I don’t know, historical “truth” is all about focus, editing and which documents, details and context are hidden, lost, forgotten, censored, omitted, overlooked, not even recorded. In the end it is a narrative and can be shaped by bias like a newspaper: you need to read a few different ones to get an idea of what actually happened, unless you lived it and even then it’s interesting to see what it looked like to others. What is important is that there is free access to historical documents and information so you can ask questions that were never answered before in textbooks and still get answers instead of an uncomfortable void in some parts.
Yes, this case is pretty clear and the intentions and alternatives are clear too as far as I can tell, it’s a classic imperial strategy of homogenisation.
PS: What I was thinking of when I wrote that was the Wikipedia article on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and how the Soviets were apparently chummy (not just non-aggression) with the Nazis before being invaded by them (1st order correction to what I used to think: that they hated each other) and there is actually a 2nd order correction to that correction from documents found showing that Stalin tried to form an anti-nazi pact with France and the UK, but it was rejected in favour of appeasement, which puts that in a different light too…everyone comes out of it looking foolish.
It’s true that it was official policy in soviet-colonized spaces to erase the local culture and power structures, replacing it with Russia’s, and paper over what happened with self-serving stories as the story of record. It’s also true that this is a thing they have in common with every other colonizer; just as the Europeans colonized the shit out of the Americas, Russians colonized the shit out of the Soviet republics (and their own territory).
Yes, the process of colonizing in this fashion involves the deliberate destruction of inconvenient fact- but saying “we can’t know the truth” participates in its erasure.
I didn’t say we can’t know the truth. I said the truth can’t be known if you can’t ask questions and don’t have free access to investigate the dark past. Some dude even called me a holocaust denier 🤡
First the Anne Frank graphic novel, now this comment. Fascists really hate the “narrative” of historical truth.
I don’t know, historical “truth” is all about focus, editing and which documents, details and context are hidden, lost, forgotten, censored, omitted, overlooked, not even recorded. In the end it is a narrative and can be shaped by bias like a newspaper: you need to read a few different ones to get an idea of what actually happened, unless you lived it and even then it’s interesting to see what it looked like to others. What is important is that there is free access to historical documents and information so you can ask questions that were never answered before in textbooks and still get answers instead of an uncomfortable void in some parts.
Okay, but this actually happened and is well documented. The event is not under question.
Yes, this case is pretty clear and the intentions and alternatives are clear too as far as I can tell, it’s a classic imperial strategy of homogenisation.
PS: What I was thinking of when I wrote that was the Wikipedia article on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and how the Soviets were apparently chummy (not just non-aggression) with the Nazis before being invaded by them (1st order correction to what I used to think: that they hated each other) and there is actually a 2nd order correction to that correction from documents found showing that Stalin tried to form an anti-nazi pact with France and the UK, but it was rejected in favour of appeasement, which puts that in a different light too…everyone comes out of it looking foolish.
It’s true that it was official policy in soviet-colonized spaces to erase the local culture and power structures, replacing it with Russia’s, and paper over what happened with self-serving stories as the story of record. It’s also true that this is a thing they have in common with every other colonizer; just as the Europeans colonized the shit out of the Americas, Russians colonized the shit out of the Soviet republics (and their own territory).
Yes, the process of colonizing in this fashion involves the deliberate destruction of inconvenient fact- but saying “we can’t know the truth” participates in its erasure.
I didn’t say we can’t know the truth. I said the truth can’t be known if you can’t ask questions and don’t have free access to investigate the dark past. Some dude even called me a holocaust denier 🤡