Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to this weekend's edition of S
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects. Uh. This is Chuck here. I
Speaker 1: picked out Revisionist History. Uh, basically because it was just
Speaker 1: a pretty darn good episode from my recollection. Um, but
Speaker 1: of course you didn't go back and listen to it,
Speaker 1: because why would I do that to myself? But I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant with his uh Nazi soda? What your orange Phantom?
Speaker 1: That's not exactly true. No, okay, well let's talk about
Speaker 1: this because it's a pretty good podcast. Their episode to
Speaker 1: discuss this. If you asked me, oh yeah, revisionist history,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. We're talking revisionist history, and for the
Speaker 1: time being, we're talking about the origin of orange phanto
Speaker 1: because there is a him were out there, Yeah that
Speaker 1: orange Fanta is a Nazi soda, that it was created
Speaker 1: by the Nazis. Yeah, that isn't quite true. Uh, like
Speaker 1: there were Nazi products like Hugo Boss, that's Wwagen, Siemens, IBM, Mercedes.
Speaker 1: I think this one to No Mercedes wasn't well Volkswagen, definitely.
Speaker 1: The beatle was created to look like the SS helmet
Speaker 1: from what I understand. Yeah, but Fanta Orange was created
Speaker 1: by a coke employee in Nazi Germany, Coca Cola Germany UM,
Speaker 1: which was supposedly well then that was the name of it,
Speaker 1: and it was supposedly cut off from its parent company
Speaker 1: during the war. Yeah, so they didn't have the supplies
Speaker 1: they needed to make h coke. So this guy was
Speaker 1: kind of mixed together a potion and created Fanta Orange. Um.
Speaker 1: He went out back and dug up a bunch of
Speaker 1: roots and squeezed the red headed kid. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: like he wasn't a member of the Nazi party, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't created four Nazis, but it was enjoyed by Nazis. Okay.
Speaker 1: So that's where I think you can reasonably call it
Speaker 1: a Nazi drink. It was. It was born out of
Speaker 1: the the Nazi regime in Germany as a result of
Speaker 1: directly because Coca Cola drives because of the embargo on
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. Get Hitler love coke too, by the way,
Speaker 1: did he? Yeah? Um, but I wouldn't put it in
Speaker 1: the category of like Nazi products like Volkswagen and Hugo
Speaker 1: Boston and so Coca Cola the way it has has
Speaker 1: it spelled out, and I mean it depends like this
Speaker 1: story is about as good as Coca Cola can come
Speaker 1: off looking while still admitting that Fanta is a Coke
Speaker 1: product that was created in Nazi Germany. But basically their
Speaker 1: their spiel is that, you know, Coke was cut off.
Speaker 1: Their spiegel was that UM Coke was cut off. Coke
Speaker 1: Germany was cut off from the parent company because Coke
Speaker 1: wasn't doing business, and then UM, as a result of
Speaker 1: the war ending Coke was like, wow, this did really well,
Speaker 1: come back into the folds, and we'll just keep selling
Speaker 1: Fanta and and way to go for you know, keeping
Speaker 1: the company alive in the face of these Nazi war pigs.
Speaker 1: UM that's apparently like the company line. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it could be revisionist history. There are some American companies
Speaker 1: that definitely did business illegally in Germany, most prominent among
Speaker 1: them as IBM, who literally created not only the machines
Speaker 1: but also the programs to tally the people in concentration camps.
Speaker 1: That is not revisionist history. No, that's absolutely true. But
Speaker 1: I just didn't I didn't even know when I brought
Speaker 1: this drink in here that would be such a great
Speaker 1: setup of the show. I just enjoyed men Orange. It
Speaker 1: turned out pretty well. Yeah, so chucky. There's this really
Speaker 1: great article that Conger wrote called how Revisionist History Works.
Speaker 1: Email today tell her how good it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is good, and she ignored me. It's the top
Speaker 1: notch article. And she starts out with a pretty great
Speaker 1: intro that I don't feel can be much improved on
Speaker 1: because it demonstrates this whole thing pretty well. Conger talks
Speaker 1: about George Washington, how as a little boy, Uh, he
Speaker 1: was maybe a little aggressive, and he got ahold of
Speaker 1: an axe and uh his father's ax, I believe, and
Speaker 1: he gave a cherry tree forty wax. Then when he
Speaker 1: saw what he had done, he gave it another forty
Speaker 1: one and ended up chopping down the cherry tree. I
Speaker 1: may have mixed legends here. Uh. And when his father
Speaker 1: came out and saw that he had just chopped down
Speaker 1: a cherry tree, a perfectly good money producing cherry tree,
Speaker 1: because those things were like gold back then, he said Georgie,
Speaker 1: what did you do? Did you cut this down? And
Speaker 1: George Washington looked at the axe, looked at the tree,
Speaker 1: looked at his father, looked at his feet, thought about
Speaker 1: maybe a sandwich later, gonna be present one day? Shut up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he said, I so I should probably be like
Speaker 1: every other president and not tell a lie. Instead tell
Speaker 1: the truth, because that's what our presidents do. And he said, father,
Speaker 1: I cannot tell a lie. I did chop down this
Speaker 1: cherry tree. What are you gonna do about it? I
Speaker 1: never understood the point of that story. Was it that
Speaker 1: he was honest, honest, forthright, upstanding, was willing to accept
Speaker 1: the heat for what he'd done. He was accountable. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff wrapped up in just that one
Speaker 1: little fable good with an X, exactly handy. His dad
Speaker 1: had cherry tree, so he, you know, came from a
Speaker 1: wealthy background. But the problem is is all of it's
Speaker 1: made up. And we've talked about this before. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what what I think it was, maybe the how
Speaker 1: much money is there in the world. We talked about
Speaker 1: how Washington's biographer made up a bunch of stuff. Um
Speaker 1: remember in throwing a silver dollar all the way across
Speaker 1: the Potomac. And when I'm saying, like, the problem is
Speaker 1: there weren't silver dollars back when Washington was younger, and
Speaker 1: I've seen the Potomac, that's impossible. Yeah, right, exactly. But
Speaker 1: the point in is Mason Weems, h Mason Lockweens, who
Speaker 1: was Washington's early biographer, just made up a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: And what is kind of a black eye or egg
Speaker 1: on the face of historians for a century or so
Speaker 1: that followed. They just kind of bought these things hooklient
Speaker 1: and sinker and it actually, the cherry tree story was
Speaker 1: in our textbooks, this total fable, completely made up fable,
Speaker 1: was told the school children as the truth. I bet
Speaker 1: it still is in some classrooms and maybe in the ozarks,
Speaker 1: you know, but typically outside it has been revised because
Speaker 1: they found out, i think a two thousand and eight that, um,
Speaker 1: there were no cherry trees on Washington's family childhood home,
Speaker 1: so cut him all down right exactly, But there was
Speaker 1: not even evidence of cut down cherry trees. So they
Speaker 1: had to go back and say, hey, we need to
Speaker 1: take this out of the textbooks. They did, and nobody
Speaker 1: really was bothered by it. It's pretty minor, it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's not like saying Christopher Columbus discovered America and
Speaker 1: proved the world wasn't round and didn't commit match genocide
Speaker 1: and tortured and rape people, right that, Yeah, that he
Speaker 1: and his men didn't sharpen their knives on the skulls
Speaker 1: of live Indians they encounter. Yeah, it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: that that's we still have Columbus Day. Did you you
Speaker 1: know the deal? Now? No one mentioned it. Well, I
Speaker 1: think people are starting to pull their heads from their butts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this year marked the the true beginning
Speaker 1: of the end for Columbus Day. I do not think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be around much longer. Shouldn't be. It's just
Speaker 1: two history is that man is too complicated, and he
Speaker 1: did too many horrific things, even culturally relativistically. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did horrible things, and I feel like he's not going
Speaker 1: to be honored too too far from now. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: friend Jerry in Portland as a school teacher, and uh,
Speaker 1: there's a thing going around Facebook about Columbus and I
Speaker 1: shared it, of course, and Jerry said, you know, I've
Speaker 1: the past three years, I've been able to teach this version.
Speaker 1: So there's at least like a hundred and eighty kids
Speaker 1: in Portland that are now like scarred for life with
Speaker 1: the truth. And I was like, man, that's great. It's
Speaker 1: about how sad is that you even have to say
Speaker 1: this version instead of real history, right you know? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's part of the problem. Is history as
Speaker 1: they figured out and maybe the I think late nineteenth
Speaker 1: ordly twentieth century, it's objective or subjective. It's not objective,
Speaker 1: and people thought that it was and that it just
Speaker 1: kind of history happened, you talked about it, and that
Speaker 1: was that like you there were it was just history.
Speaker 1: It wasn't continuous and like when something happened, it happened,
Speaker 1: and then once it was written down, that's how it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It's a subjective, ever evolving thing. And we
Speaker 1: figured it out, and we'll talk about when we figured
Speaker 1: it out. But first, um, I mean we're what we're
Speaker 1: talking about overall, this idea that history is meant to
Speaker 1: be modified as new facts come to light, as attitudes change. Um.
Speaker 1: It is called revisionism. And it's not necessarily a dirty word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. It definitely has a negative connotation
Speaker 1: when you say, well, that's revisionist history exactly. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that's one lens to to look at revisionist history through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the three um major parts of revisionist history.
Speaker 1: I think, well, this is the three ways you can
Speaker 1: look at revisionist history. Yeah. One is a theoretical perspective.
Speaker 1: Basically we'll say, looking at it through the lens of
Speaker 1: African Americans instead of old white men or women or
Speaker 1: you know, any other like minority. That's one example. That's
Speaker 1: like you know when people say like get on the
Speaker 1: right side of history. Yeah, that's basically somebody being aware
Speaker 1: that there is a cultural social lens of revisionism. Sure
Speaker 1: that you know what's going on is going to change
Speaker 1: the attitude towards something that's going to change, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna look like a pretty horrible person when there's a
Speaker 1: picture of you fifty years from now holding a sign
Speaker 1: that's Columbus right right exactly. Uh. The other is one
Speaker 1: of the others is fact checking. Um, that's basically just
Speaker 1: to get it right lens. Yeah, like new facts come
Speaker 1: to life, you change the history books. And finally, the
Speaker 1: negative perspective um that uh sees revisionism as an effort
Speaker 1: to falsify or skew things for you know, usually political motives.
Speaker 1: You know, let's talk about one of those. Congord gives
Speaker 1: another good example of like all three of these wrapped
Speaker 1: up in one guy. One Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. So factually,
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States.
Speaker 1: He wrote the Constitution, wrote the Declaration of Independence, like
Speaker 1: from word a disease. Yes, yes, you're right, might have
Speaker 1: had some help. I don't know, I think other people
Speaker 1: history exactly, but I mean, yes, he he was a
Speaker 1: founding father. There's a lot of stuff that we know
Speaker 1: for a fact Jefferson did right, But there's also other stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: in particular that he had a slave with who who
Speaker 1: was also his mistress. In her name was Sally Hemmings,
Speaker 1: and he had children with her. And for many, many
Speaker 1: years this was viewed by negative revisionists as just a
Speaker 1: dirty rumor, yeah, which is incredibly insulting, it is to say,
Speaker 1: because they were in love. Ye, well yeah, Nick Nolty,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't like, oh he just you know,
Speaker 1: had his way with his slaves, like he was in
Speaker 1: love with Sally Hemmings and it's very insulting to say
Speaker 1: that that's a blight on America that our president with
Speaker 1: stoop so low, is to be in love with a
Speaker 1: black woman, you know. Exactly. So the people who looked
Speaker 1: at this through the negative view of revisionism, that it
Speaker 1: was meant to sully we're on the wrong side of
Speaker 1: history agreed. So in the late nineteen nineties, I think
Speaker 1: maybe nine seven, I don't remember. Um, incontrovertible d n
Speaker 1: E DNA evidence showed that Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: had children together. They did it more than one, yes,
Speaker 1: which does imply that they did it. They did it
Speaker 1: a bunch um yeah, because the first time, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on. Uh. So with that, we have these three
Speaker 1: different lenses coming to play. You have the social theoretical lens,
Speaker 1: which is okay, well, now we can go back and
Speaker 1: look at history and say, um, maybe Jefferson wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one to have a slave mistress, right, Maybe there
Speaker 1: was a lot of this stuff going on, and maybe
Speaker 1: black folks and white folks were co mingling more than
Speaker 1: we thought, right exactly. Maybe at some point along that's
Speaker 1: the way we um we meaning like the midnight mid
Speaker 1: twenty century people of America put our own racist hang
Speaker 1: ups on the people before and before during this era,
Speaker 1: and we changed history unwittingly, it changed it back with
Speaker 1: this fact that came to life. Then there was the
Speaker 1: fact version yeah, which is like, maybe this is something
Speaker 1: we should put in textbooks, right, you know, or more
Speaker 1: to the point, now we can't not put this in
Speaker 1: textbooks or the very least biographies, but textbooks do come on. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's a third one, the negative revisionism, which
Speaker 1: kind of was um dispelled when this incontrovertible DNA evidence
Speaker 1: came to light. Yeah, because up to that point you
Speaker 1: could be like no, no, no, and then once the
Speaker 1: DNA came out, it was like yes, yes, yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So historians they have connor comparison to journalists, which is
Speaker 1: I think pretty spot on. There's a responsibility there to
Speaker 1: get it right and to not use your own skewed perspective,
Speaker 1: Like you know, take the Civil War. If you still today,
Speaker 1: if you go out in the sticks of Georgia and
Speaker 1: ask someone about the Civil War, they're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: some opinion. Yeah that may not be quite right. I
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't know if people at North even
Speaker 1: care about that stuff anymore. I think the South has
Speaker 1: all the hang ups, sure, because we lost. They were
Speaker 1: the ones, Yeah, the losers and the ones who wanted
Speaker 1: to succeed. Yeah, up North, it's just like what happened.
Speaker 1: But it's amazing that like this, many years later, there's
Speaker 1: still that skewed political perspective because of your personal beliefs
Speaker 1: in history, maybe family history, you know. Uh So let's
Speaker 1: talk about modern revisionism, which pretty much started after World
Speaker 1: War One, when the onus was put on historians to
Speaker 1: suss it out and say, like, all right, world War
Speaker 1: One happened, So that happened. Uh, we now have an
Speaker 1: obligation to record this and teach the world about it.
Speaker 1: But there were a lot of different opinions about it, right,
Speaker 1: which makes it tough. And the term revisionist history was
Speaker 1: actually coined a couple of decades before World War One
Speaker 1: by Marxists who were grappling with um whether or not
Speaker 1: the revolution was inevitable and how to put that down
Speaker 1: in the history books, and revisionism was coined around this
Speaker 1: this time by those people, but it really didn't come
Speaker 1: into play worldwide until after World War One, and at
Speaker 1: this time scholars started to realize that this is when
Speaker 1: people figured out history is objective, Like seriously, up to
Speaker 1: this point subjective you mean, yes, thank you. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I can't get this straight today. But up
Speaker 1: to this point, historians, mainstream historians overall typically believed that, like,
Speaker 1: history was objective. Yeah. And now something like World War
Speaker 1: One happened with all the world involved, everyone at a
Speaker 1: stake in it. Because what is history besides um, looking
Speaker 1: good you know, no one wants to look bad in
Speaker 1: the history books or making someone look bad on purpose. Um,
Speaker 1: and historians started to realize, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Like
Speaker 1: it's kind of up to us what goes in the
Speaker 1: history books. And this is such a complicated, complex event
Speaker 1: that maybe history isn't objective. Yeah. In thee A, the
Speaker 1: speech was given at the American Historical Association by President
Speaker 1: Carl Becca, and he was kind of the first guy
Speaker 1: to really come out in public and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's a living, evolving thing. It is very much subjective,
Speaker 1: and it's uh subjective because it's humans memory basically the
Speaker 1: story definitely fallible or their perspective as individuals. Uh. And
Speaker 1: like I said, politics is usually one of the big
Speaker 1: reasons how it gets skewed, but not just politics nationalism.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants their country to be the winner or look
Speaker 1: like the good guy or what have you. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Becker was the first to say it's subjective and therefore
Speaker 1: it's subject to revision. And World War One was the
Speaker 1: thing that kicked it off. Like we said, the Treaty
Speaker 1: of Versailles really really strongly punished Germany, redrew its boundaries
Speaker 1: and basically said, Germany, you're responsible for World War One.
Speaker 1: You guys were the aggressor, and everybody else was reacting.
Speaker 1: And then as time wore on, um new documents were
Speaker 1: at least that showed that, no, it wasn't just Germany.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other factors involved, including among
Speaker 1: the Allies that contributed directly to the beginning of World
Speaker 1: War One, and Germany was kind of punished unfairly, so
Speaker 1: in the League of Nations basically said hey, we need
Speaker 1: some sort of guidelines for writing historical textbooks, and they
Speaker 1: came up with that, and from that point on revisionism
Speaker 1: was born. And then y one, Carl Becker said, yeah,
Speaker 1: here in America, we agree history is subjective and it
Speaker 1: can be revised. Yeah, and declassification of documents is a
Speaker 1: big way that things can be revised, because you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't have it's not just someone's opinion. If
Speaker 1: if you don't have actual documentation and like peer reviewed stuff,
Speaker 1: then you can't revise history, you know what I'm saying. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that brings us to World War Two, when what
Speaker 1: is called the age of historical consensus officially began. Um,
Speaker 1: and I get the idea that that was just when
Speaker 1: people sort of historians a banded together a little bit
Speaker 1: more than ever before. Yeah, get that feeling. They Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of patriotism, nationalism, and basically everybody said,
Speaker 1: if there's anything that happened in World War Two, is
Speaker 1: that the US emerged victorious and saved the world. Jingoism perhaps, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very much. So this is among historians. And you know,
Speaker 1: if all historians basically are on the same page that
Speaker 1: America is awesome and kicks ass, then that's what the
Speaker 1: history books are going to reflect. Yeah, and that held
Speaker 1: pretty strong until the nineteen sixties, which, as anyone who
Speaker 1: knows anything about American history knows, it was a pretty
Speaker 1: tumultuous time. Uh. Quite a few things to Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, feminist movement, globalization, the Cold War, they
Speaker 1: all combine to basically quell that nationalism a little bit. Maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean all of the the u s
Speaker 1: went from this sunny, happy, suburban, white picket fence Nazi
Speaker 1: butt kicking country to one that was coming apart at
Speaker 1: the seems internally. And the historians of the time of
Speaker 1: the sixties said, like, wait a minute, if history is
Speaker 1: this ever evolving, UM dialogue, that's table will be revised,
Speaker 1: how are we going to document this? And what they
Speaker 1: figured out, very wisely, was well, we need to tell
Speaker 1: everybody's story four lenses. Yeah, well, at least I think
Speaker 1: six maybe emerged from the sixties that basically history became
Speaker 1: more inclusive. It wasn't just about the leaders anymore. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just about how great America was. It was the
Speaker 1: whole picture. That's what historians strove to to get to
Speaker 1: write the four major lenses from the sixties on or political, economic, racial,
Speaker 1: and sexual. That's four, it's not six. You should make
Speaker 1: two more up. We could probably come up with a
Speaker 1: couple that aren't like fully covered here. On political lends,
Speaker 1: though UM obviously has to do with foreign policy. Nationalism. Um,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, I believe you already mentioned the
Speaker 1: Marxist revisionism outlined more of a struggle between the classes,
Speaker 1: and maybe he took an approach that wasn't like, gave
Speaker 1: the lower classes a little bit more there do, Right,
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like, um, just because somebody was a
Speaker 1: prominent leader doesn't mean they were a great person necessarily. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that was a huge radical change, especially compared
Speaker 1: to that age of consensus among historians. The economic lens
Speaker 1: Charles A. Bird, a historian, had a pretty radical idea that, hey,
Speaker 1: the Founding fathers were writing the Constitution this sort of
Speaker 1: look out for wealthy white dudes. And I think he's
Speaker 1: probably right. Yeah, there was a he wrote that in
Speaker 1: I think nineteen thirteen, and it took until the TUMULTI
Speaker 1: of the sixties before anybody ever really like kind of
Speaker 1: championed itmult. I think that's right. Really, if I am
Speaker 1: a descriptivist at the at the moment, not just tumult Yeah,
Speaker 1: but doesn't TUMULTI run roll off the tongue a little more, well,
Speaker 1: tumulty would be the adjective like that was a very
Speaker 1: TUMULTI no, that'd be tumultuous. I know, that's one point.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Beard's idea was that the framers of the
Speaker 1: Constitution said, hey, let's protect ourselves, and the landowners who
Speaker 1: owed money to the framers basically led a revolution in
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred that was led by the election of Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 1: And that's where we are we live in today. But
Speaker 1: we may have had much more of an elite society,
Speaker 1: or basically we have an elite society now, we just
Speaker 1: would have had had one for longer. So the racial lends, obviously,
Speaker 1: uh strove to cast a light on minorities a little
Speaker 1: more that were largely ignored thanks to the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement um against some momentum. I remember being in school
Speaker 1: and not learning about Malcolm X or Hue P. Newton. Who. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wasn't taught those things classes in high school. I
Speaker 1: had to read about them on my own afterwards. College
Speaker 1: does a much much better job, for sure, But even
Speaker 1: you know, and this was, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: while ago for me. This was in the eighties. Do
Speaker 1: you remember, but like you think, it's gotten a little better.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when you learned hopefully at least in
Speaker 1: high school. Um about the Native Americans supplied of Native
Speaker 1: Americans in the US. I don't remember, man. I remember
Speaker 1: ninth grade finally taking a history class where they like
Speaker 1: spoke frankly about it, like you're like your friend in Portland,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember my mind just being blown because
Speaker 1: I was like, well, wait a minute, what about everything
Speaker 1: I learned the last eight years, Like all that's just
Speaker 1: total bs, like completely is contradicted by what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Not only was this stuff like left out, I learned
Speaker 1: the opposite, you know that they basically just went away
Speaker 1: on their own because the white man came and they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, this place is yours. And I remember
Speaker 1: were being in ninth grade just learning this like wow,
Speaker 1: that was a big eye opener for me. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably why I got into history, because I was like,
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting stuff, Like there's more out there,
Speaker 1: sure I want to know, like, yeah, the whole the
Speaker 1: whole thing under the Rachel lens. Also, now you could
Speaker 1: learn about dudes like the Tuskegee Airmen or Japanese in
Speaker 1: tournament camps, which I never heard of until we did
Speaker 1: that episode on me. Until three years ago. But um
Speaker 1: that raises another good point, Chuck Uh. With the Japanese
Speaker 1: in tournament camps. It wasn't in the history books before,
Speaker 1: and then it comes out maybe in the nineties. I think,
Speaker 1: um or it's put into the history books in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and that kind of reflects why people struggle against revisionism,
Speaker 1: or some people do, because history is ultimately zero sum,
Speaker 1: right if you put that in the history book, the
Speaker 1: Japanese plight, American Japanese Americans who were putting new in
Speaker 1: terms at camps, their plight is honored just through recognition,
Speaker 1: like this happened to you people, and now everybody knows
Speaker 1: about it. But at the same time, the US government
Speaker 1: looks bad. Yeah, and reparations are like all of a
Speaker 1: sudden on the table and they don't want that. So
Speaker 1: it's impossible to shine a light on something and it
Speaker 1: not have Almost always, I can't think of one instance
Speaker 1: a also a negative impact on something else, because what
Speaker 1: is history again, if it's not somebody's screwing somebody else over?
Speaker 1: Is that all it is? I mean, at least world history,
Speaker 1: political history. Uh. And the final lens, of course, is
Speaker 1: the sexual lens, which shone a light on women and said, hey,
Speaker 1: history is not just about old white men. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of ladies like Elizabeth Katie Stanton and
Speaker 1: so journal truth. And I think the only, like, the
Speaker 1: only black woman I ever remember reading about, of course,
Speaker 1: was Harriet Tubman. It's like one person, are you really
Speaker 1: that's the only that's the only African American female in
Speaker 1: history that made any difference was Harriet Tubman, Right, And
Speaker 1: think about it, Like the most recent one that's mentioned
Speaker 1: here is Elizabeth Katie Stanton. So apparently we ran out
Speaker 1: of producing great women in the early twentieth century. Where
Speaker 1: is the rest of them? So apparently we're still struggling
Speaker 1: with that sexual lens of revisionist history. I think I
Speaker 1: think women are definitely still fighting that fight. Included a
Speaker 1: cool thing the other day on I think it went
Speaker 1: sort of viral where this woman had her daughter, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like little girls play dress up and stuff
Speaker 1: little boys to too. But um, instead of dressing the
Speaker 1: daughter up like you know, I'm a Disney princess, um,
Speaker 1: she dressed her up like famous women in history and
Speaker 1: took pictures and just had a blast. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: really neats, like a little photo series of this girl
Speaker 1: dressed up as all these like great women in history,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's very cool, very cool thing to do.
Speaker 1: I feel like I saw that. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. So you probably did good
Speaker 1: for her, is what I say. Yeah, good for her. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess now maybe it's a good time to do
Speaker 1: a message break. Yeah, and after we're going to get
Speaker 1: into correcting the facts, which is my favorite part, so Chuckers, Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about revisionism as a means of correcting the facts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the game of telephone, the old adage, and that's
Speaker 1: basically what history was. You start with a story and
Speaker 1: it gets passed down orally or maybe even it was
Speaker 1: written down, and it's just like a game of telephone,
Speaker 1: things get mixed up and in the end you end
Speaker 1: up with what is probably not the way it really happened, right,
Speaker 1: Purple Monkey Dishwasher like like Pocahonas is her example about
Speaker 1: she had this. It was a great love story between
Speaker 1: Captain John Smith and Pocahonas and Jamestown and Disney made
Speaker 1: a movie about it. It It seems like I'm picking up
Speaker 1: Disney a lot, and it's well, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: like that. Disney took this, this idea and ran with
Speaker 1: it and created like a new well not a new character,
Speaker 1: but he created a character who fell in love with
Speaker 1: John Smith and they had a wacky courtship and overcame
Speaker 1: all the odds and Jamestown was saying, I think he
Speaker 1: falls down at some point maybe and there's maybe a
Speaker 1: talking animal. Yeah. There was one problem with this though,
Speaker 1: is Pocahonas was eleven years old and James Smith was
Speaker 1: not a um perst. Well, pederste is exclusively with boys,
Speaker 1: is it. I don't think I knew that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I guess you'd be a pedophile. Yeah, let's let's just
Speaker 1: generally say a pedophile. Uh yeah. And even though things,
Speaker 1: you know, people courted younger back then, eleven was not
Speaker 1: his game. So it's not true. Pocahona Is actually um
Speaker 1: married a widower named John Rolfe. She died when she's
Speaker 1: about twenty one. She did help, she did introduce the
Speaker 1: the colonists to her tribe. The thing is and and
Speaker 1: like do she did play a role in saving Jamestown. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, she didn't fall in love with Captain John Smith. No.
Speaker 1: And thanks to modern times, we have things like anthropology
Speaker 1: and forensic science and archaeology, and uh, people coming out
Speaker 1: like the deep throat Mark felt finally revealing I was
Speaker 1: deep throat. I don't think he revealed himself though, did he? No,
Speaker 1: he was uncovered. I believe documents becoming declassified, like as
Speaker 1: time marches on and we get a little bit more modern,
Speaker 1: we we get the facts more correct again with declassified information. Um,
Speaker 1: you know something is a secret, it can't be part
Speaker 1: of history. But then once it's declassified, these things definitely
Speaker 1: have an effect on history and impact on history. CIA
Speaker 1: did give LSD too, unwaiting Americans. Um, the Star Wars
Speaker 1: program did very much help usher in the end of
Speaker 1: the Cold War. All these come from declassified documents that
Speaker 1: show yeah, this, this actually happened this way go back
Speaker 1: and they really had an alien autop season area, right,
Speaker 1: that's all on TV. Did you hear them Molder and
Speaker 1: Scully or down for making another movie? They don't know
Speaker 1: if it will happen, but I mean, if they're both game,
Speaker 1: why not, especially her? And we're about do for the
Speaker 1: nineties to come back in vogue. So you just look
Speaker 1: a good bit things not working or does it have
Speaker 1: a clock on there. No, it just shows I don't
Speaker 1: have four thousand steps yet today, but you just happed it,
Speaker 1: so it thinks you're walking. I'm just shaking my much
Speaker 1: tv uh, because there's nothing like cheating yourself out of it,
Speaker 1: just out of health. UM. So, like we said, updating
Speaker 1: biographies and more importantly, uh for me, textbooks is a
Speaker 1: big part of this. UM. But it's not so easy.
Speaker 1: It's not like, hey, let's just throw in a new
Speaker 1: chapter on Jefferson. Um. You have to actually go through
Speaker 1: quite a process. Scholars and researchers. Uh. You know, the
Speaker 1: first they developed these theories and thesis, they published them,
Speaker 1: they're reviewed by academics and teachers. Uh, textbook authors meet
Speaker 1: at conferences and see the new recommendations. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a long involved process too to make a substantial change
Speaker 1: in a textbook. Uh. And there's an actual Institute for
Speaker 1: International Textbook Research that analyzes all this stuff and make
Speaker 1: sure that textbooks are diversified. And uh, don't just tell
Speaker 1: the history of you know, wealthy white dudes, right exactly.
Speaker 1: This is ideal, This is the ideal process. Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: another really big factor in this that we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: where the biggest states are the states with the most
Speaker 1: students and therefore by the most textbooks are the ones
Speaker 1: who ultimately get to write the textbooks, which is why
Speaker 1: Texas has such an outsize influence on what the rest
Speaker 1: of the country learns, because they write the textbooks and
Speaker 1: the publishers aren't going to make different textbooks for each state.
Speaker 1: You're gonna make them for the biggest state and then
Speaker 1: go sell them to the rest of the state. So
Speaker 1: there are flaws in this process. And including that, there's
Speaker 1: also you know, it's it doesn't keep up in real
Speaker 1: time very well. Now you can't just economically, you can't
Speaker 1: publish a new textbook every year. I think they try
Speaker 1: to have about a tenure life on a textbook, but
Speaker 1: I can't they just email history teachers and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: on page forty two, it says that Jefferson did not
Speaker 1: have kids with Sally Hemmings. Don't teach that part. Teach
Speaker 1: the opposite. Yeah, And I wonder. I'm sure it varies
Speaker 1: from county to county. I wonder how much freedom teachers
Speaker 1: have to develop their own curriculum and other standards. But
Speaker 1: I wonder how they can do their own I wonder
Speaker 1: the impression there isn't teaching any longer, like oh, this
Speaker 1: is a moot point when we're talking about textbooks. That's
Speaker 1: not true. Uh sorry, sorry, teachers, I just realized something
Speaker 1: of you. Have you listen to this, No, and you
Speaker 1: weren't saying that in spiteful way. You're saying that like
Speaker 1: it's sad that. Yes, exactly, teaching is, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: to get teachers these days, thank you, just like a
Speaker 1: public service, you know what teaching these days? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it always has been you think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the constraints put on teachers has really
Speaker 1: tied their hands to the point where they aren't able
Speaker 1: to teach like they should or like they want to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think it remains a public service. I just
Speaker 1: think our education systems that need is some real reform.
Speaker 1: Well it is. And it's sad that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of teachers these days to treat it like a
Speaker 1: public service. And and it's not bad, but I'm saying
Speaker 1: sometimes teachers these days will be like, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go teach for four or five years because people are
Speaker 1: in need of teachers. Not necessarily I want to be
Speaker 1: a teacher for my entire career, and what they're finding
Speaker 1: out is this generation is going to be short on
Speaker 1: teachers because people are teaching for a shorter amount of time,
Speaker 1: you know what. I'm interested in this, and we to
Speaker 1: do an episode on that. But in the meantime, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a pre listener mail call out and ask
Speaker 1: for any teachers out there who are in there on
Speaker 1: the front lines, email us and tell us what can
Speaker 1: be done to solve the problems with the public school system,
Speaker 1: whether it's easy, complex, whatever. I'm very curious and totally
Speaker 1: down to help anyway we can, you know, Um, alright,
Speaker 1: so where were we textbooks? Sometimes you will publish um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll publish supplemental material that's like not every ten years,
Speaker 1: just to get things right. Um. Yeah, because ten years
Speaker 1: is a long time to go between discovering acceptance of
Speaker 1: a new historical fact and teaching it to to kids.
Speaker 1: That's too long. But people got up in arms. The
Speaker 1: American Historical Association UM submitted as it's or updated it's
Speaker 1: national history standards in textbooks, and they got negative feedback
Speaker 1: because they were like, well, where's Daniel Boone and who's
Speaker 1: this Harriet Tubman, why's she getting so much attention a
Speaker 1: black woman, unbelievable. Yeah. So even when they get it right,
Speaker 1: they still get go It's a it's a really good point.
Speaker 1: It's a good segue to the negativism. Um, even when
Speaker 1: it's true, it's still going to encounter resistance. Part of
Speaker 1: it is that people hang on to their national pride,
Speaker 1: their national story, stuff they learned as a kid. People
Speaker 1: are fearful of new things change. Um, but what does
Speaker 1: that mean about me? You know exactly? Like I dressed
Speaker 1: like Daniel Boone and go out in public. So what
Speaker 1: what happens if everybody doesn't know who Daniel Boone is
Speaker 1: and I just look like a weirdo. Um. But another
Speaker 1: part of it is because of the bad name that
Speaker 1: revisionism has has been given by hacks and crackpots over
Speaker 1: the years. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I remember in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, President Bush used the turn revisionist history historians
Speaker 1: talking about the media their coverage of the war in Iraq,
Speaker 1: basically saying that, you know, some reporters are questioning the
Speaker 1: reasons that we invaded Iraq and had sway over the
Speaker 1: public's opinion about this, and a lot of historians for
Speaker 1: the media to have, and a lot of historians weren't
Speaker 1: too keen on that. You're like, hey, you shouldn't really
Speaker 1: say that, because that's kind of knocking studying history, the
Speaker 1: academic field of history, or the fact that history is
Speaker 1: able to be revised. He was, he was making it
Speaker 1: a negative thing. Same with um Florida. Apparently in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six they outlawed the teaching of any postmodernist
Speaker 1: or revisionist history and kids were only allowed to learn
Speaker 1: the facts, which is number one impossible yea, and number
Speaker 1: two um it says implicitly that revisionist history is not facts.
Speaker 1: And what's the opposite of facts? Will lies? Man, that's
Speaker 1: sad it is because it's basically saying we were used
Speaker 1: to progress. Yeah, I will not progress, not only in
Speaker 1: bad stuff, but in good stuff too. Yeah. No, we
Speaker 1: are quite happy with that whole post war agent consensus thing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna stay right there. So the rest of the country,
Speaker 1: rest of the world, you go progress without us. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's crazy. You just can't do that. You can't
Speaker 1: dig in your heels in in thwart history. It just
Speaker 1: won't happen. Yeah, you look like you're on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of history. That's gonna be one of our new
Speaker 1: t shirts with you like pointing. Uh. One reason though,
Speaker 1: revisionist history has negative connotations because people wrongly tie it
Speaker 1: to things like Holocaust deniers. That is not revisionist history.
Speaker 1: That is called negationism, and it's not the same thing.
Speaker 1: So if you know someone who says the Holocaust didn't happen,
Speaker 1: they're not revising history. There crackpots. Yeah, and probably a
Speaker 1: troll too, yeah. Um yeah, So you can just kind
Speaker 1: of remove the whole Holocaust and now from revisionist history.
Speaker 1: The poem is in the public image. Those two things
Speaker 1: go very much hand in hand, same with conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: But Conger kind of gives this little thumbnail handy dandy
Speaker 1: guide to separating the wheat from the chaff as far
Speaker 1: as revisionist history goes. So if you're encountering something like
Speaker 1: a moon landing conspiracy or Kennedy assassination and conspiracy, you
Speaker 1: have to ask yourself. Number one, is this a professional
Speaker 1: historian or an amateur historian on the blog? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good one. Is this historian um out for the
Speaker 1: truth or fame and money? So is it just sensationalized um?
Speaker 1: And we ran into something like we almost did the
Speaker 1: article about did the Chinese beat Columbus. That's a good
Speaker 1: example of somebody who is a historian. I don't I
Speaker 1: think his name is Gavin Menzies. There's just a theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's like all this really tiny crumbs of circumstance
Speaker 1: util evidence here there that um, the Chinese did beat
Speaker 1: Columbus to the New World. The problem is, at this
Speaker 1: moment it is just a crackpot theory. He has almost
Speaker 1: nothing to back it up, as he looking just to
Speaker 1: sell books. He sold a bunch of books. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty red pretty big red flag it is. It
Speaker 1: is interesting, and you can't say that somewhere down the
Speaker 1: road that we won't find that the Chinese did visit
Speaker 1: the New World before Columbus. But as it stands like
Speaker 1: that is so far outside of the mainstream. It's just
Speaker 1: a crack pot idea. At this point, you know that
Speaker 1: some guy wove into a pretty interesting book. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: she also points out, which is totally true, that we
Speaker 1: tend to be more skeptical of revisionist history. That's we
Speaker 1: have a feel like we have a stake in right
Speaker 1: or are very familiar with like, maybe I'm resistant to
Speaker 1: that because I was raised the idea that Columbus discovered
Speaker 1: the New World, Whereas if I it was from Ghana,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, maybe the Chinese did do it.
Speaker 1: Who cares exactly? You know, I couldn't said it better.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Basically, a very small number of revisionist histories
Speaker 1: are factual or not factual but accepted as fact in
Speaker 1: the end. It's just tough to pull off, like Kevin
Speaker 1: Menzies is another good example of that. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: revisionist history, it has a um, unearned bad name, right
Speaker 1: it's an actual worried Well, we're not We're not saying
Speaker 1: this is a fringe idea that's been brought into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: This is a mainstream, um part of the study of history, right, Um,
Speaker 1: that some fringe dwellers have adopted like here or there.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, like like, revisionist history is
Speaker 1: a real part of the discipline of history, and it's
Speaker 1: a good part of it in my opinion, because, like
Speaker 1: Congred points out, it levels the playing field. It's inclusive.
Speaker 1: Like when revisionist history became a thing, history became more
Speaker 1: inclusive of and it started to tell everybody's story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear from historians. They're gonna be like,
Speaker 1: oh dude, thank you yeah, or boy, did you guys
Speaker 1: screw this up? Microvisionist history is nothing but crack pots,
Speaker 1: Like where did you get the idea of what? No?
Speaker 1: Um so you got anymore? I got nothing else? Thank
Speaker 1: you for let me stay all pepped up about this one.
Speaker 1: You know, how was a history major and like this
Speaker 1: is like great stuff. I know. I usually just throw
Speaker 1: the wet blanket on you. Uh that is not true. Uh,
Speaker 1: since we said wet blank get or chuck did that
Speaker 1: triggers me to say, if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about revisionist history, go to the website, type that in
Speaker 1: the handy search bar. And then, since I said handy
Speaker 1: search bar, we've got kind of a Rube Goldberg thing
Speaker 1: going here that triggers uh listener mail. That's right. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this, uh handwriting analysis from a handwriting analysts.
Speaker 1: And this is my favorite thing is when I hear
Speaker 1: from the actual people and they either say, hey, you
Speaker 1: did a good job or you didn't do such a
Speaker 1: good job. I don't mind this. I was surprised to
Speaker 1: hear we did so good about the Maori. That was great. Yeah. Boy,
Speaker 1: those Kiwi's love a little light shine in their way.
Speaker 1: I love it. Hey, guys, just finished episode on handwriting
Speaker 1: analysis as I arrived to work as a handwriting analysts,
Speaker 1: or as we call ourselves, forensic document examiners. When I
Speaker 1: got into my car at home and saw the title
Speaker 1: of the episode, I had already begun a mental checklist
Speaker 1: about the misconceptions you might pass on about the field.
Speaker 1: Um oh, that's negative. I have to deal with them
Speaker 1: all the time. However, I'm delighted to say you guys
Speaker 1: absolutely nailed it. Exclamation point. I don't have a single
Speaker 1: criticism or correction in this case. Each lab has its
Speaker 1: own specialty, but at the Homeland Security Investigations Forensic Laboratory
Speaker 1: where I work, we specialize in travel and identity documents.
Speaker 1: Most of my work is determining if certain passport screen cards,
Speaker 1: driver's licenses, and visas our counterfeit or altered. What I'm
Speaker 1: trained to do handwriting examinations as well. I spent months
Speaker 1: of my training and handwriting and it is not for everyone.
Speaker 1: Let me say it is a difficult task. It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of natural ability to accomplish. The first thing
Speaker 1: we did in training was to take a form blindness
Speaker 1: test to make sure we had that natural ability before
Speaker 1: I started the job I have now though. I actually
Speaker 1: worked for the Secret Service on the Phish database that
Speaker 1: you mentioned. Uh. Fish is a lot like a f
Speaker 1: I S for handwriting. The Secret Service processed a lot
Speaker 1: of anonymous threat letters and I would put them into
Speaker 1: the database to see if I could come up with
Speaker 1: any matches. You could probably imagine how fun it was
Speaker 1: to find a hit. Uh. There were a few times
Speaker 1: this happened for me during the year I worked there,
Speaker 1: and Uh, it always amazed me how well the system worked. Right.
Speaker 1: And that is from Jordan's the handwriting animals. That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: I like hearing from the actual people too. It's great,
Speaker 1: Thanks Jordan, Yeah, thanks a lot. Jordan's. Um, Well, let's see,
Speaker 1: we already asked for it, but I think compars asking
Speaker 1: for again. If you are a teacher and you have
Speaker 1: some ideas about how to fix the cracks and flaws
Speaker 1: of the public education system or education system in general,
Speaker 1: we want to hear about it. You can tweet to
Speaker 1: us at s Y s K podcast. You can join
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, and you can join us at our
Speaker 1: home on the web stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.