Sunday, January 29, 2023

History is Now “Misinformation” and a Threat to Democracy - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

"The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history."

 


It was bound to happen.

After classifying virtually any disagreement on contemporary issues as disinformation, the leftist expert class has decided to go full Orwell and declare history to be disinformation.

Some of the nation’s top historians are going after lies and misinformation about U.S. history in a new book.

Nobody has heard of the vast majority of these “historians”. And by “lies and misinformation”, they mean conventional disagreements in the past.

The book, released this month, seeks to rebut simplistic maxims repeated mainly by the right — that the New Deal was bad, the Reagan revolution was good, and Confederate monuments are nothing more than historical artifacts.

If we’re classifying the non-leftist positions about the New Deal or the Reagan revolution was “misinformation”, how long until they’re being censored and deplatformed by Big Tech?

The debates over policies by the FDR and Reagan administrations were hashed out long ago. In a free society, people would be free to continue debating them. But in this creepy 1984 system that the elite Left is pushing, there’s no more debate. Everything that the lefty elites disagree with is branded as “misinformation” that needs to be suppressed because it’s actively dangerous.

Editors Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer, both Princeton University historians, say the right has used the conservative media ecosystem to dismiss evidence about real conflicts in favor of a patriotic story of triumph and perseverance.

Again, not the language about “evidence” or a “conservative media ecosystem” as if debates about the New Deal hadn’t long predated the internet or could be settled by “evidence”.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the full Orwell without a “threat to democracy”.

“The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over facts, making constructive dialogue impossible and imperiling our democracy.”

There we go.

People who disagree with us are a “crisis” that makes “dialogue” impossible and are a threat to “democracy.”

Good news. If you don’t like FDR’s socialism, which was repeatedly struck down by the Supreme Court in his own time, you represent a “crisis” and a threat to “democracy”.

Not a new idea, really. It was a popular enough take from these same totalitarian propagandists in the FDR era.

Enjoy this clip from Gabriel Over the White House. And remember, they’d like to actually make it happen.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/history-is-now-misinformation-and-a-threat-to-democracy/

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