The relevance of European and American conceptions of history

[agapelove]

Lol, explaining reality is not apologetics.

Reality is that Churchill had just helped defeat a villain who sponsored concentration camps, just to approve concentration camps in Africa several years later. At worst he directed them and at best he was complicit to them. He fought Hitler not because he was killing Jews but because he was a threat to power. Attempting to obscure his transgressions with his accomplishments is apologetics.

Agape there is a tremendous difference between arguing the details of an issue and taking an absolutist stance which denies all attempts at reality testing. Absolutism is evil, it is at the heart of all of humanity’s most destructive impulses. Whatever part of the political spectrum it comes from the whole those people/that person are so bad they should be (fill in the blank) is always the same thing, a misguided belief in one’s own supreme goodness and the evil of the other, based on warped and superficial understandings of history - and untested notions about one’s own goodness. There is the occasional Stalin or Pol Pot etc who is so destructive they can only be got rid of (but not forgotten, which is a mistake) but if you lump everyone together who when in a position of power during a period of conflict did some dubious things there would be virtually no-one un-tarred, if anyone at all. Even Ghandi had racist notions, as Quid pointed out, and his movement led to a dreadful bloodbath and the division of a nation. Is that what he should be remembered for?

What absolutist stance am I taking? You're assuming that because I am introducing the other side of the narrative that must mean I want all of Churchill's achievements to go down in flames. That's a little defensive don't you think? Nowhere have I denied that Mr. Churchill saw this country through the biggest and bloodiest war it's ever seen, but his racism and support for colonialism is also part of this country's history. But how many people know these things about Churchill? To most, he is simply a war hero. If we say we want to impart truthful history then people should know the full extent of the good and the bad. You will find plenty of people from Churchill's day who found his views appalling, they were considered extreme even for his time. As a person outside of politics, he was pretty ghastly. So it's not even a question about whether racism or imperialism was normal back then it's more so a question about what we want to celebrate today as we learn and progress as a society. I'm not asking you to condemn Churchill but if moving his statue is a way to show that we acknowledge and listen to the plights of the oppressed then why is that so controversial for you? I mean they've practically already got him in a shame box. Gandhi statues have been successfully removed before. If we wanted to erect a statue for antifascism wouldn't you think an Iron Front memorial would be more appropriate?

Every conflict that has ever happened was caused by something someone else did, at least in the eyes of the aggressors. People have been fighting over resources since the year dot, if British colonialism is 'evil' then the entire human race is. The convenient selective memory employed behind this kind of idea is a pretty feeble basis for an argument, if you are going to argue that any civilisation that invades and takes over others is evil then there aren't any left that might be considered good. Like it or not, what you are describing is human behaviour. The good, as far as it goes, is when the civilisations with the least bad track record get into and maintain power. As far as I am concerned, a world dominated by the model of Western democracy, flawed as it is, is better than any of the alternatives. Paraphrasing Churchill, who didn't live under any illusions, it's the worst form of government, apart from all the others. You need to see the bigger reality here - people, people everywhere, in the whole world, have been doing horrible things to other groups of people (and sometimes to their own people) for millennia. So far, the only thing that manages to keep a lid on that is when lots of people are ruled under a relatively benevolent system (i.e. marginally less destructive than the others). It is simply impossible to have that kind of scenario for any period of time without conflict arising within it.

I'm not sure that "people have always been horrible" is grounds for justifying the next conflict. The idea that Western democracy is the best form of government comes from Cold War propaganda and it's really more of an opinion rather than a proven claim. "Better" is a function of one's values, but plenty of non-Westernized countries do well with their model, like China or Singapore. Imperialism is about a country's spread of power and influence not really about "making the world a better place" even though that's the colonizer's favorite lie. If we don't judge the past how do we refine the future? We should use history as a moral marker not as an excuse to continue overthrowing one another.

 

[Sparagmos]

...To current events.

A couple of things I came across recently have made me question whether people living in the US have a fundamentally different way of thinking about what constitutes recent history, and what might be called ancient history, or just things that occurred 'a long time ago'.

The first was an article written by a young woman that I read on Medium about certain themes in 'ancient' literature. What the article was actually about was medieval and renaissance literature, which the writer appears to think of as periods of 'ancient' history. The second was the idea I've seen in a few threads here on CF that the period of slavery in the US happened so long ago that it no longer has any relevance.

This last idea is worth discussing, I think. As a European, I tend to see history as stretching back in one unbroken line (which is indeed what it does) to the very earliest times we know anything about. Everything that ever happened in any significant way had an effect on everything that came after it. To me, that seems obvious - am I wrong? I have spent most of my adult life living in the UK, in England specifically. The dual influences of the classical world and the Germanic/Nordic world are obvious and widespread in English society, thinking, language - pretty much everything. It is not difficult to see how major events in history have shaped the way the English see themselves and how English society functions, 1066 (and all that), the great plague, the subsequent peasants revolt and so on and so on. All of these historic influences come together to inform the perceptions and prejudices of the average person in the street. Again, this seems obvious.

Slavery was common in the US during what was in England the Victorian era - of course slavery was effectively exported to the US from England and other European countries, via colonialism, so this isn't about apportioning blame in any sense, just about things that happened - but wasn't part of most people's lives actually in England at that time. But that same period was tremendously influential on English society and how English people see themselves in all kinds of ways that are absolutely still relevant to how that society functions now. A society and its history are ineluctably bound to each other, what society is now in any country is what previous actions and events have made it. Again, this seems blatantly obvious.

It does to me, anyway, but it does seem that maybe this way of thinking isn't so common or regarded as obvious in the US - ? Is that true? To me, the Victorian period was really not all that long ago, in historical terms. Slavery in the US ended, as I understand it, in the late 1800s, there were laws in place that defined black people in some parts of the US as unequal citizens up until the 1960s, and quantifiable social prejudice continued into the 1970s. None of this is ancient history, but the view that none of this has any relevance today, with regard to the current situation as much as the wider picture of race relations in the US, seems to be quite common.

That's my impression in any case, and it is just an impression, so I'd be interested in hearing what people living in the US think about it. The US is after all a very young country and so a different understanding of history, and different conceptions of what constitutes ancient history, are explainable.

I don’t think Americans are taught history in a meaningful way. I know I wasn’t. I grew up in Texas for context. History was names, dates, and events. It should have included more sociology, politics, and economics. History is a story, and should be related as such.

 

[Radagast]

It should have included more sociology, politics, and economics.

Those are all abstract, dull, and potentially biased.

History is a story, and should be related as such.

I agree with you there.

But it's the concrete that makes history compelling. "People were poor during the Depression" is so abstract as to be almost meaningless. But I still remember the childhood history book of mine that listed what a typical working-class family would eat in a week during that time (it wasn't much).

There is also a lot to be said for good historical (and contemporary) fiction. There used to be a lot of that in the US; political correctness has largely washed it away. Far too many people find accurate portrayals of the past frightening.

At a more academic level, this is one of the best books about the "Jim Crow" era, precisely because it is so concrete (and the story of how it came to be written is fascinating too). Of course, it's now politically incorrect as well, because it quotes black Americans using the "N word."

 

[Tom 1]

Reality is that Churchill had just helped defeat a villain who sponsored concentration camps, just to approve concentration camps in Africa several years later. At worst he directed them and at best he was complicit to them. He fought Hitler not because he was killing Jews but because he was a threat to power. Attempting to obscure his transgressions with his accomplishments is apologetics.



What absolutist stance am I taking? You're assuming that because I am introducing the other side of the narrative that must mean I want all of Churchill's achievements to go down in flames. That's a little defensive don't you think? Nowhere have I denied that Mr. Churchill saw this country through the biggest and bloodiest war it's ever seen, but his racism and support for colonialism is also part of this country's history. But how many people know these things about Churchill? To most, he is simply a war hero. If we say we want to impart truthful history then people should know the full extent of the good and the bad. You will find plenty of people from Churchill's day who found his views appalling, they were considered extreme even for his time. As a person outside of politics, he was pretty ghastly. So it's not even a question about whether racism or imperialism was normal back then it's more so a question about what we want to celebrate today as we learn and progress as a society. I'm not asking you to condemn Churchill but if moving his statue is a way to show that we acknowledge and listen to the plights of the oppressed then why is that so controversial for you? I mean they've practically already got him in a shame box. Gandhi statues have been successfully removed before. If we wanted to erect a statue for antifascism wouldn't you think an Iron Front memorial would be more appropriate?



I'm not sure that "people have always been horrible" is grounds for justifying the next conflict. The idea that Western democracy is the best form of government comes from Cold War propaganda and it's really more of an opinion rather than a proven claim. "Better" is a function of one's values, but plenty of non-Westernized countries do well with their model, like China or Singapore. Imperialism is about a country's spread of power and influence not really about "making the world a better place" even though that's the colonizer's favorite lie. If we don't judge the past how do we refine the future? We should use history as a moral marker not as an excuse to continue overthrowing one another.

You’re jumbling up too many ideas there for me. Appreciating the realities of the world is not a justification, it’s just a starting point for beginning to think about what it all means. This is as opposed to a phony starting point, which goes something like -

At this point in history many of us are not involved in any direct conflict for survival. This is because the culture we live in defeated and dominated other cultures and has been able to maintain that dominance for long enough to produce at least the illusion of a long-lasting or semi permanent peace. This allows people, not being under pressure to survive, to speculate about how the world might be different. These speculations rarely have any bearing on how the world actually operates, and tend to divide the world up into groups and individuals who are then assigned labels of ‘good’ ‘bad’ etc (often along racial or national lines). Huge swathes of history are simply ignored in order to support narrow and unrealistic viewpoints.

Secondly, terminology that accurately describes things is important. A concentration camp in popular parlance at least is a place set up for the express purpose of eliminating anyone interred there. This does not accurately describe the internment camps set up in Kenya. People interred there were certainly treated brutally, savagely even - although not to the same extent of savagery with which some of them had treated others, which the article you linked to sweeps under the carpet - but there was no program of systemised extermination. Really, I can’t see how anyone would need to have the systematic extermination of Jewish and other peoples under Nazi Germany and the deaths of 1,000s during the brutal struggle in Kenya explained to them. If you don’t actually want to deal with the facts, why bother getting involved in the discussion at all? The kind of systemised killings practiced under Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin etc are actual historical aberrations. Brutal and savage treatment of prisoners and terrorists (or freedom fighters if you prefer, all terrorists who target civilians see themselves as freedom fighters) unfortunately is the norm, whoever the prisoners/those doing the imprisoning are. What keeps a lid on the worst excesses is the fact of having a culture that is dominant over other cultures for a long enough period of time to establish systems that can prevent things getting out of hand - and, of course, with the intent to actually do that, which isn't a given. Without such a system, for example, the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib would have got far, far worse - because that is what always happens when you don’t have a well enough established culture with all the necessary checks and balances. If you are operating under the (ironically racist) illusion some people have that the people most recently oppressed in history were living in love and harmony until the Europeans turned up you can quite easily inform yourself about other periods of history. You could read Che Guevara’s accounts of working with the Congolese, for example, to have some basis on which to evaluate. The reality the kind of revisionism you seem to favour deliberately avoids is that the only differences between people from any period of time are differences of degree. People are people, period, and these strangely racist notions that arise from selective representations of history lack any use or value.

 

[Tom 1]

He fought Hitler not because he was killing Jews but because he was a threat to power.

This kind of silly assumption of omniscience should be beneath you. You have no idea whatsoever what motivated anyone else in history you have never met, and if you think any other person can be accurately reduced down to some basic notion you have then you should seriously question your whole system of thought and that of whoever is teaching it to you.

 

[Tom 1]

But how many people know these things about Churchill?

Anyone interested in the history of that period.

If we say we want to impart truthful history then people should know the full extent of the good and the bad.

Your representation of the events in question is no more truthful that the representation you are arguing against.

 

[Tom 1]

I'm not sure that "people have always been horrible" is grounds for justifying the next conflict.

You’re missing the point - the point is that you appear to be seeing one slice of history to be indicative of something with limited application. It’s a blinkered view of human history. India, for example; prior to British rule, the Mogul empire had ruled over India for a few hundred years. This rule began with a local ruler from Afghanistan invading Indian territory. That person had in his heritage both the blood of Mongol invaders who had previously invaded and dominated Afghanistan and the blood of the Ottomans who invaded and dominated other cultures across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. If you go back further on either side this leads you to smaller groups fighting each other over smaller bits of land, and so on. What are you going to do? Go back through it all and point out how horrible all the leaders of all those groups were? What possible use would there be in that?

The idea that Western democracy is the best form of government comes from Cold War propaganda and it's really more of an opinion rather than a proven claim.

Yes, of course it’s an opinion, again I think you are missing the point. I also rather suspect you are being a little disingenuous here, certainly you wouldn’t be able to so freely criticise the founders and defenders of your own culture if you were not living in a Western Democracy. Each person judges their own culture by whatever standards they think are important, that goes without saying.

 

[agapelove]

These strangely racist notions that arise from selective representations of history lack any use or value.

I really can’t tell if you’re disagreeing with me anymore, because isn’t portraying Churchill as the “Greatest Briton of All Time” considered selective representation? I mean, really? Above Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare, and Hawking? But I guess this is subjective. I wonder though how many of the 447,423 that held this opinion were included in the “Anyone interested in the history of that period.”

This kind of silly assumption of omniscience should be beneath you. You have no idea whatsoever what motivated anyone else in history you have never met, and if you think any other person can be accurately reduced down to some basic notion you have then you should seriously question your whole system of thought and that of whoever is teaching it to you.

It’s basic knowledge that the UK got involved with WW2 only after the Nazis took control of Poland in 1939. The first concentration camp was opened in 1933. The Allied Powers were aware of the scale of the Jewish Holocaust
but did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary. In 1943, Churchill’s war cabinet wrote that British Empire was already too full of refugees to offer a safe haven to any more. The Allies began drawing up war crime indictments but US and UK policy makers curtailed the prosecutions of the Nazis because they agreed that some would be needed to rebuild Germany and confront communism, which was the greater danger.

You’re missing the point - the point is that you appear to be seeing one slice of history to be indicative of something with limited application.

No, I understand that everything should be judged in context. I'm quite sure in 100 years time Jeff Bezos will be considered a slave master for the tactics he used to gain his wealth but some consider him that now too. Hell in 1000 years maybe everyone will be vegan and they will condemn us for eating meat, but there are many people fighting for animal rights today like PETA. We are aware of the evils committed today just like people in the past were too. Not everybody was a racist or imperialist, many people stood up against those things and Churchill helped devise their oppression.

What are you going to do? Go back through it all and point out how horrible all the leaders of all those groups were? What possible use would there be in that?

Well if they were the topic of discussion then yes I think it would be important to pull out all the facts in order to analyze history truthfully.

Your representation of the events in question is no more truthful that the representation you are arguing against.

Have I said something not truthful? Or are you just against anything that disrupts what you think is true?

Sorry mate if I didn’t address all your points. You’re jumbling up too many ideas for me there too.

 

[Tom 1]

Well if they were the topic of discussion then yes I think it would be important to pull out all the facts in order to analyze history truthfully.

Without that it's just a skim, as the topic of this discussion at least is how people behave, and a basic facet of human behaviour has always been to defend the interests of your own group and to fight for safety and security. Picking out one individual who did this in the same way anyone else in the same position has always done - apart from the true exceptions who take it to the extreme, such as Hitler - does not lead to an honest or useful evaluation. The rest of your points are kind of a skim also - where is the point of comparison between Churchill and Shakespeare, Newton, Hawkings or Darwin? Neither of the others ever had to conduct a country at war. Without the people, like Churchill, it takes to establish and defend a civilisation, which always, always involves killing and oppression, always, there are no Shakespeares, and no scientists.

 

[Tom 1]

It’s basic knowledge that the UK got involved with WW2 only after the Nazis took control of Poland in 1939. The first concentration camp was opened in 1933. The Allied Powers were aware of the scale of the Jewish Holocaust
but did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary. In 1943, Churchill’s war cabinet wrote that British Empire was already too full of refugees to offer a safe haven to any more. The Allies began drawing up war crime indictments but US and UK policy makers curtailed the prosecutions of the Nazis because they agreed that some would be needed to rebuild Germany and confront communism, which was the greater danger.

This kind of skimming of a few facts only gives the illusion of understanding.

 

[agapelove]

The rest of your points are kind of a skim also - where is the point of comparison between Churchill and Shakespeare, Newton, Hawkings or Darwin? Neither of the others ever had to conduct a country at war. Without the people, like Churchill, it takes to establish and defend a civilisation, which always, always involves killing and oppression, always, there are no Shakespeares, and no scientists.

This is just a matter of opinion about whether you think winning a war is a greater achievement than discovering gravity? Churchill did not end fascism. At best Churchill assisted in winning the war. His greatest contribution was that he kept Britain going until the US entered the story and Hitler declared war on Russia. If you look at numbers it was Russia that won the war. Ultimately Churchill’s role in the Allies victory is overstated and really more a result of his own self-aggrandizement. He had a way with words. All that put together helped make him larger than he really was.

This kind of skimming of a few facts only gives the illusion of understanding.

Sorry I didn’t have time to write you an entire dissertation? If you seriously think Britain declared war on Germany because they were incinerating Jews then I think you are the one confused.

 

[Radagast]

The first concentration camp was opened in 1933.

As a political prison, yes. The extermination of Jews did not begin until after the conquest of Poland.

The Allied Powers were aware of the scale of the Jewish Holocaust
but did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary.

This is just nonsense. The scale of the Holocaust only became apparent after Allied troops actually reached the camps.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to make so many false statements to bolster your "all whites are evil" narrative, but it doesn't reflect well on you.

 

[Tom 1]

If you seriously think Britain declared war on Germany because they were incinerating Jews then I think you are the one confused.

I doubt if anyone thinks that. This isn't an either/or question with that being one of the options.

This is just a matter of opinion about whether you think winning a war is a greater achievement than discovering gravity?

That isn't the question either. Is it possible for major scientific discoveries to be made and the heights of cultural achievement to be reached outside of a long-enduring culture that enables interchange with other similarly enduring cultures? No. The question is then how are those cultures established and maintained?

 

[agapelove]

As a political prison, yes. The extermination of Jews did not begin until after the conquest of Poland.

Then that just furthers my point that the UK/France did not enter the war for the purpose of saving any Jews.

This is just nonsense. The scale of the Holocaust only became apparent after Allied troops actually reached the camps.

Perhaps not the full scale but they were aware enough to indict Hitler for war crimes in 1944. You can read more about those documents here: Secret documents reveal allied forces knew about Holocaust long before they discovered Nazi camps

I'm not sure why you feel the need to make so many false statements to bolster your "all whites are evil" narrative, but it doesn't reflect well on you.

Wow! Biggest strawman I’ve ever seen! Exactly WHAT gives you the idea that I have that agenda? You might want to ease up on the personal attacks. I’m not a racist.

 

[agapelove]

Without that it's just a skim, as the topic of this discussion at least is how people behave, and a basic facet of human behaviour has always been to defend the interests of your own group and to fight for safety and security.

Yes, warlords put themselves in positions to be both praised and scrutinized. You can commit crimes/atrocities in the name of securing safety and wealth for your nation and then you should be judged/celebrated accordingly.

 

[Tom 1]

Yes, warlords put themselves in positions to be both praised and scrutinized. You can commit crimes/atrocities in the name of securing safety and wealth for your nation and then you should be judged/celebrated accordingly.

Warlord is a loaded term here. Nations don't always chose to go to war. Like it or not, no wars = no civilisations, no armed defence of those civilisations = no civilisations. There are no unicorns, no miraculous civilisations that were established and won their longevity through pacifism - either their own or that of nations they provide a service to - and a person is a person is a person - the adage 'don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes' applies just as much to someone leading a war effort as to anyone else.

 

[agapelove]

Warlord is a loaded term here. Nations don't always chose to go to war. Like it or not, no wars = no civilisations, no armed defence of those civilisations = no civilisations. There are no unicorns, no miraculous civilisations that were established and won their longevity through pacifism - either their own or that of nations they provide a service to - and a person is a person is a person - the adage 'don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes' applies just as much to someone leading a war effort as to anyone else.

There is actually a biography titled Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945. You might be interested in it if you are so inclined to talk about his achievements. It talks about his lifelong fascinations of soldiering, war, and command.

And if we were to really take that adage seriously, by that logic we would not be allowed to judge Hitler. I have definitely not walked a mile in his shoes.

 

[Tom 1]

There is actually a biography titled Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945. You might be interested in it if you are so inclined to talk about his achievements. It talks about his lifelong fascinations of soldiering, war, and command.

And if we were to really take that adage seriously, by that logic we would not be allowed to judge Hitler. I have definitely not walked a mile in his shoes.

We keep circling round to the points you aren’t looking at, the fundamental difference between building a set of opinions on something phony vs something real. I don’t see a problem with understanding Hitler - I read sections of mein kampf at A level. The question is what do you do with a Hitler? WWII was probably inevitable, but the Holocaust wasn’t. The only thing to do with someone like Hitler is to eliminate them. Understanding how he managed to get into power however holds some potentially useful lessons. So inclined to talk about his achievements- ? I don’t know what you mean by that, but if the people at the time who were trying to avoid war at any costs had remained in charge instead of Churchill, today’s Europe would be a very different place. Armchair pacifism doesn’t alter that one iota.

 

[Chesterton]

You think you're being funny, but you're not. People will react to your post without realising that it's sarcasm.

Well, no one has so far. If some low IQ person sends you a nasty private message, I'll talk to them for you.

And the examples of Syria and Nigeria weren't mine; they were the two countries highlighted in the news story I referred to.

I know.

Hey @Quid est Veritas?, what is the current perception of Winnie Mandela in SA?

 

[Chesterton]

@Tom 1,
Well, yes, Churchill. Mama always said starting a thread was like a box of chocolates.

For something more about your OP: a poster above said she didn't think American history was taught well. Regarding slavery, my experience was good. I recall beginning in 3rd grade (in the early '70's) they taught us about the slave trade, the practice of slavery, the Abolitionist movement and related stuff, Harriet Tubman was presented as a heroine, etc. And the war, Reconstruction, the sharecropping system, carpetbaggers, all that stuff. They taught us about the post-war Ku Klux Klan, although neglected to accurately describe it as the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party, lol. I could imagine very heated complaints coming in to the school when little Johnny gets home and asks "Daddy, didn't you say you and mommy were Democrats? Because teacher said you guys...".

Overall I think the teaching was pretty thorough and good. It's really hard to whitewash humans owning humans. The fact that it happened is an ugly fact of something that just can't be justified in the modern world, and of course there was no attempt to ignore it or excuse it.

A side note about Churchill: He should be remembered also for his writing and exquisite oratory. I once read a book which was nothing more than a chronological compilation of all his speeches. So there were speeches about boring topics, such as agricultural production, or dealing with trade unions. As a fan of language, I enjoyed reading even those just for the way he said things. If he'd never been a military man or statesman, I think he might have earned a statue for writing something.