Posted on 01/01/2012 1:32:46 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
We've long lived with revisionist history. Progressives have made the founders into racists, many of them into atheists, but there has to be a way to track this down, right? It actually comes from Germany. Once again, we see how the roots of progressivism comes from "Germanic ideals" or "Prussianism".(some of the ways it used to be phrased in the early 20th century - see my archives for previous discussion on this) And revisionist history is yet another tendril of this tree root. Marxists.org has the actual article where it first entered into the English language, but I can't blame anybody for not wanting to give web hits to these people. The title of the article is "Revisionism in Germany", written by J. B. Askew. Here.
Wikipedia has an article about Revisionism in the Marxist tradition. Here. While I generally distrust Wikipedia, I do generally think this makes sense in that the attribution of Revisionism as a whole goes to Eduard Bernstein.(and Jean Jaures) Here's what it says:
who sought to revise Karl Marx's ideas about the transition to socialism and claimed that a revolution through force was not necessary to achieve a socialist society. The views of Bernstein and Jaurès gave rise to reformist theory, which asserts that socialism can be achieved through gradual peaceful reforms from within a capitalist system.
The image caption on the right says the following:
Eduard Bernstein, originator of the original Revisionism.
I found this to be intriguing, as well as the whole timing, considering that (As I've previously noted) one of the major precursors to Fabian Socialism in Britain(and in the US I might add) is Henry George's Book. In the late 1800's. Also, this is right around the time that progressivism rears it's ugly little head. Late 1800's, early 1900's. And how Bernstein ties into this is incredible. He wrote the book on Evolutionary Socialism, in 1899. I think this may be it's English translation.
Now think about that for a second. Does not "Evolutionary Socialism" perfectly describe Fabianism? And while we're at it, does it not also in large part describe progressivism? I can't help but see that all these puzzle pieces fit together perfectly.
The victors write history.
As an example, in public schools, our children are reading about........
Bump for later
But while the term may be relatively new, the practice is much older.
It goes back a lot further than that. Even before “socialism” had been labeled, proto-socialists had embraced what could be called “historical revisionism” going way back, even to the 18th or 17th Century.
Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed many such proto-socialist ideas in his writings, with an idealized return of mankind to isolated, rural villages, having surrendered or been forced to surrender civilization and history. This concept still crops up today among radical environmentalists.
Emerson proposed that these isolated, rural villages be kept in a primitive state by itinerant “Orphic Poets”, who would travel from town to town, intentionally giving corrupt history lessons to keep any town from developing or returning to civilization and culture.
As an integrated example of this, Emerson cited a Biblical stories, that he twisted to show the opposite of its original intent. In that case, the story of Nebuchadnezzar II, who is made the hero of the story, and is favored by God.
Today, and for the last hundred or more years, socialism has viewed accurate history as its greatest enemy, and something that must be subverted and eventually destroyed, so that socialism can exist and thrive. In practice, this is the same level of lying that was used for Kim Jong Il, him showing how superior he was by allegedly making eight holes in one in a single game of golf.
In other words, it is ludicrous. But this does not stop socialists one bit from broadcasting and rebroadcasting naked lies, using the big lie theory, that with enough repetition, a lie will be accepted as the truth.
This is a very worthy post, the links are most informative, thank you.
The socialists also claim that facts are subjective. That helps to tamp down any questioning of their revisionism.
1948 in 1984
It is important to note that a common tactic used by revisionists is to accuse the opposition of what you are yourself doing. As in Pelosi calling the Tea Party nazis-- it is most certainly the other way around. The German communist party partnered with Hitler in the SA stormtroopers and labor. The parallels are quite eerie.
The other essential part of socialism gaining ground is to have an audience that does not know correct history-- and to take that audience and "revise" the history to fit what you are driving at-- revisionism in the colleges was and is easily done with uninformed naive dumbasses (like occupy- funded by obama supporters, how ironic).
Have come across a site that is at first hilarious and then
very informative. It is called The Peoples Cube. Could not stop laughing at all the parody and also the true stories.
Went there after perusing Kim Jong Dead funeral.
An all red rubik’s cube is part of the site— everybody can solve the cube, cause it’s all the same color— equality of outcome in the socialists worker’s paradise.
Apparently it is run by someone who says they were formerly in agitprop for the soviets.
The first time I heard the term in graduate school was actually applied to historians of the North Pole who claimed Robert E. Peary did not reach the Pole. But I think probably the first “authenticated” revisionist in America was Charles Beard with his “Economic Interpretation of the Constitution.”
This was published, I believe, in 1913, and may have been the first revisionism of the Progressive movement, but it is not the first revisionism in America.
An earlier example would be referring to the 1860's failed war of independence as a "civil war". It was no more a civil war than was the successful 1776 war of independence. History is written by the victors.
I expect that someone could come up with an even earlier example.
I agree, the term “Civil War” is probably wrong. It should be the “War by the south to enslave other people without penalty.”
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