National false memory syndrome
I’m taking the above phrase from David Horowitz’s article on Sixties Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and his many subsequent conversions:
[Cleaver’s] Panther comrades David Hilliard, Bobby Seale, and Elaine Brown were busily taking advantage of a national false memory syndrome which recalled the Panthers not as the street thugs they were but as heroes of a civil-rights struggle they had openly despised. (In their heyday, Panther leaders liked to outrage their white supporters by referring to its leader as “Martin Luther Coon.”) On campus lecture tours, in Hollywood films, and in a series of well-hyped books celebrated by institutions like the New York Times and the Washington Post, they rewrote their own past to fit the legend.
It struck me that we could extend the concept and say that we are suffering from a generalized national false memory syndrome about our history and the history of the world, aided and abetted by the press and academia. After all, these two institutions are tremendously instrumental in giving us the bulk of our information as to what’s happening as it occurs (the so-called “first draft of history”), and then in further filtering, explaining, analyzing, and therefore shaping and ultimately defining our memories of historic events, even events that we ourselves have lived though. And these two institutions have in recent decades been ever more strongly taken over by liberals and the Left.
Orwell knew full well how this sort of thing works, as did the Communists and the Left. As they still do.
[NOTE: “False memory syndrome” is a controversial term that refers to the idea that a certain unknown percentage of people reporting childhood abuse, especially sexual abuse at the hands of parents, are not relating the objective truth of what actually occurred but are relating false memories that have either surfaced through the power of therapist suggestion, or in dreams. It’s one of the most contentious areas of psychology, and I’m not about to get into a discussion of it here. Suffice to say that I believe the syndrome exists, although the extent of it is presently unknown and it’s often very difficult to determine when it is operating.]
After my father and mother divorced, and I had begun to care for my stepmother (prior-mistress) at age 5, I made up such a sex abuse story about my mother and some sailor boyfriend.
I later confessed and reconciled with my mother, who had lost a nasty custody battle and even been declared unfit. The idea was that, even if only a dream, there must be enough truth in there to justify the child’s false memory.
I did turn out much better than I would have had I stayed with my mother.
I knew I wasn’t being entirely truthful (age 7). There’s no way of ever knowing how many of the others have been such.
Prefer not to state: your story is another way in which false accusations can be made. But it’s not false memory syndrome. In false memory syndrome, the child (or adult; it’s often an adult looking back on childhood after the passage of many years) believes in the truth of the memory. It is not a purposeful lie.
And true memories erased. Victims of the Memory Hole:
–Republicans supporting civil rights longer than Democrats.
–A Communist killing one Kennedy.
–A Palestinian Christian killing another for supporting Israel.
–The murderous natures of Castro and Guevara.
–Arafat ordering the killing of a US diplomat in Sudan.
–Vietnamization succeeding until Congress cut off money and arms for an ally. Nixon ending the War.
–Kerry meeting with enemies in Paris during a time of war.
–The guilt of Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and a long line of –Communist in sympathy with the Soviet Union.
–The naivete (?) of Ed Murrow.
–How the Algerian war was won, and its lessons for insurgents around the world.
–The many lives of Frantz Fanon.
This list could go and on. I have stopped at about 1975, but the point remains that if real history is suppressed, then false narratives can be put in its place. It seems to me that the greatest of all treasons is to lie.
This is current stuff. I’ve been to several left websites lately with the bloggers going on like Eric Bohlert of Media Matter:
A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this
The radical right, aided by a GOP Noise Machine that positively dwarfs what existed in 1963, has turned demonizing Obama–making him into a vile object of disgust–into a crusade. It’s a demented national jihad, the likes of which this country has not seen in modern times.
One, JFK was killed by a communist. Two, where was Eric B. when prominent leftists were openly fantasizing in front of microphones about shooting Bush and creating books and movies about that blessed event?
Just the other day we had Nancy Pelosi getting all teary about right-wing violence based on Dan White’s murder of Milk and Moscone in San Francisco.
Dan White was a Democrat. Furthermore, the current political violence has been pro-Obama folks biting off fingers or beating up conservatives.
I take all this as evidence that the left is panicked by their inability to force Obama’s agenda through and are just saying and doing whatever seems necessary.
huxley: I sometimes think that one of the reasons behind all the conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assasination is the Left’s refusal to accept he was killed by a Communist. It’s such an inconvenient truth.
huxley: I just read that Media Matters article earlier today. It floored me.
I can understand the left revising old history. I cannot understand the left revising history we all lived through. They think they can get away with that? They are idiots.
It is interesting that you point out Pelosi. When I read that article the first thing I thought of was Pelosi’s crying session. I wonder if that article was written in order to try to back up and defend her horrid acting demonstration.
I wonder if that article was written in order to try to back up and defend her horrid acting demonstration.
MikeLL: It seems to me it is a collective breakdown for the left and they all go to the same places.
In some cases they are revising very recent history, which makes for very selective awareness.
neo: Geez. I could go on for a while about conspiracy theories. I was deep into them for a couple of decades.
The JFK assassination was extraordinarily complex. It was a massive blow to the American psyche, especially to liberals. We are still feeling the repercussions. I think much of the craziness in liberals today stems from that event.
That said, it was also true that the Warren Report was a rushed, botched job, followed by the assassinations of Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK. It’s not surprising that people were seeing all sorts of things in the shadows.
What I know now is that if one stares long enough and hard enough into any event with suspicion there is no end to what one can find.
Which is a big part of my skepticism and resistance when people extrapolate much beyond the data with Obama today.
I suspect there are people who are shocked when they realize the following phrase, refering to a specific Deity is in, Gasp!, the US Constitution, given that the way it is presented by the media it just should not be there:
“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven…”
Before someone misunderstands me, I am also aware of this in Article VI of that same document: “but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Although conspiracy theories are useful tools, there is a reason for believing them in the matter of assassinations.
Nobody wants to believe a giant can be brought low by a pissant.
It offends the sense of the appropriate.
MikeLL – to revise history effectively, you have to start right away, preferably before the events even occur.
Once a worldview is in place, it will find its own reasons to persist, even if the original supports are knocked down.
“…Nobody wants to believe a giant can be brought low by a pissant.
It offends the sense of the appropriate…”
But assassins are usually pissants: Charles Guiteau, Gavrilo Princip, Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark Chapman, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, as well as unsucessful assassins Arthur Bremer and John Hinckley, Jr., were all notable for their mediocrity at best, outright failure at worst. Plus, there’s the issue of mental illness in several of these cases. The only assassin I can think of that had any public “name recognition” whatsoever was John Wilkes Booth.
I agree that for many people, the conspiracy theories regarding the Kennedy assisination are an “inconvenient truth”: either because they dont want to hear than a leftist, pro-Castro Communist did it… or because they cant stand the idea that a “pissant” no-account loser did it.
I recommend as an antidote to the conspiracy believers the excellent dosumentary, put together originally by ABC (yeah, theyre good for something occassionally), and also run in another form on the History channel, called “Beyond Conspiracy.” You can find it in several parts on You Tube. It utterly takes apart the various “conspiracy” theories, and their origins.
Clarifying my prior post:
the documentary on Youtube debunking the Kennedy assasination conspiracy theories is called:
“The Kennedy Assasination: Beyond Consipracy”
The version available on Youtube is apparently a BBC version of the aforementioned deocumentary.
I just transcribed some Andrew Breitbart interview comments. They are relevant re MSM rewriting history as it happens. Excerpt:
There is more in Breitbart’s interview, and it is good. You can read the transcript, or watch the YouTube video of the interview, at my blogpost: Andrew Breitbart’s Points.
Gcotharn, thanks, here is a link to the youtube interview, very well done regardless of what you think of Savage, nice blog by the way. Licking my chops for next week:
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/09/19/breitbart-prepare-for-a-blockbuster-from-left-field-next-week/
— George Orwell, Ninteen Eighty-four
Alan Furman–There is actually more to this quote, which more fully reads:
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” —
Which summarizes in a nutshell the understanding that impelled the Left to make getting control over both the educational establishment and the MSM a primary objective, because if you have effective control of both, you can largely control what his known of the present and how it is understood, set its norms, determine how it is shaped, who its villains and heroes are, and what its meaning is, and you can also rewrite, revision and reinterpret the “narrative” of past history, all of which gives you a very good chance of being able to dictate the direction, shape and goals of the future.
What they are doing is part of a process. it works, and i have been trying to cut to the chase everytime. but until you guys catch up, what i write is ignored…
sorry its to long winded, but until you guys have the information, it has to be long winded. however now that you are just starting to think about what the implications of stalinization is, how long before you learn thats what it is to create a false history?
this is one of STALINS things. As i said, not only can you tell that they are not neoliberal useful idiots, you can even tell which sub brand they are. and they are hitlerian-stalinists.. taking the best from both (as far as their needs and desires are concerned), and are trying to create a better hegelian synthesis of the two.
in an article about forgotten history, where is the history we forgot? isnt that what i have been constantly bringing up?
i quoted new google scanned books from hayes tilden elections. i have quoted chinses military tactical books. shadow history. front history that we completely forgotten.
and NOW you realize that the population has been stalinized… and now i am going to have to listen to days and days of people barely waking up to the implications of it, before some other distraction comes up.
what you guys dont get is that this serves two purposes. and i mentioned them before.
stalinization of history creates the mental and philosophical effect of cortez burning the boats. american africans do not have a connection, there is no going back for them.
the purpose of stalinization of history, and purging 1/3 of the population is to create this situaion that prevents them from going back evne if they succeed.
read about the destalinization efforts where it was impossible to educate those whose reality was falsely created. as stalin and lenin said. you have to wait for them to die, or kill them.
which is what you guys dont get. once it happens, and you allow the split of your coherent population into their own warring factions, it takes a few generations of no manipulation to put it right as the people die off and the new ones are educated better.
think that will ever happen?
so much in history…
and yet so much you havent learned.
and while lip servicing how important it is.
in the next breath, work against ever getting it.
if its a process, and its been done before, examining its stages and being marvled by them anew is no way to anticipate.
and denying whats going on to be reasonable isnt going to work either (its just a person setting themselves up to later be the one saying if only X knew).
oh… and if you guys who are reasonable knew these games and this history, and so on. you wouldnt be reasonable and measured slowly changing yoru mind over months.
like a person bit by a dog before, you know what a dog can do more than the reasonable person putting their hand out and thinking it can never happen.
when i was an emt (volunteer), i met dozens of people a week who all thought it can never happen. oh the surprise when their hand came off, they were degloved, or any number of VERY real things, including dying.
our ability to deny even an obvious reality we are sitting in, is legendary.
oh..
neo, can you explain who a person chooses to follow and to what degree when that person is above them (power principal) and they validate their reality?
that is. this method creates a false reality where those that learned it are locked in to siding with others above them who validate that reality, and in that way, keep them from living in a harsher reality.
you want to show them experts that say black is black and white is white? they will show you experts who will show you black is white and white is black. nietschean transvaluation of virtues.
when the genetic sciences and such couldnt validate marx, feminsts and others started their own journal, and poisoned the well. from meade, to kinsey, all doing bad science that has poisoned the legal well not just the educational well for hundreds of years to come.
they have turned a battle which should be over process moving forward and choosing what to do.
to a battle of one reality against another within a single state. since they tend to control the media message the film message, and literature and education, its only a matter of time before one reality replaces another.
then they are detached and then they have no more history to teach them and inform them of whats going on, whats happening to them, or even how the elite are just like them and not god like humans with special abilities.
i guess if you can figure out what the genetic outcome of the current few generations choices and look at the demographic groups you can see where this is going. but given the way it goes, you will ahve to be hip deep in crap to realize that there is crap at all.
Another way of saying what I said above is to say that, a large majority of those who are supposed to be, and hold themselves out to be, the protectors, custodians and transmitters of our History, Culture, Values and Collective Memory, the supposedly objective observers and analyzers in our society–the scholars, experts, newsmen and commentators–who have a professional responsibility to thoroughly research, to weigh very carefully and fairly what their research has turned up, to arrive at reasoned and informed conclusions, and to give a full, well-rounded, fair and balanced presentation of all the facts, are not doing any of this at all–except as a gloss applied to disguise what they are really doing.
The vast majority of them have been taught to view everything through a Marxist and/or–its derivative–Postmodern lens, and everything they say, every one of their conclusions, all of their ‘analysis,” is deliberately (or perhaps somewhat unconsciously) skewed and designed to blinker us, to deliberately mislead us and to herd us in one direction, to direct us to the goals that Marxism/Collectivism/Statism sets, that are the mortal enemies and antithesis of our Democracy and Freedom. The almost total control of “History” that they have achieved plays a major role in that endeavor.
You know how conservatives are always beaten up so badly by the left whenever there is any scandal of any kind that involves them? The cries of “hypocrite” that resound because conservatives dare to have ethical standards. (liberals by contrast know that no one is perfect, that we are all only human, that no one is any better than anyone else, so why aspire?)
It’s the same thing when it comes to US history.
America, that shining city on a hill, symbol of freedom, virtue, and goodness to the world is criticized and faulted for every perceived imperfection since its inception. Even if those imperfections have long since been righted.
And so the left, over the years, through the media and academe have succeeded, by focusing on our faults and imperfections, and ignoring the true greatness of a country and its people. They have succeeded in convincing the majority of Americans that we are no better than anyone else, that essentially the standards we once held are irrelevant.
National False Memory Syndrome has come about not just from the focus that’s put upon “changing or idealizing” certain historical events and people, but by an intentional effort to minimize the greatness and high ideals of our institutions.
It comes down to a Dilbertism:
It isn’t what I’ve done that counts, it’s what I say I’ve done, and what I say I’ll do in the future.
I previously mentioned this title (I recently finished), clarifying the early real long-term record of the Democratic (and Republican) Party concerning racism in America, and well worth your time: “Setting The Record Straight, American History in BLACK & WHITE”, by David Barton, ISBN 1-932225-27-7; For example, much is made by Democrats of Lyndon Johnsons “signing” of the 1964 and 1965 civil rights legislation, but as the author clarifies: “President Johnson needed a majority – only 269 votes – to get those bills passed; but out of the 315 Democrats, only 198 voted for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts…. in fact, 83 percent of Republicans voted for those bills, a percentage of support almost twenty points higher….” Here’s another fun one:
http://www.carnellknowledge.com/the-1-killer-of-blacks-in-2001/
Dear Neo,
Thanks for referencing and reading David Horowitz.
Like Norman Podhoretz, Tammy Bruce, M Medved, Vanderleun and recently Robin of Berkley at American Thinker, I appreciate reading people who have been left and have turned right. Thanks for sharing your journey also.
I don’t think liberals only lie to decieve others. They are like the worlds premiere group at lying to themselves with overwhelming success.
Off topic significant news:
White House rejects competition across state lines:
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2009/09/20/the-white-house-rejects-interstate-competition-in-health-insurance/
White House is anti-black (or against David Patterson running in New York):
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2009/09/20/white-house-targeting-gov-paterson-d-ny/
Wolla Dalbo said, “Which summarizes in a nutshell the understanding that impelled the Left to make getting control over both the educational establishment and the MSM a primary objective, because if you have effective control of both, you can largely control what his known of the present and how it is understood, set its norms, determine how it is shaped, who its villains and heroes are, and what its meaning is, and you can also rewrite, revision and reinterpret the “narrative” of past history, all of which gives you a very good chance of being able to dictate the direction, shape and goals of the future.”
You are so correct. That is why, if conservatives ever get back into a position of power, one of their first acts needs to be eliminating the Department of Education. Reagan promised to do it in 1980, but never followed through after elected.
The Dept. of Ed. was created by Carter as a sop to the teacher’s union’s support in the ’76 election. Since then, the money spent on education has gone up, way up. Yet student achievement on standardized tests has gone down.
The teacher’s union (NEA) is an arm of the democrat party and a leftist arm at that. THere is no doubt today that they are the greatest impediment to real education in this country. Education standards and funding is a matter for the states and eliminating the Department of Education is one of the necessary first steps in reducing federal over reach.
When I was a child I asked my father what the Black Panters actually accomplished. He laughed and said that other than scaring the heck out of white people, absolutely nothing.
Here’s another fun one from Free Republic, “What the Democrats would like you to forget”…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/801130/posts
More from http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4054 (for the entire entry):
“Tim Gratz
View Member Profile Nov 6 2005, 11:43 AM Post #6….
But here is another possibility re reparations:
Inner City Minister Sues Democratic Party For Reparations
Inner City Minister Sues Democratic Party For Reparations
[ Seattle , January 3, 2005 ] On December 10th 2004 , inner-city minister, Rev Wayne Perryman, – filed a class action Reparation lawsuit (in the United States District Court in Seattle Case No. CV04-2442), alleging “that because of their racist past practices the Democratic Party should be required to pay African Americans Reparations.‿ Perryman said “he based his case on the research that he gathered during the past five years while writing the three editions of his latest book: (click here to view in pdf format)
Unfounded Loyalty
An In-depth Look Into The Love Affair Between Blacks & Democrats ………………. Perryman said, “To conceal the truth of their racist past (and as part of their effort to deceive the public), the Democratic Party made a conscience decision not to mention or disclose their true and complete history. (See exhibit 1). On their official website they failed to disclose that as a Party: …the Democratic Party established a pattern of practice by promoting, supporting, sponsoring and financing racially bias entertainment, education, legislation, litigations, and terrorist organizations from 1792 to 1962 and continued certain practices up to 2002…”
Of course it might be racist now to remember this inconvenient past, now that the dems have their “Manchurian Candidate” ensconced in the White House….
Of course, while the Dems would have us believe they are completely reformed now, they’ve just gone from one extreme to another pandering for votes, from the formerly KKK end, now to the ACORN end; RICO now, fat chance….
Here, in the St. Louis Riverfront Times, an “alternative” weekly, is an account of a Weathermen bombing: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2009-09-16/news/blown-to-peaces-weather-underground-leaders-claimed-bombings-devised-to-avoid-bloodshed-fbi-agents-suspect-radical-70s-group-killed-cop-in-name-of-revolution/
I would not have expected this in a liberal / progressive publication. Maybe, the times they are a’ changin’?
Funny you should say that. Some on the left actually accept that Oswald acted alone – but his actions were “triggered” by rightwing rhetoric.
Just last Thursday I made the mistake of tuning into ‘Hardball’ and almost screamed aloud when Chris Matthews charged that it was “rightwing hatred of Jack Kennedy that may have sprung or triggered even a leftwinger like Oswald to do what he did”.
Vieux Charles, no matter what the Left does, it will always be something from our side that “triggers the reaction”, i.e., it’s never the Left’s fault. They have no responsibility, they’re never accountable for their own actions, and the blame always lies elsewhere. The epicycles and contortions that these arguments are put through to reach this conclusion a la Matthews boggle the mind of a reasonable person, but it’s the Left’s opinion, and they’re sticking to it.
As a Leftie I always read Neo’s comments with cynical bemusement. I see a tendency to assign human frailty to the Left and no soul searching for one’s own frailty. Of course I know the mirror applies to the left blogoshere, we have only to read the Daily Kos for identical Pavlovian reactions.
I think that we assign conspiracy to the Kennedy assassination because it was so awful, so traumatic, so unacceptable to witness a president being shot to death on TV. We don’t want to come face to face with the awful power on that bullet and how it tore apart the whole edifice of our civilization in an immediate moment of chaos. It is chaos that we fear, the helplessless before an event that overwhelms all that we know. In order to re-erect our sense of safety and order, we will construct any theory or explanation that will impose some sense of reason on the horror.
The planes flying into the twin towers was that same sort of unbelievable experience. we could not accept what our eyes were seeing. Suddenly we were transfixed by the sight and sound of it and as the day wore on, the trauma grew and grew and again all sense of safety and order vanished and we found ourselves again staring into the abyss.
America is a young and blessed nation and we find it hard sometimes to accept cruel and unpredicable events. We find comfort in theories which place them in some sort of explainable history, even if that history is sinister. Better sinister than nothing.
But notice that for the most part it is not the conservatives making up conspiracy theories about 911…
9/11
mea culpa
“…We find comfort in theories which place them in some sort of explainable history, even if that history is sinister. ..”
To me, it’s perfectly explainable that a lone whackjob could assassinate a president or other public figure. I don’t find it especially comforting to see a conspiracy where none exists. I have no problem facing the fact that an Oswald or a Hinckley likely acted alone until it is demonstrated with some rigor that he didn’t. People are sometimes unstable, and, occasionally, homicidally so. A loose cannon like Oswald or Hinckley can walk around unnoticed for years before the right set of circumstances converges and a Kennedy or a Reagan is suddenly in the crosshairs.
To me, that’s more palatable than a conspiracy. Take the plot the resulted in the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Did Gavrilo Princip and his co-conspirators really think the Austrians would let their Archduke’s assassination just slide? They couldn’t have believed that. But they went ahead anyway. In the end, I guess Princip (who didn’t survive the war) got what he wanted: Austria out of Bosnia. But with a few “unintended consequences” (i.e., WW1) along the way. The fact of the conspiracy gave neither the Austrians nor the Serbs the wiggle room they might have had if Princip had acted alone.
In defense to many on the left, the Truthers co-opted the anti-war movement. They were welcome under the philisophy of “an enemy of my enemy is my friend”. However, they were suspiciously ejected when it became embarassing to have them around.
After such an accusation, it would have been nice if you’d given an example.
I’m not trying to defend Neo, and I don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment of how typically the Kennedy and 9/11 conspiracies came into being, but the fact is, many on the left have revised the Kennedy assassination and many aspects of 9/11 for their own political agenda – as if Bush and the neocons, exploited the 9/11 emergency to create out thin air the Iraqi WMD threat to justify an invasion and to hide their alterior motive of “stealing Iraqi oil”.
This is a pathetic revision of the facts that even today the Democrats pull out to frighten the ignorant and stifle any real valuation of why we invaded – even at the contradiction of why we still remain.
Plato Bunker, here is a Quick Guide for HTML tags, courtesy of Mount Holyoke College.See “”Creating links.”. For a link, just put a website URL between the quotation marks.
You can use this website to preview remarks. Unfortunately, Neo’s software doesn’t allow for preview.
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