The Racist Origins of Lies about American History

12/1/2017

I’ve had a rather busy week, so I am going to keep today’s post short by directing you to an interesting video that Cracked produced last week about the misuse of history among rightwing pundits. The video examines, especially, claims about Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and the Civil War. While I don’t agree with every claim made in the video—since a couple are presented as established fact when they are actually interpretative—the general thrust is correct. As Cracked explains, a certain branch of rightwing American pundits bend history into pretzels in order to, essentially, justify racism. The video gains cumulative power as the number of false, misleading, or grotesque interpretations of history pile up and reduce one by one back to racism

12 Comments

Residents Fan

12/1/2017 05:55:09 pm

", a certain branch of rightwing American pundits bend history into pretzels in order to, essentially, justify racism"

Not just a US problem. British right-wing politicans like former PM David Cameron and Minister Michael Gove have criticized the teaching of British history in schools, claiming it is too unsympathetic to the British Empire:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people-are-proud-of-colonialism-and-the-british-empire-poll-finds-a6821206.html

I live in Ireland, a country which used to be part of the British Empire, and where about a million Irish people died during the
Great Famine. Said Famine occurred while the British Empire was ruling the country, and they did little to help the victims.
So we're not exactly thrilled that our neighbours have such a rosy view of the British Empire-especially giving the anti-Irish opinions reappearing in Britain following difficult Anglo-Irish Brexit negotiations:

https://www.todayfm.com/The-Last-Word-with-Matt-Cooper/Brexit-And-AntiIrish-Sentiment:-Nothing-Has-Changed

David Bradbury

12/1/2017 06:28:12 pm

Ireland is a rather small nation in strategic proximity to a larger-but-not-huge nation. The options for surviving a situation like that are very limited, and Ireland did not follow any of those options until the 1930s.

Americaegro

12/1/2017 10:39:19 pm

As yes, the 1930s, when the dead Irish resurrected and got independence. Who knew Irish history was so simple?

Infinite.Magnetic

9/3/2018 08:48:50 am

Just catching up to this discussion. Good work!

Titus pullo

12/1/2017 06:32:34 pm

Keep an open mind jason. Read tom woods or andrew napolitano for the right or libertarian view.

BigNick

12/1/2017 11:27:27 pm

Where would I go for an unbiased view of history, and why would I seek out any other view.

David Bradbury

12/2/2017 09:29:19 am

A significant driver of change in human societies (i.e. what we see in retrospect as history) is people acting in accordance with their biases. Often, the biases have to be inferred from the actions, and that's really really difficult, not least because because most of the actions themselves have to be inferred from their effects. Much easier to just fit the actions into a simplified framework.

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/1/2017 09:02:31 pm

Some factual errors in the video:

"Missouri Compromise of 1850" (in the graphics)

The Missouri Compromise was enacted in 1820. The Compromise of 1850, obviously, was in 1850. It managed to stave off civil war by ten years at the cost of the freedom of fugitive slaves living in the North.

"Except, no, he lost."

Lee's brilliance is a subjective judgment, but the Confederacy was much weaker economically than the Union. If he's been a worse general, or the Union generals opposing him had been better, the war would have ended much sooner. As the video says, though, that doesn't mean he wasn't contemptible.

"…gave us a deadly cold, partly on accident and then mostly on purpose…"

There is only one well documented use of smallpox blankets in history, during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763. A polemical left-wing professor, Ward Churchill, claimed that smallpox blankets were used on other occasions, in a somewhat infamous instance of academic fraud. Although there probably were other, undocumented attempts to infect local groups of Native Americans in the 400 years of conflict between them and European-descended settlers, the largest effects of the epidemics were in the first couple of centuries after Columbus. Entire Native American societies were probably destroyed before Europeans had any contact with them other than skirmishes in passing.

That said, the racist ignorance exposed in the first eight minutes of the video show why everybody in the United States should read the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann.

Americanegro

12/2/2017 12:41:59 am

Maybe not entire societies depending on how you define that term but the Wampanoags appeared to suffer heavy losses... in the days before explorers or settlers got into the blanket-handing-out business which would have come later if at all.

One wonders what tribe stonish Ward Churchill belongs to this week.

Denise

12/3/2017 04:17:09 pm

Can't help myself.....

"...went to war with George II's son, George..."

George II was George III's Grandfather not father. George III's father was Prince Louis Frederick, who basically seemed to hate his father, led a short and fast life, and never made it to the throne.

aaahhhh feel better, thanks

Americanegro

12/3/2017 08:54:02 pm

Awkward.....

One can only hope for a similar outcome for Prince Charles. Then again, being made King might be a fitting punishment. On the whole, eff that guy.

The Racist origins of Jason Colavito

12/4/2017 02:45:57 am

Jason is a
1. Racist
2. Socialist commie pos
3. idiot leftist douchebag
4. Hater

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The Racist Origins of Lies about American History

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