Revisionism Revived

“History is a discussion without end,” according to Dutch historian Pieter Geyl. What he meant to say was, of course, that how we see the past at a particular moment cannot be valid and true forever and for all future generations. Like in all disciplines and science, it is always necessary to reconsider and rethink what we believe is true. Indeed, like another Dutch historian, Johan Huizinga observed, each generation needs to rewrite history.

However, this is far from being the case. Powerful interests do not want history to be a discussion without end, nor do they wish history to be rewritten by each successive generation. Foremost among those interests are the two hundred states in the world. For them, history (taught in schools and colleges) is an indispensable instrument for instilling some sort of collective spirit in the young. New generations need to be convinced that their state, their nation is unique and somehow better (although usually not formulated so bluntly) than the neighboring nations and states. It means that official history, like geography, like most subjects apart from the three Rs, is a propaganda tool with which to create obedient citizens.

Ah, you will say, but fortunately we have universities where scholars spend their time to do research and record real history. In the words of nineteenth-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, “the task of the historian is to present the past as it truly was, without bias or personal interpretations.” No doubt a few historians teaching at the thousands of colleges and universities all over the world are honestly trying to do just that, following the Rankean precept.

Well, nothing of the sort. Like all other kinds of work, especially in the “West” where Neo-liberalism reigns supreme, all academic work, especially research, has become corrupt to the core. Today’s academics and university teachers are no different from the presstitutes of the legacy media. The only difference being that academics have fancy credentials, hold doctorates (the more vague and elusive the discipline, the better!), Fundamentally, most academic research, most certainly historical research, is carried out according to the business model prevalent in prostitution: the customer pays and gets what he wants.

It is undeniable that history, that is the historical discipline, has long been hijacked by the ruling elite. The beginning more or less coincides with the advent of widespread literacy and the birth of modern mass media in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since that moment, the historical discipline in most countries is no more than a propaganda outfit enjoying academic prestige. As such it became part of an intricate framework to influence public opinion. The wider public certainly could not be permitted to form its own opinions independently. The few wayward individuals straying from the flock could be dealt with according to circumstances. These “intellectuals” would be allowed to voice their opinions until they needed to be silenced.

In some cases, it might even be necessary to dispose of them permanently, as recently happened with Charlie Kirk in the US. Given what happened to Gonzalo Lira in the Ukraine (2024), it should be obvious, however, that he is not the first not the latest victim of brutal, violent censorship.

Since some historians tend to be more wayward than others, from early on there have been “dissident” historians. One of the first was Harry Elmer Barnes, who in the 1920s began to publish work critical of official historiography, especially with respect to World War I. Barnes thus initiated a tradition in US historiography that has come to be known as Revisionism.

Revisionism relies on three main pillars. In the first place, doubt regarding the official narrative, secondly a re-interpretation of the sources sustaining that narrative, and third, the use of neglected or fresh documents to support an alternative, or revisionist interpretation. The very fact that Barnes and his followers have been called revisionists is proof that historiography then found itself in a dead-end street, because after all, history should indeed be a “discussion without end.”

Together with Argentina, the US is the only country that has seen the development of historical revisionism, welcomed and supported by important segments of the reading public. While in the US revisionism was born as a reaction to US foreign policy and the country’s participation in World War I, in Argentina it resulted from criticism of the liberal interpretation of the country’s nineteenth-century history. Not surprisingly therefore, in Argentina Revisionism was never the object of nasty self-righteous vilification.

After World War II, especially since the 1960s, Revisionism returned, now focusing on the events underlying the “monopoly of victimhood” claimed by Jewish groups and organizations. As the holocaust narrative became fully developed, morphing into what can only be called a secular religion imposed on the entire Collective West, it has become an integral part of the ludicrous black/white narrative enforced by the Western Allies after 1945.

Today, Revisionism is no longer confined to the US. It has become rather an international phenomenon, although thanks to the First Amendment in the US Constitution, US historians are freer to engage in Revisionism than their European colleagues. Since the 1960s, because it tended to focus on the official narratives of World War II, and particularly on the trials and tribulations suffered by European Jews, Revisionism has been condemned for being intrinsically “antisemitic.” Even outstanding, conscientious historians such as David Irving were given that epithet, which in the Collective West is something like a social kiss of death.

The rigid historical narrative of World War II is a complete caricature of history, which is presented as a kind of end-of-times struggle between lily-white saints and evil monsters with a German accent. In a sense, it looks a bit like a secular version of the fight between the Lord Jesus Christ (embodied by Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and the devil himself: Hitler, of course.

Today, however the “Temple of Inverted Truth” erected after 1945 is in the process of being demolished. Ironically, it is the Israeli Defense Force, the “Most Moral Army in the World,” that should be credited with starting and mainly carrying out that operation. The surprise attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 has now been proven fake news. If only because there is just a bit too much coincidence which can only be called symbolic: October 7 was the day of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when the Ottoman fleet was destroyed by the combined Papal and Spanish navies, but also the date on which in 2001 the US and some of its NATO vassals invaded Afghanistan in response to the demolition of three WTC towers in New York on September 11.

Hamas’ alleged surprise attack on Israel gave the Most Moral Army in the World a golden opportunity to “hit back” at Gaza and start what even the UN has officially qualified as an undiluted genocide. Gaza has been converted into a Mediterranean version of the notorious Rheinwiesenlager where on the orders of General Eisenhower millions of German POW’s were being kept with no shelter and no food. Living (and dying) conditions in these camps were much worse than in most camps run by the Nazis, worse than the worst Gulag, worse than Japanese concentration camps and those in France before the Germans overran that country in 1940.

Now that the Most Moral Army in the World runs a giant concentration camp, engages in genocide and routinely bombs hospitals, civilians, starving them between bombing raids, there is no longer any justification for any monopolization of victimhood. The problem is, however, that the State of Israel was founded on that very concept.

In a broader sense, what about the never ending litany about German “war crimes”? If what the Most Moral Army in the World has been doing in Gaza does not qualify as war crimes, than what on earth is that, a war crime? According to prevailing historiography in the West (based on the verdicts of the Nuremberg Kangaroo Court), it is any crime committed by a member of the German armed forces during World War II. According to the criteria of western historiography, no American, British, French, or Soviet soldier, indeed no allied soldier at all ever committed a war crime. Nor, according to that kind of logic, can genocidal maniacs like Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman be considered war criminals for having ordered the mass killing of innocent civilians during allied bombing raids on German and Japanese cities. The very essence of Western historiography on World War II, plus the entire postwar period until today, is being destroyed by the current Gaza genocide.

Other sensitive subjects come to mind as well. That of resistance fighters, for instance. In the official narrative of the Second World War, the resistance in Western Europe, especially in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, is allotted a heroic, a mythic status. The heroism of members of the resistance is sung in glowing terms, their role in defeating the Germans grossly exaggerated. The resistance played no role of any military significance whatsoever. The reality is that the Red Army defeated Germany and the US “Liberators” have occupied Europe and destroyed the remnants of its culture and civilization.

Switching fast forward to Gaza, the Hamas resistance against the Israeli “Defense Force” is being played down, ridiculed and vilified. According to the legacy media in the West, Hamas resistance fighters are no more than terrorists who deserve to be killed. How is it that politicians and the media in the West deny the right of Palestinians and Gazans to defend themselves against those who invade and occupy their land?

Of course, Western elites can go on for another while ignoring the inconsistencies and non sequiturs in their own and Israeli propaganda. At any rate, it only emphasizes the fact that they are accomplices in the Gaza genocide.

The Most Moral Army in the World has done the world a tremendous favor by unlocking the door to the sorely needed drastic revision of the history of the past hundred years. As a matter of fact, all history since 1914 needs to be rewritten. All those supposed heroes, from Churchill and FDR to the “heroes of Omaha Beach” and those brave RAF and USAAF pilots that bombed European cities with their priceless art treasures, killing millions of innocent civilians, all of them should be taken off their pedestals. Many streets and squares carrying their names should be renamed. No more Churchill Avenues and Roosevelt Streets in Europe!

At the same time many of those who have until now been considered villains and anti-heroes deserve to be scrutinized and assigned new roles in the new, revisionist historiography. However, this does not mean that all of those still considered heroes should be demoted and transformed into villains and vice versa.

The time has come for a dispassionate rendering of the past, for a history that makes us understand the decisions and actions of our ancestors, and this will help us better understand where we stand today.

The time has finally come for some serious historical research and writing.

After all, history is a discussion without end.

 

Source: https://hansvogel.substack.com/p/revisionism-revived