You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.
133Well he lost so history remains intact.
31Idk, I've been flipping through this history book written in 1941 and it says he did a lot of winning so how bad could he be?
27Isn't it "the less" you care for him?
🫣
I'll show myself out.
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RIP Norm Macdonald
51RIP indeed, dude was the funniest comedian to me. I went and watched every possible clip of Norm available online right before he passed. The YouTube channel I'm Not Norm has 'em all
12Fuck Youtube, use the Internet Archive instead. Here is the link to watch all the Norm podcasts with NO ADS:
12At least now we know it really wasn't Norm.
3I'm not norm is a legend
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Norm was fairly right-wing and said some pretty unacceptable things., but he was an undeniably talented comedian and I'm glad we have his body of work to remember him by.
3Mr. MacDonald had this to say about the sentencing: "In Nebraska, a man was sentenced for killing a female crossdresser [sic] who had accused him of rape and two of her friends. Excuse me if this sounds harsh, but in my mind, they all deserved to die."
In case you don’t know where to look. This (and other comments) is well documented and plenty discussed. I don’t know if I’d say he’s right wing nor would I say he’s left wing. He was definitely bigoted and sexist.
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He shouldn't have had so many cheeseburgers from his restaurant
1IA IA OOOH
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I know I'm taking a joke remark too seriously, but "History is written by the victors" is just plain wrong. More often than not it is, sure, but it's not exclusively, or even overwhelmingly.
History is written by those who write it. This can be the winners or the losers, and there are plenty of examples for both.
E: people crying about this even though it's blatantly true and I've provided plenty of examples in another comment.
Sorry, but people need to stop universally applying and blindly believing Churchill's history is written by the victors quote.
It was a half-cocked throwaway line by a politician, it's not a universal law.
48"Just plain wrong"......."More often than not" yeah.....
18“History is written by the victors” is just plain wrong
The most published book in the world just so happens to be the religious narrative that justifies the most successful empire-building exercise in world history.
The second most published book in the world is a book of quotations by the founder of the modern incarnation of the most populace (and arguably the most economically successful) nation in world history.
The third most published book (series) in the world is a fantasy about wizards in high school written and distributed by the colonial power that originally mass marketed that first book so aggressively.
it’s not exclusively, or even overwhelmingly
Perhaps "History is published and distributed by the victors" is a more accurate. But it is always worth analyzing the historical narrative you receive through the lens of the people producing and distributing the texts.
Yeah, sure, Howard Zinn and Hunter S. Thompson and Betty Friedan exist. But their works are unlikely to be the ones your Middle School World History teacher is distributing copies of. In fact, given the recent wave of book bans and library scourges happening across the United States, you're even less likely to find a copy of their works today than you would have five or ten years ago.
14Those books aren't really history though. You could argue that there is some history in the Bible, but a lot of it is not history at all.
Also, the Old Testament was written by the Jews while they were part of the Persian Empire, so I'd say they were still the losers even though they were released from slavery and given land.
5You're deliberately misinterpreting my statement as "history is never written by the victors", which isn't what I said. I have another comment with a number of examples that disprove the quote that everyone treats as gospel.
I don't know what your second example is referring to.
And Harry Potter being written by someone who happens to be from a former colonial power is the biggest reach I believe I've seen in my entire life. So good job with that.
Seriously, how is that an example of history being written by the victors? Childrens books are written by the victors, maybe. It's a book about magic school kids, not a writing of history. And it was published by a publishing company, not by the government of colonial-era Britain.
History is not written by the victors. It is written by those who are most able to write history. More often than not this is the victors, but it is far, far from the rule.
4
It's a very idealist Hume-inspired view of history that even makes this distinction. It's taking for granted that history is determined by conflicts between good and bad. This also takes form in phrases like "the right side of history."
or, "what no historical materialism does to a mfer."
14maybe instead of 'written' it should be 'taught' or 'indoctrinated'
9That is... more correct.
But even then, it's not hard to find counterexamples. The fucktwits of the American South teaching that the Confederation was Good, Actually spring to mind. It wasn't, and they lost hard. Yet the victors (the literal US government) have not managed to retain control over that narrative.
Reality is that "victors" aren't always an overpowering hegemony, "losers" aren't always doomed to genocide, historians and teachers don't always have an incentive to lie about their own history, and how a culture tells its own history is a complicated and highly situational socio-political process.
We should be extremely wary of the many inherent biases/incentives in how we teach history, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss the discipline outright or that democracies aren't capable of self-reflection and of properly teaching past mistakes.
1
No saying is a universal law, that's not really the point of those phrases. "How history is taught is heavily influenced by those in power" is just not as catchy. I think you're taking it too literally.
5I'm pointing this out to people and they're saying no it's 100% a universal law. I'm aware the quote likely wasn't originally meant that way.
1
Actual history is written by historians. Textbooks are written by the people who are currently winning. Popular understanding of history is written by anyone who has the money and the will.
0.... I think you're mistaking this joke for an invitation to the validity of the historical remarks that were made in this.... meme
-2Yes, I listened a really long podcast about it and I know it made total sense and listed a lot of evidence, but as always, I can't recall anything but the point that truly the saying is wrong. Do you have an example?
-5There's plenty of examples, but possibly the most interesting one is China.
China, historically, fanatically wrote about their history, and unfortunately for them, particularly around the time prior to the Ming Dynasty, most of this was writing about them having their arses repeatedly handed to them by Mongol armies.
For the US, plenty of the history surrounding their civil war was, at least for a while, written by supporters of the Confederacy, which is why to this day there's still so many people pushing the "it was about states rights!" thing.
Sticking to the US, let's be real, despite many Americans claiming otherwise, the US lost their war with the British Empire and their allied natives in 1812, yet the US often refers to it as being a draw, or even (though more rarely) an American win.
England under Cromwell invading Ireland was written about heavily on both sides, and England isn't exactly presented as being the good side.
It's probably more accurate to say History is most consistently written by the most literate, but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
12If history was written exclusively by the victors, the Khans would be considered one of the greatest empires of all time. However, the Mongolians didn't really have a pronounced aristocracy class that focused on arts/writing, and so most of our records regarding their conquests are written by Chinese and European scholars, a.k.a. the losers.
12The many many cultures who were just living life, only to be wiped out by colonists. Are they the good guys?
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Well it is because the bad guys were real jerks!
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