who had done nothing to them, basically they treat them like a White version of their usual precious brown people because they weren't Christian), pirates, and Texas.

With pirates its straightforward, they - specifically certain historians, like Colin Woodward - play them off as progressive revolutionaries who gay married, had gender equality, fought colonialism, and liberated slaves. The truth is that they were still looters by their nature, and more specifically were looters either serving as mercs of the colonies or as rebellious mercs after their contracts were terminated (War of the Spanish Succession ending --> Nassau Republic formed). With regards to slaves, sometimes they freed slaves, sometimes they "freed" them by conscripting them into their crews (you know, kind of like being a slave), sometimes they sold the slaves since they were valuable contraband, sometimes they fucking sank the ship with the slaves onboard. It had everything to do with the personalities of the crews/captains involved and whatever goals they had at the moment. There was no ideology tied to it whatsoever.

With Texas they like to play up the slavery angle of it, how it was basically a filibuster expedition that was successful. I used to believe that, but in time I've come back to realizing that while most of the Texans WERE duplicitous scumbags, Santa Ana still had it coming. Leaving aside that the largely non-slaving, Catholic, and Mexican Tejanos were also largely revolutionaries, Santa Ana had overthrown the old constitution (basically voiding any legitimacy his government had), and was fighting secession movements spanning all the way from Yucatan to Zacatecas to Rio Grande to New Mexico to California. His whole country was disintegrating. So even if slavery was a big chunk of why Texas existed, you can't just overlook that Santa Ana was so shitty his own people rejected him all over the place.


I have had a tendency in my life - mostly my teenage years - towards revisionism, probably in large part just contrarian douchebaggery that also saw me embrace Alt-Right shit that I've mostly turned from in late college years. Despite that I don't regret any of it, because I have found that revisionism actually helps me to appreciate history much more and understand it better.

Firstly, revisionists tend to know more about their subject matter than casuals. There's lots of casuals who either don't care about history, or do care about it but are too lazy/unthinking to spend any time thinking through what they hear, so they just parrot whatever the dominant historical narrative is. I know people like this, who genuinely know a lot of stuff but also hold contradictory views (like American Revolution good, French Revolution bad, Lincoln good) because they just jerk off whatever looks the most traditional to them, even if tradition means totally different things in different contexts.

Anyways, the revisionist has to know a good chunk just to be a revisionist at all. Of course, much of what they learn will either be factually incorrect, misrepresented, or incomplete, but I still respect them. But, if a person reads generally and doesn't just read their revisionist circlejerk, they should eventually get enough knowledge for their revisionist viewpoint to collapse. (Mind, some revisionism is actually correct; McCarthyist revisionism, for example, is 100% true.)

Now, the cyclical part of this is that I tend to find that there's a journey where as you study the revisionist viewpoint you'll shift to backing the bad guy, but will eventually work your way back to supporting the good guy, except now with way more nuance and depth than the normal historical narrative goes. It's like Hegelian dialectics. Some examples from my studies:

AMERICAN REVOLUTION
- King bad because tax and no democracy :mad:
- King not bad, tax imposed because colony started war, also offered representation in Parliament, also want kill Indian :|
- King is bad, imperial troops not actually used to protect colonies, also colonies were basically self-governing so the King was kind of useless, was fucking them over in ways had never done before, colonies were like their own countries BEFORE British tightened down

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
- South bad because slavery :mad:
- South seceded over other things like tariffs and internal regulations, also North wanted South tariff money, also constitution gives right to secede, big government, Lincoln tyrant, North didn't care about slavery, South would have freed them all anyways.
- But no Southern state besides Georgia even mentioned tariffs in their secession documents, and can Lincoln really be called a tyrant when he let a contested election happen? Also, none of this big government stuff now had anything to do with political issues back then. Also Southerners had no respect for the Constitution when they suppressed free speech in their own states, they enshrined slavery in their Constitution, it was hugely profitable and they aggressively tried to impose it elsewhere. Yeah, the North had lots of racists, but they weren't really the ones in power. Also, is mild inconvenience for Whites nowadays worth having consigned Blacks to slavery back then?

TEXAN REVOLUTION
- Mexico bad because tyrant :mad:
- How would you feel if a bunch of people crossed your border, agreed to assimilate and follow the laws of your land, didn't do any of that, and then revolted to claim your land from you?
- True, true, but as mentioned above, the whole fucking country of Mexico was in a state of war and had an unlawful government

CENTRAL POWERS IN WW1
- Germany bad because aggressor :mad: but totes sad they were victimized at Versailles :'| Save democracy, over there
- Germany was not the aggressor, WTF are you talking about? Serbian terror attacks started the war and then entangling alliances caused the rest of it. The US got itself entangled through its favoritism and the war to save the world for democracy was total bullshit (Germany was a federal constitutional monarchy, the Russians were a de facto absolute monarchy).
- True, but the Ottomans committed the Armenian Genocide and the Germans invaded neutral Belgium: you don't just get to invade a neutral country for expediency. The Germans were awful nasty barbarians who had no regard for life, as seen in their disgusting behavior in both trench warfare and towards civilians. The Americans did involve themselves but Germany did itself no favors with retarded policies like their submarine warfare and Zimmerman Telegram, and had in fact been saber rattling at them and everybody else for years, if they existed nowadays they'd be viewed like China and Russia are. The Kaiser played the single largest role of anybody in helping the Bolsheviks come to power. The Germans were extremely vindictive at Brest-Litovsk. A total victory like in WW2 shows that you CAN punish a country, you have to break them completely. And why shouldn't Serbia be trying to liberate its countrymen occupied by a foreign monarchy? Fuck Germany, fuck France, fuck Russia, fuck all of them, they're all shit and had it coming except Belgium.

AMERICAN INDIANS
- American Indians were dindu nuffin noble savages that lived in peace >:|
- Lolbro, Indians stayed at war 24/7 with each other and ate people and were savages and stole the land from someone else
- Who cares if they're savages? They could be banging rocks together and wearing loincloths and they'd still have a right to exist on the land that's theirs by conquest (if you've held land for generations, it doesn't really matter where you got it from, it's all water under the bridge), and anyways they weren't, they had sophisticated political structures (Haudenosaunee, Haida) and architecture (Pueblo, moundbuilders) and very rich artwork/crafts (look up actual Indian clothing, pottery, totem poles, etc.). Also, which is worse, eating the heart of a respected slain foe to gain his courage, or having bears fight dogs to the death for fun? They had practices which are disgusting to us because we're raised to find it disgusting, but a ton of what Europeans did was disgusting. Treating women like cattle was disgusting. The Southeastern Indian had a much more humane treatment of their people, more equal, more fair, more human, than the Europeans. Their religion also had no moral content but it was way more fun than Jew-stick. If they'd been allowed to develop on their own long enough they could have made some amazing civilizations.

Edit: That rant got off topic, but I really would rather live with the Cherokee in the 1700s than live with Hwhyte people in the same time where the rich people treat you like shit and the preachers beat you down with a Bible. And a lot of people back then agreed, which is why they went to join those societies. That they didn't have big things like cathedrals didn't mean their day to day living standards were actually that bad, there wasn't a ton of difference in normal day to day life for an Indian farmer living in a longhouse, eating tasty cornbreads and bean-and-game stews, than there was for a yeoman farmer doing the same shit in a log cabin. Except the Indian got to live in a functioning anarcho-primitivist society that had progressive elements without being consumed by them.


Edit
Another thing that really annoys me that I see Right-wingers as well as Left-wingers throw around, for "pity us White folks" points, is anything to do with the Irish-Americans and indentured servants.
1) INDENTURED SERVANTS ARE NOT FUCKING SLAVES. It's an exploitative situation (indentured servants tended to be fatherless adolescents, and could get trapped by debt, it was kind of like the situation of being a company town worker), but even if we sometimes call things slavery as a metaphor, there is a world of difference between being legal property with no civil rights versus just being poor/stuck in a contract. They had a contract. They signed the contract. It paid for their very expensive passage, pretty much at the exact cost (shipping was competitive) of moving them, and if they didn't get the treatment they were due they could and frequently would successfully sue their masters. No other "Irish slavery" existed in America.

2) IRISH WERE ALWAYS WHITE
It was straight-up 4Chan-style Antebellum shitposting calling Irish non-White. They were always legally White, just considered socially inferior.

3) THE KNOW-NOTHINGS MAY HAVE HAD A POINT
This one is a lot more contentious and I'm not certain in this, but I think the Know Nothings, often played off as ignorant retarded xenophobes, had a point to their anti-Catholicism. Look at any other Catholic society in those days and you'll see Church fuckery at every level of politics, the Pope himself didn't necessarily steer it but the local clerics were very involved in places like France and Mexico, making it a huge political issue. As a minority in a country that had a history of Catholics persecuting them back home, I don't see it as irrational at all that the Know Nothings wanted to give a preemptive beatdown to the Papists, and I even believe that the fact they weren't shy about it may have been WHY that didn't happen in America and could be an example of what needs to be done to get the Muslims to assimilate, a good beatdown to make it clear they will never have the right to rule this place.
 
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The whole "we're a nation of immigrants" that gets uses when talking about the UK and US, the circumstances for each country obviously differs but it has the same kind of goal to push the idea that as a citizen and native of either country you can't argue against immigration.
 
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Trannies trying to rewrite Hindu history and culture saying that there were 3 genders in their culture. No there wasn't.
Also, Democrats trying to rewrite history saying that they were the ones who advocated for the freedom of slaves. They say this because former Union states tend to lean Blue in present time while Confederate states lean Red in the present. The fucking cope is amazing to see on sites like Twitter and Reddit.
 
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Almost anything related to Abraham Lincoln. I will preface this by saying that no, I'm not a butthurt lost causer, and yes, the South was largely fighting to keep slavery legal. This isn't about the Civil War, but about how Lincoln is portrayed today vs who he actually was.

Lincoln is used as a tool to teach modern 21st century values, and his role is quasi-religious. Slavery is treated like America's original sin, and Lincoln died to free us from that sin. There's a narrative that Lincoln spent his life opposing slavery on humanitarian grounds and that he was in favor of racial equality. That narrative is largely fictional.

The real Lincoln was a corporate railroad lawyer before entering politics. He openly said his primary motive in the Civil War was keeping the Union together, (this quote is commonly repeated by lost causers to claim the Civil War wasn't about slavery), and in the same quote said that he didn't particularly care about slavery beyond how it would affect American unity. He also considered whites to be superior and blacks to be inferiors, believed that equality wasn't possible, and integration was undesireable, and because of this wanted to send the freed slaves back to Africa. In line with this, his oposition to slavery (less staunch than often claimed) was less motiviated by humaitarianism and more motivated by a desire to protect the economic interests of ‘Free White Labour’. If you want to get a bit politispergy, he had one of the largest paramilitary organizations in America’s history(The Wide Awakes), who jailed journalists for reporting negative things.

THAT Lincoln, the man who made Trump look like a respecter of his critics, the man would be considered horrifically racist by today's standards, is so far away from the "Great Emancipator" Lincoln presented in the modern narrative, its absurd. The whitewashing of Lincoln is imo one of the best examples of revisionism in American history.

Like I said, I'm not a lost causer and the Confederacy had plenty of grounds for crticism, to put it mildly. That doesn't justify Lincoln being deified and protrayed in popular consciousness as a figure that he never was in reality.
 
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Certified_Autist said:
Almost anything related to Abraham Lincoln. I will preface this by saying that no, I'm not a butthurt lost causer, and yes, the South was largely fighting to keep slavery legal. This isn't about the Civil War, but about how Lincoln is portrayed today vs who he actually was.

Lincoln is used as a tool to teach modern 21st century values, and his role is quasi-religious. Slavery is treated like America's original sin, and Lincoln died to free us from that sin. There's a narrative that Lincoln spent his life opposing slavery on humanitarian grounds and that he was in favor of racial equality. That narrative is largely fictional.

The real Lincoln was a corporate railroad lawyer before entering politics. He openly said his primary motive in the Civil War was keeping the Union together, (this quote is commonly repeated by lost causers to claim the Civil War wasn't about slavery), and in the same quote said that he didn't particularly care about slavery beyond how it would affect American unity. He also considered whites to be superior and blacks to be inferiors, believed that equality wasn't possible, and integration was undesireable, and because of this wanted to send the freed slaves back to Africa. In line with this, his oposition to slavery (less staunch than often claimed) was less motiviated by humaitarianism and more motivated by a desire to protect the economic interests of ‘Free White Labour’. If you want to get a bit politispergy, he had one of the largest paramilitary organizations in America’s history(The Wide Awakes), who jailed journalists for reporting negative things.

THAT Lincoln, the man who made Trump look like a respecter of his critics, the man would be considered horrifically racist by today's standards, is so far away from the "Great Emancipator" Lincoln presented in the modern narrative, its absurd. The whitewashing of Lincoln is imo one of the best examples of revisionism in American history.

Like I said, I'm not a lost causer and the Confederacy had plenty of grounds for crticism, to put it mildly. That doesn't justify Lincoln being deified and protrayed in popular consciousness as a figure that he never was in reality.
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I heard of some of this but mainly he went along with slaves being freed due to many of his fellow constituents were anti-slavery and without them, he couldn't get what he needed to be done or anything he needed approved.
I didn't know some of this but I did know that Lincoln didn't give two shits about freeing slaves, he only went along with it because people he associated with it wanted that to happen.
Oddly enough I learned that part in high school, they showed us real quotes from his associates and even showed us how little lincoln actually gave a shit about slavery.

Why make him this symbol now? He didn't even want to free the slaves if you look into it, his associate basically pressured him to sign that emancipation proclamation.
 
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Crusade vs. Jihad, where one conquered a quarter of the world in thousands of battles and made coasts of europe unlivable because of the slave raids, and the other winning like 10 or 15 battles total and causing more damage inside europe than against the enemies it was supposedly against.
 
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Lemmingwise said:
Crusade vs. Jihad, where one conquered a quarter of the world in thousands of battles and made coasts of europe unlivable because of the slave raids, and the other winning like 10 or 15 battles total and causing more damage inside europe than against the enemies it was supposedly against.
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Well duh, they couldn't even get to the Holy Land without deciding "Nah, fuck this, we're sacking the Rhineland because of JOOOOOOS"
 
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