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Home » To the left, history is fiction they can rewrite at will

To the left, history is fiction they can rewrite at will

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s the war on statues about? It’s a case of “venting,” of course, in the emotional sense. But it’s much much more than that. The pulling down and/or defacing of statues is not some emotional spur-of-the-moment impulse, although I suppose it functions that way for some hangers-on. However, it is just one of many tactics in an overall strategy that has been coldly and methodically executed over many decades by the left, and has been reaping great rewards: to destroy actual history and create a narrative more desirable to them.

This is not about Confederate statues, in case anyone ever thought it was. That much is clear. It’s not about slave owners, either. Those were just the beginning tactics, the opening moves to lull people into a false sense about what going on.

Now it is decreed by the leftists that a statue of Lincoln next to a kneeling slave in the act of rising and with his chains finally broken, about to stand in freedom, must be destroyed. A statue paid for by actual, real life freed slaves, who gave their money to commission it. The left says it can’t be allowed anymore because the slave is kneeling, you see, and Lincoln is a white man liberator who had a few racist ideas typical of the “woke” of his time. We can’t place him in history, celebrate his accomplishments and his sacrifice, and the fact that slaves were freed, and be done with it.

No, that’s not the story the left wants told, and what the left wants it gets or you’re a racist, too. The same goes for statues of Robert Gould Shaw and all the abolitionists. Wipe em out, and obliterate the memory of their sacrifices and deny their help with the struggle for freedom, because the new story that must be heard throughout the land is that the slaves freed themselves.

There’s no question that black people were part of the process and were instrumental in it as well, particularly black freemen and freewomen. Robert Gould Shaw led the first black regiment that fought for the Union in the Civil War, and Shaw died in that endeavor. History consists of all of the above, not either/or.

But the left says that we can’t have that.

Today Scott Johnson of Powerline has published the speech of Frederick Douglass at the dedication of the statue in 1876. I’m going to except just the beginning, although the whole thing is worth reading [emphasis mine]:

I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have today. This occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men of our race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the United States; who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of events by which we have reached our present position, will make a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with a sense of manly pride and complacency.

Frederick Douglass was a brilliant man who had been born in slavery and escaped prior to the Civil War, fleeing north. He lived through the events that today’s leftists only read about in their carefully constructed politically correct histories. I doubt he ever imagined what would be happening a hundred and fifty years later in the name of anti-racism. He assumed the continuity of the “wise and thoughtful.” Little did he know.

Note also that Douglass keeps saying “man,” even to the point of adding “manly pride.” And yet, even back then, some abolitionists were women. I suppose that, as a woman, I could get angry at Douglass himself for that viewpoint. But you know what? I could not care less. We all are people of our times, and Douglass and Lincoln were visionaries and great great men who saw further than most of their contemporaries. I salute them both and don’t demand that they conform to some later standard of speech and thought dictated by the woke, who are most definitely not men – or women – who are “wise and thoughtful.”

If you ever looked at the 1619 Project pushed by The New York Times to rewrite American history as motivated by love and promotion of slavery, you may have wondered why the Times has persisted in pushing the tale despite widespread and bipartisan criticism of it from historians. Well, wonder no more. The Times could not care less what historians say, because the editors are not at all interested in telling accurate history. They are interested in pushing the story they wish had happened, and even more importantly, the story they want all Americans and their children to believe and to pass on to their children some day.

I fear they are succeeding – and in fact may have already succeeded. I see the evidence all around me.

[NOTE: The woman in charge of the 1619 Project, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has now been outed as being not just an anti-white racist, but one who has long subscribed to some extremely bizarre rewrites of history, such as the idea that black people discovered America first, befriended the natives, and that the pyramids in Mexico are somehow evidence of this and monuments to this early friendship. You an read the whole letter here.

This is the person heading the 1619 Project, a “history” that will be taught in many schools across the land.]

Comments

To the left, history is fiction they can rewrite at will — 30 Comments

  1. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. . . Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right” — Orwell.

  2. You know who is really excited by all this? Whatever brokedick cracker is running the Ku Klux Klan and the knuckle-draggers recruiting for the Aryan Brotherhood. This is their dream come true.

    Mike

  3. Neo, I may have to take a break from your blog. It’s getting too depressing. I know of most of what you write, though you fill in the details wonderfully. You are so tuned in to what is happening in the country and what it all means. However, I just see no hope that the good side will prevail, or is even trying to.

    As an aside: do you know how many people are registered on your blog, and also how many just stop by and read? Just interested in your “reach”. Also it would be nice to know how many of us are really “out there”.

  4. A.G. Sulzberger has transformed the NYT into The Weekly World News.

    Back in the ’90s, the WWN would publish “news” about invisible CIA agents attempting to assassinate Gaddafi with death rays.

    Perhaps Hannah-Jones got her start in journalism there.

  5. physicsguy,

    I have been trying to spend less time online and following the news lately because it is so damn depressing and even the distractions like sports are all obsessed with BLM and panic porn on the virus. Finding places to go online is very hard. There have been more than a few days where I have been real busy and not had time to check the latest and been in a great mood then get online and it is an immediate downer.

    This is obviously not neo’s fault it is just so unrelenting at this point.

  6. If you ever looked at the 1619 Project pushed by The New York Times to rewrite American history as motivated by love and promotion of slavery, you may have wondered why the Times has persisted in pushing the tale despite widespread and bipartisan criticism of it from historians. Well, wonder no more. The Times could not care less what historians say, because the editors are not at all interested in telling accurate history. They are interested in pushing the story they wish had happened, and even more importantly, the story they want all Americans and their children to believe and to pass on to their children some day.

    1. Because the person running the paper and much of staff producing the editorial matter know little American history. I don’t mean granular material like the content of Thos. Jefferson’s correspondence, but the landmarks which would give you a BS detector about dubious contentions.

    2. Because the person running the paper is a vain and malicious fool. Behind all of this are people who have lived very comfortable lives compared to those of their great grandparents, people who are sitting atop the efforts and accomplishments of previous generations, people who’ve not built a blessed thing, sitting in judgment of their ancestors. These types are legion among gentry liberals.

  7. but one who has long subscribed to some extremely bizarre rewrites of history, such as the idea that black people discovered America first,

    Did you know she was a history major at Notre Dame? Heckuva job, Holy Cross Fathers.

    And for you sports-obsessed alumni, your donation dollars at work, suckers.

    Maybe some alumni for whom a couple of million is sofa change can endow a chair just for kicks. How about “Erich von Daniken Distinguished Professor of History”?

  8. Ladies and gentlemen you are made of sturdier stuff. These are not the end of days. This turmoil fueled by ignorance and self destructive hatred shall not stand. A great backlash is quietly building. Optimistic, yes, but why surrender in pessimism?

    In sleepy Iowa I keep a handgun near at hand.

  9. Griffin, yeah…I’m a big soccer fan and was happy to see the European leagues start back up. Tuned into a Man City-Arsenal game only to see all the players with “Black Lives Matter” on the back of their jerseys. So much for the Premier League. At least La Liga is acting normal and it’s good to see Barcelona again. I’ve dropped my lifetime support for the Denver Broncos after their stunt for BLM last month. Even the players on our family’s favorite UConn women basketball made a statement supporting BLM, and Geno approved…sigh…. I’ll see what happens with the NWSL this weekend, but even the outlet of sports is being taken away and politicized.

    Hard to stay optimistic Parker.

  10. physicsguy:

    I understand, but I certainly hope you don’t leave. Your comments are very much valued here.

    You might want to look at a post I just posted.

    To answer your other question, my traffic varies depending on links. I get about 3K viewers a day, sometimes a bit less especially on weekends, or a lot more if there’s a big link. But not all my readers visit every day, and not all of the visitors are regular readers at all. So it’s actually very hard to estimate how many regular readers there are, how many occasional readers, and how many one-timers.

  11. Today felt like Despair Day to me – the day when the turn happened. I can’t point to why – but I’m fighting it.

    I’m telling myself people lived through 1968, and much better times lay ahead for them. I’m telling myself that election night 2016 was as huge a shock to me as it was to my political opponents. I’m telling myself that all the lockdown stuff serves to concentrate everyone’s emotions dramatically, and as reopening happens people will have more outlets for their feelings.

    But I live in Texas, which is now back in masks (my area was never out of them, by almost everyone’s personal choice rather than by dictate) and at low capacity (ditto), and things feel slow as molasses and sour as vinegar today.

  12. I am a reader every day of your blog and since physics guy mentioned some who do not comment but read your blog every day…I am one! Do agree with most of that what is happening to our country is tragic and I hope President Trump can influence and help stop some of this. I am and remain a true Trump voter, because I believe the alternative is the destruction of our country and the constitution

  13. The airbrushing of the past is being done sloppily, with little thought given to the vastness of the history puzzle. Only true pieces fit that puzzle. Traces of reality point to the full truth, and the erasers will be increasingly viewed with disdain.

    SJWs are narrowly focused, and seemingly unable to comprehend the sweep of time forward and back to infinity. They are microscopically smaller than the pissants above them in the evolutionary ladder. They might assume this is their only life, but contemplating that question is presently beyond them.

    Pulling down statues? How astonishingly minuscule. Let us put up more that are easily and quickly replaceable to keep them busy.

  14. I lived through the 60s and 70s. Actually had a front row seat to many of the events. Served in Vietnam, recruited Naval aviators while being heckled and protested on college campuses, flew over Los Angeles and Baltimore when they were aflame, stayed in hotels with cops with submachine guns in the lobby, was aware of the Zebra killings in San Francisco where I frequently laid over, and other events that I was close enough to know fear and revulsion. I moved my family to a remote mountain area because I believed our society was going to come apart. Then, along came Ronald Reagan. One man with the courage of his convictions, was able to defeat the USSR, strengthen our military, promote a good climate for business, promote law and order, and survive an assassination attempt,

    Can Trump and his successor do the same? It will be far more difficult. Our education system, especially the college level, has gone too far left. Our businesses are run mostly by lefties like Bezos, Zuckerberg, and other powerful globalists. Our institutions are not as strong. The DOJ (Bill Barr excepted), FBI, and Intelligence Community have all been politicized. All that said, there is still a majority (the silent ones) of Americans who don’t approve of the Communist, anti-American activities being promoted by BLM and ANTIFA. The gun shops are running low on inventory. People are arming themselves and it’s not the liberals.

    I’m not willing to pronounce the patient dead. There are many events to come and I never forget the hand of Providence that has produced the right men at the right time in our past. As much as arms and ammunition are needed, maybe some prayers for wisdom, courage, and the continuance of this grand experiment are just as needed. Cheer up. Be happy warriors.

  15. Valuable post!

    Frederick Douglass was one of the strongest supporters of women’s rights in the 19th century, although he prioritized voting rights for blacks over voting rights for women.

    He was friends with many of the leading advocates, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Susan B. Anthony. The Susan B. Anthony Park in Rochester shows statues of her and Douglass seated at a table drinking tea: https://www.cityofrochester.gov/article.aspx?id=8589936553

    Douglass died on February 20, 1895 in Washington D.C. shortly after addressing the National Council of Women: https://www.stripes.com/news/us/frederick-douglass-died-feb-20-1895-hours-after-making-up-with-susan-b-anthony-1.569202

  16. My unsolicited advice, don’t be silly sissies. Stock up on ammo, make sure your aim is true. If you are not capable to defend yourself with lethal force you are slaves awaiting your chains. Or worse. Let history be your guide. Sheesh.

  17. Parker has it. The rest is just talk.

    In fact any other approach is often worse than just talk as people who are too weak-minded to defend themselves with violence (and perhaps also too weak-minded to make the difficult decision to relocate to safe more defensible locales)… these weak-minded kickers of cans down the road often end up being partially responsible for worse depredations when the can finally reaches the end of the road and runs out of room.

    TL:DR: If you in the present year you are in favor of ‘diversity’, ‘immigration’ / ‘invade the world / invite the world’, ‘affirmative action’, ‘choice’ (i.e. infanticide), ‘going along to get along’, ‘turning the other cheek’… why then you are also part of the problem.

  18. Physicsguy, I got one, would be much happier if you stayed. I respect your opinions, and am glad to get them.

  19. physicsguy – always appreciate your comments, but understand the need to take a break.
    Maybe just drop by for dance and jello?

  20. Banned Lizard on June 26, 2020 at 7:24 pm said:
    “The airbrushing of the past is being done sloppily, with little thought given to the vastness of the history puzzle.”

    * * *
    The iconic pictures of the Communists airbrushed out of Stalin’s pictures are iconic precisely because we still have both versions.

    https://www.hoover.org/research/inside-stalins-darkroom

    One of the most extraordinary things about Western admirers of the Soviet system, those who were also supposedly informed students of the Soviet scene, is that they somehow did not notice this phenomenon. It is as if–exactly as if–British Americanists had simply failed to register the disappearance of half the U.S. cabinet and most of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    Over on the Twitter thread, I repeated this well-known maxim:
    Liberal turned conservative David Mamet famously said:
    “In order to continue advancing their illogical arguments modern liberals have to pretend not to know things.”

    To continue from the article, a sobering thought about all of history that we think we know:

    One baffling notion, still to be found among academic students of the Soviet period, is the idea that documents are, per se, a reliable source of information. These photographs are, of course, documents, and much Soviet typed or printed material is at the same level of credibility. (If only one of the Stalinist revisions had survived, it would doubtless be accepted by researchers.) It is true that nonvisual documents have more leeway because they are usually invented out of whole cloth rather than being revisions of earlier material. But not always. The minutes of a Politburo meeting in 1918 had to be retrospectively altered to bring Stalin’s attitude on the Brest-Litovsk treaty closer to Lenin’s. But such things as the 1939 census or the German responsibility for Katyn were just straightforward falsifications. Indeed, if we rely on the documents, then we must still believe that Stalin’s old comrade Sergo Ordzhonikidze died a natural death in February 1937. The only document, a postmortem signed by the commissar for health and three other leading doctors, calls it a heart attack. The true story, long since accepted in Moscow, that it was suicide or murder (at any rate, a gunshot), depends on less “rigorous” sources.

    The rehabilitation of Stalinist victims (others had to wait for a generation) began in the late 1950s under Khrushchev. Even then, some of those deleted from the photographs were still given fake death dates because the secret NKVD records had also been falsified to transfer them to a later period.

  21. Another article with a very interesting picture – reminds me of an Agatha Christie mystery titled “And Then There Were None” – and a blunt reminder that journalism is the first draft of history.

    https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching

    In one photograph, Stalin is shown with a group of three of his deputies. As each deputy fell out his favor, they were snipped out of the photo until only Stalin remained.
    …
    It can be a way of literally erasing today’s political enemies from tomorrow’s picture of history—and making the future as unreliable as a present filled with propaganda and lies.

  22. A newbie (4 month daily Neo fan). I’m calling my 94 yr old mother each day with a singular goal: make mom laugh. It’s selfish. I need to laugh each day too. Yes, I’m discouraged. By my reading of history, it feels like the 30s but worse. Is this descent into madness unstoppable? God I hope not. (A declaration and a plea.) As an aside, I just began reading all you commenters. Good stuff. Grey matter stimulants and, sometimes, a balm. Thanks.

  23. “To the left, history is fiction they can rewrite at will.” neo

    Indeed. Yet the ‘history’ they ‘rewrite’ are a blatant pastiche of omissions, distortions and lies both big and small. And the trouble with lies is that they both cannot withstand the light of examination and when their true nature is finally seen that belief turns into disgust and revulsion for no one enjoys having been played the fool.

    Lately I too have been spending a bit less time online and following the news because giving it an inordinate amount of attention is a waste of time. I’ll write, speak up with family and friends (some of whom disagree) when possible politely disagree with strangers and most of all vote. But if a majority of Americans vote for tyranny then it will be time to prepare for “politics by other means”.

    In the meantime, I’m concentrating on my two interests; fly fishing and audio.

    “This turmoil fueled by ignorance and self destructive hatred shall not stand. A great backlash is quietly building.” parker

    That is exactly what I foresee.

    “The airbrushing of the past is being done sloppily, with little thought given to the vastness of the history puzzle. Only true pieces fit that puzzle. Traces of reality point to the full truth, and the erasers will be increasingly viewed with disdain.” Banned Lizard

    This. Reports of the Left’s prowess is another Big Lie.

    Though a lie can indeed “be halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on” that lie has little staying power and must be continually ‘refreshed’ with more lies. Yet the counter to that, “oh what a tangled web we weave, when once we begin to deceive” is still as true today as when Shakespeare penned that eternal truth.

    So for those of a religious bent; have faith for God is not finished with us even yet and, for those of a secular persuasion; civilization for all it’s up and downs… persists. We’ve met the enemy and he is indeed us and all that remains to be revealed is how hard are the lessons Americans have yet to learn.

    The “American Experiment” is not over, not by a long shot.

  24. Douglass’s speech at the dedication of the monument is worth several readings. He deserves a place among the immortals. Of particular interest rhetorically is the way he puts distance between Lincoln and black Americans (“He was not… our man or our model…He was preeminently the white man’s president.”) Douglass uses that distance to create in his conclusion a tribute to Lincoln that is admiring, appreciative, and heroic.

    Of particular interest is a phrase Douglass uses to describe how black Americans saw, measured and estimated Abraham Lincoln, “not by isolated facts torn from their connection”.

    That is the tactic being used by the left to undermine America and the American story–tearing isolated facts from their connection.

    Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Churchill, the King James Bible–the rhetoric employed lifts the prose into the heavens. If you are feeling blue, read any of them.

    Footnote: I saw that the shifty and unreliable Elinor Holmes Norton said in a tweet the other day that Douglass criticized the composition or imagery of the Freedman’s Monument in his “keynote” speech. Do you see that in Douglass’s speech? She is either lying or relying on someone else who lied to her. Disgusting. And it wasn’t a “keynote” speech. She is such a political hack that she can only express herself in sordid political terms.

  25. I am beyond disgusted by the 1619 Project, the nutcase who helms it and the garbage newspaper promoting it. Funnily enough, I am currently working on a novel set in the years leading up to the Civil War and a main female character who is a passionate abolitionist, and so I had to go back and read a bunch of memoirs and accounts of anti-slavery activists … including Frederick Douglass (who does appear as a character.) They were passionate about abolishing slavery, many of them from the very beginning, going back to our Revolution in some cases, and freely joined up to fight against the slave power when the war kicked loose. The awful Hannah-Jones woman and the New York Times-Stürmer has whitewashed all that (verb chosen deliberately) history of activism and protest, even as mobs rip down and deface statues of abolitionists and Union soldiers.
    By the way, I am nearly certain that the image of the kneeling slave in the Lincoln statue (which was paid for by former slaves!) was a deliberate visual reference to Josiah Wedgewood’s design for the British abolitionist organization: a kneeling slave in chains with the motto “Am I not a man and a brother?” a design which was widely distributed in various media and would have been well-known to contemporaries.
    https://www.artic.edu/artworks/66185/anti-slavery-medallion

  26. Parker: “If you are not capable to defend yourself with lethal force you are slaves awaiting your chains.”

    So, what should someone in their eighties, who barely gets around with a walker, do exactly?

  27. Parker: “A great backlash is quietly building. ”

    Yes, I agree. However, that in itself can be cause for worry.

    Look at the rise of Napoleon in France, or the rise of the National Socialists in Germany. Although not precisely the same, they can be classified as backlashes against what came immediately before.

  28. Sgt Mom:

    That medallion does seem to be very much like the statue. How interesting!

    But even if the “woke” crowd knew about it they would not care, any more than they care that the statue was paid for by free black people (many ex-slaves) and dedicated by Frederick Douglas. They know better than those old racists – racists by the new woke definition, which defines everything other than their own POV as racist.

  29. Look at the rise of Napoleon in France, or the rise of the National Socialists in Germany. Although not precisely the same, they can be classified as backlashes against what came immediately before.

    Both Napoleon and Hitler caused an ocean of misery because of grossly excessive imperial ambitions and (in Hitler’s case) lunatic hatreds. Countries which are fortunate receive a gift of someone who is capable, someone who knows he has enough real enemies and has no need of manufacturing enemies from his imagination, and someone who wants to care for his own people – not subjugate some other people. The few who have filled the bill have been Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile, the Uruguayan chiefs of staff, King Hussein of Jordan, Park Chung Hee in South Korea, and Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. Salazar in Portugal and Suharto in Indonesia get partial credit. The closest to the mark right now is Vladimir Putin.

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