The Politics of Historical Revisionism

Narrative defines History

The infallible indicator of a person’s politics is the way that they interpret history; once you understand this about a person, you will understand their politics. Our present is determined by our past, politics are no different, the politics of today are the result of the politics of yesterday.

The issue is that history is not a set of dates and facts to be memorized, history, like all things human requires a narrative that gives all these dates and facts meaning. All political persuasions can agree with the fact that the berlin wall fell in 1989, however, there is little agreement of what this fact means.

Did the fall of the berlin wall represent the final triumph of liberal western democracy and marked the beginning of the end of history? Or did it represent the victory of the forces of capitalist exploitation over the glorious worker’s revolution? Depends on who you ask. Each political persuasion has their own preferred interpretation of historical events which predictably support their own ideology.

History must be interpreted, there is no way around it. Of course, there is an official narrative of history that interprets the facts in the favour of western liberalism. This is the interpretation that most historians follow and the one that is taught in history class. To paint with broad strokes, it states that history, so far, has progressed away from oppression and backwardness towards freedom and progress. It explains the main events of the 20th century like the world wars, the fall of the iron curtain, and the material prosperity of the west as proof that liberal democracy is the way to go.

The Revisionist Surgeon

However, all political ideologies that disagree with liberalism will attempt to change the common understanding of history to fit their preferred interpretation of events. Therefore, historical revision in either political direction represents nothing less than a political challenge to the status quo.

One can best exemplify the revisionist as a surgeon that will operate on history herself in order to remove a cancer. In this analogy, the tumors inside history are the interpretations and facts that the revisionist considers to be incorrect or false, while the healthy tissue represents the correct historical facts.

However, not all revisionists cut equally deep, some make minor incisions to remove a little lump, while others cut and butcher the flesh because they believe that the cancer has already metastasized all over the body. The extent of the required surgery depends on the point that you are trying to prove and the ideology you defend.

If you think that society is built on a huge wave of psyops and lies, then you will reach for the butcher’s cleaver. But if you have faith in the accepted historiography, then you will only have to cut a little. However, I think that it is important to point out that ideologies require most (we’ll come back to this) their followers to have a certain conception of history in order to be internally coherent, this is a necessity.

But is ideology the result of a person’s interpretation of history? Or is it the other way around? I have already written an essay that argues that the political beliefs of an individual are really the justifications of this person’s pre-existing beliefs. I still believe this to be the case, therefore, a person will always feel attracted to the interpretation of history that most validates their existing convictions.

So, now we will categorize all types of historical revisionism with examples.

Type 1: A small tumor

This type of historical revisionism is present in all cases where the revisionist believes that all the facts are correct, but that the accepted interpretation is incorrect and can be refuted by taking a better look at the established facts. In our surgical analogy this represents a small tumor that has not metastasized nor cancerous and can be removed without any damage to the surrounding tissue.

In real terms this means that the revisionist has faith in the work of the history faculty and in the accepted historiography but prefers another interpretation of these facts. For example, a Tory might interpret the Thatcher years as a great economic success by pointing at the GDP growth and the end of stagnation. However, a Labourite could shift the interpretation by pointing out that Thatcher led to cuts to social spending and unemployment. This essay where I argue for the Vietnam-stab-in-the-back myth can also be classified as a type 1 revisionism because I do not dispute any facts.

The Vietnam War: Defeat or Betrayal?

Another example of this type of revision is books in the vein of “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. These type of leftist academic books do not dispute any of the established historical facts, but they interpret all of them through an ideological lens that accentuates the roles of minorities and the oppressed while highlighting the selfish interests of those in power.

Type 2: A non-metastasized cancer

The second type of historical revisionism is the one that believes that a part of history has become completely contaminated and cannot be trusted, but that the rest of history is intact and can be trusted. This means that a part of history must be removed and replaced, much like an organ that has been consumed by a cancer.

The part that is thought to be contaminated depends completely on the ideology, for example, a Turkish nationalist might have not problems with the accepted interpretation of the fall of the berlin wall, the accepted interpretation of the Armenian genocide, however, might prove more controversial.

In this case, our hypothetical nationalist will reject only the history that concerns his own nation’s actions. This is a case of ideological necessity; in order to be an ultranationalist, you must believe that your nation has done no wrong and, of course, this requires a total overhaul of one specific part of history.

Another type of his revisionism is the socialist tendency to throw away practically the entire field of economics while at the same time retaining the rest of the historical consensus. This comes from the belief that our knowledge of economics has been infected by the corrupting influence of capitalism and, again, this comes out of necessity. A socialist is obligated to dispute the common understanding of economics because it clashes directly with their worldview and their economic philosophy.

Interestingly another ideology that also engages in type 2 revisionism on the field of economics are the libertarians who believe that the market should not be restrained. They dispute the historical consensus on topics such as the great depression where they contend that such economic crises are the result of state intervention and that measures such as the new deal did more harm than good.

Type 3: A metastasized cancer

The third type of revisionism is the most extreme and by extension, the most interesting. It believes that history has been actively falsified and therefore the whole body of knowledge has been corrupted and cannot be trusted, that one must by necessity operate on the whole body to remove the cancer by force; resulting in a Frankenstein-esque surgery that leaves history irrecognizable.¹

An important example of type 3 revision is the way that committed communists revise the whole 20th century in defense of the USSR and the rest of the communist international. In the eyes of a Marxist-Leninist, the good guys have lost the cold war and the body of history has been thoroughly falsified by American capitalist imperialism. Therefore, they think it necessary to reach for the meat cleaver and hack away at the historical status quo.

The tankies believe that the USSR was a great country that was fighting for the working class and the oppressed around the world, however, that this beacon of socialist progress was slandered by capitalist lies. The veracity of these “lies” would call into question their whole ideology, things like the Holodomor, the Great purge and the Moscow trials, the Solovki, the deportations, and the Gulags, the use of poison gas against the Tambov peasants, etc.

So, all dedicated communists must deal with these claims about the criminal nature of their main experiment; if they accept that these things did happen, then it is hard to defend the party line. Then, again, out of ideological necessity, they must conduct a type 3 revisionism, they must either deny or interpret these events so that they do not threaten their ideology. After this surgery, history becomes the narrative of the dialectic of the class struggle against the bourgeois parasites and the USSR becomes the lost utopia that once was.

On the other side of type 3 revision, we have the unironic fascists² who believe that history has been systematically falsified to undermine their own ideology. This type of revision is most present around World War II, to be specific, around the portrayal and responsibility of National Socialist Germany.

Again, this type of revision is a case of ideological necessity. In the eyes of a National Socialist, the good guys lost WWII. However, the historical status quo clashes violently with this interpretation, therefore, they need to conduct a type 3 revision of the narrative in order to portray the Großdeutches Reich in a positive light. The rehabilitation of the reputation of Germany (& co.) in WWII facilitate the implementation of similar nationalistic ideas in the 21st century.

However, the job of this last group of revisionists is perhaps the most difficult of them all. To interpret the second world war in favour of the Germans one needs to reject pretty much the entire consensus and accepted facts about the war. The grounds for rejection is that they believe that the entire history has been maliciously falsified (usually by the Jews) to slander the reputation of European nationalist movements.

Their revisionary efforts center around minimizing or contesting some of the more famous accusations against the Germany during the war, such as the extermination of diverse ethnic groups, the conquest and exploitation of their neighbors, and their varied war crimes. After this surgery, history becomes the story of an ancient race war between the Nordic race and the Untermenschen.

How deep to cut?

Many of these revisions are indeed quite far-fetched. However, we must take into account that there are a few cases where such an extreme revision is indeed called for. Imagine that you are born in North Korea, and as a result, you have been raised to believe that the DPRK is the light of civilization against the barbarism of the outside world, that the party is always right, and that the supreme Leader could sail a yacht and drive cars from the age of three.

If you were born in the DPRK, the only way to escape their thoroughly falsified history is to extensively revise it, in such a situation, a type 3 revision would be called for since the whole body of history would be corrupted by state propaganda. The question then is how infected is the body of history in the West? How much has the cancer spread? This is the central question when it comes to historical revisionism.

The problem is fundamentally is that all of these sources are self-referential. All the sources, revisionist or not, will claim that they are objective and that they tell the “truth”. (There are few words that have been whored out like the word “truth”; immediate slop alert”).

At the end of the day, it is a question of trust; I was not there, and neither were you. So, we must trust someone that was (or more often, someone who uses the references of the people who were there into a complete study of the topic). Whatever the case, you must put your trust in some source. Of course, this all-important decision is arbitrary and depends on your pre-existing political beliefs.

In my own case, I have more trust in the historical status quo than on most of the alternatives. When it comes to the topic of World War two, I have more trust in the status quo historians like William L. Shirer (plus, he was actually in Germany ‘34-’40) compared with the revisionist David Irving.

Of course, I am highly suspicious of most works coming out of academia because of their general Zinn-like progressive bias which is easy enough to spot. In my estimation, the history faculty does not seem to be as heavily indoctrinated and, most importantly, old works of history are not thrown out of the historiography and replaced by newer literature which is far more common in the other humanities fields.

Therefore, I throw most of my trust with the status quo and am quite enthusiastic when it comes to type 1 revisions, especially those that rely on parts of the accepted historical facts that are generally ignored. I am careful with type 2 revisions, since it is very rare that such revisions are really needed, and I tend to stay away from the real type 3 everything-is-a-lie territory because I do not think that it is required as of now.

Beyond the fact that I find the heavily revisionist narratives unconvincing, I do not even think that they are ideologically necessary. One can be an enthusiastic nationalist without the need to rehabilitate every single past nationalist (i.e. Hitler)³, just as well as one can be for socialism and a new economic system without having to think that Stalin did nothing wrong and that Pol Pot was a chill guy.

Historical precedent is important, but only for didactic purposes; the person that does not know history cannot understand the world of politics and international relations. But the reason why so many people desperately try to defend their ideology’s past is that they directly identify with this past.

And to be fair, it is the easy thing to do, the past is tangible! There are memoirs, architecture, and memorabilia, however, by identifying completely with a past regime you end up LARPing it and, as a result, you lose the ability to look forward to the future and imagine something new.

We cannot truly replicate any past ideology because our historical circumstances are different. A 21st century communist cannot hope to embody the ideology of the Russian revolution because he was not born as a Russian peasant in the early 20th. Therefore, the problem with historical revisionism is that is can quickly turn into overidentification with the past and LARPing.

You can very easily buy a Soviet flag and a Mao poster on amazon, but that does not make you a red guard, it makes you cringe. It leads to fantasies of revolution that are no more realistic than the Wehraboos’ dreams of establishing a “Based” fourth Reich on top of their superiorly engineered Tiger tanks. LARPing is indeed easy and imagining something new is hard.

It is much more challenging to imagine what socialism would have to become in order to be a promising ideology in the 21st century. How could a people’s state make housing and food more affordable in the age of globalism? And how could such a system keep up economically with their capitalist neighbors?

These forward-looking dilemmas are no easier to solve on the right-wing; what would a new national identity need to embody to re-establish a working civil society and repair the birth rates? How should a patriotic system deal with assimilation? And how should a nationalist movement protect its cultural identity in the age of the internet?

Historical revisionism is and will always be an important part of politics, our past determines our present, after all. However, each individual will have to choose what narrative they believe, however, especially when it comes to interpreting the past, the most important thing is to be honest to oneself and not to contort one’s rational faculty to find reasons to believe thigs that did not happen.

With enough brainpower it is possible to convince, or delude, oneself of pretty much anything. But because we can find arguments to revise history according to our ideological preferences does not mean that we should. The past is set in stone and no argument can change that, it is only the future that is made of wax.

1. In the real world, one cannot perform a whole-body operation to remove a metastasized cancer without killing the patient and possibly furthering the spread of cancer. To combat these advanced cancers chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the preferred methods, but I will still use the analogy.

2. I feel strange using the word “fascist” because it has been overused to death by the left, the same applies to the word “Nazi”, but I can scarcely find other words to describe this type of historical revisionism

3. Indeed, I would insist that a German nationalist that looks over the NSDAP for both its triumphs and its failures is far superior to the one that thinks uncritically and shouts confidently that the regime did nothing wrong.