Current Events > "History is written by the victor"

(+) Yeah! (+)

How much independent research have you done into wars that the US was involved in?
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Less than I have into waffles.

Chocolate chip or no, CE?
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Fleming

i watched oliver stone's untold history of the united states
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History is full of liars
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The American Civil War is unique in that most of the story-telling came from the losing side. The Confederate flag is synonymous with slavery and prejudice today, but the narrative of the "lost cause" went on for a solid century after the war.

History is a version of past events people have decided to agree upon.
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Literally everything we have been taught is a lie
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Skye Reynolds posted...

The American Civil War is unique in that most of the story-telling came from the losing side. The Confederate flag is synonymous with slavery and prejudice today, but the narrative of the "lost cause" went on for a solid century after the war.

at least in the south. in washington we were taught that slavery (a states right to own slaves) was the cause, in college i learned in south carolina they were taught it was just straight up states right they were fighting for.
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-Henri posted...

History is a version of past events people have decided to agree upon.

Hilarious that that quote comes from someone remembered unfavorably by history.

History is written by the victors, then their descendants get told to check their victor privilege.
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Everybody lies.
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DocileOrangeCup posted...

History is full of liars

If he lives, and we die, his truth becomes written - and ours is lost.
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Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were recruited in post-Nazi Germany and taken to the U.S. for government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959; many were former members and some were former leaders of the Nazi Party.

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KILBOTz posted...

Skye Reynolds posted...

The American Civil War is unique in that most of the story-telling came from the losing side. The Confederate flag is synonymous with slavery and prejudice today, but the narrative of the "lost cause" went on for a solid century after the war.

at least in the south. in washington we were taught that slavery (a states right to own slaves) was the cause, in college i learned in south carolina they were taught it was just straight up states right they were fighting for.

I wasn't so much thinking about the history books as the dramatizations. There are a dozen tales of the South gallantly fighting against impossible odds for every one or two tales which make heroes of the North. At least such was the case prior to the 1960s.

the statement is inherently wrong. that's a very simplistic way to present bias.
much better than "winners writing history" is "writers writing history."
though, often these two groups are the same people, but not always.

case in point, the US lost Vietnam, yet we only get the US point of view from it.
Genghis Khan was just filled with victory after victory, but is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.

when Rome became an Empire, it can be said the Senatorial Elite lost, and Augustus won, but since most of the historians were part of that elite (or atleast sympathetic to them), the shift of power is more often presented as a bad thing.

tl:dr "Winners write history" is an outdated and flawed trope.
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