WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: How Revisionist History Works 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.600 Hey everybody, and welcome to this weekend's edition of S 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:07.720 Y s K Selects. Uh. This is Chuck here. I 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:12.159 picked out Revisionist History. Uh, basically because it was just 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.760 a pretty darn good episode from my recollection. Um, but 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:17.360 of course you didn't go back and listen to it, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.360 because why would I do that to myself? But I'd 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:25.200 love for you to welcome to stuff you should know 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:34.040 from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.880 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:42.040 Bryant with his uh Nazi soda? What your orange Phantom? 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.840 That's not exactly true. No, okay, well let's talk about 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.360 this because it's a pretty good podcast. Their episode to 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.720 discuss this. If you asked me, oh yeah, revisionist history, 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.520 I guess. Yeah. We're talking revisionist history, and for the 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.800 time being, we're talking about the origin of orange phanto 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.920 because there is a him were out there, Yeah that 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.119 orange Fanta is a Nazi soda, that it was created 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:09.240 by the Nazis. Yeah, that isn't quite true. Uh, like 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:14.560 there were Nazi products like Hugo Boss, that's Wwagen, Siemens, IBM, Mercedes. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:18.480 I think this one to No Mercedes wasn't well Volkswagen, definitely. 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.399 The beatle was created to look like the SS helmet 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.600 from what I understand. Yeah, but Fanta Orange was created 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:31.400 by a coke employee in Nazi Germany, Coca Cola Germany UM, 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.160 which was supposedly well then that was the name of it, 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:39.720 and it was supposedly cut off from its parent company 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:42.440 during the war. Yeah, so they didn't have the supplies 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.600 they needed to make h coke. So this guy was 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:50.600 kind of mixed together a potion and created Fanta Orange. Um. 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:52.680 He went out back and dug up a bunch of 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:57.680 roots and squeezed the red headed kid. But it wasn't 0:01:57.720 --> 0:01:59.640 like he wasn't a member of the Nazi party, and 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.120 it wasn't created four Nazis, but it was enjoyed by Nazis. Okay. 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.920 So that's where I think you can reasonably call it 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.359 a Nazi drink. It was. It was born out of 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.440 the the Nazi regime in Germany as a result of 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.400 directly because Coca Cola drives because of the embargo on 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.239 the Nazi regime. Get Hitler love coke too, by the way, 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.799 did he? Yeah? Um, but I wouldn't put it in 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.480 the category of like Nazi products like Volkswagen and Hugo 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.880 Boston and so Coca Cola the way it has has 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.720 it spelled out, and I mean it depends like this 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.240 story is about as good as Coca Cola can come 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:41.160 off looking while still admitting that Fanta is a Coke 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.000 product that was created in Nazi Germany. But basically their 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:49.799 their spiel is that, you know, Coke was cut off. 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.600 Their spiegel was that UM Coke was cut off. Coke 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.760 Germany was cut off from the parent company because Coke 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.720 wasn't doing business, and then UM, as a result of 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.680 the war ending Coke was like, wow, this did really well, 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.680 come back into the folds, and we'll just keep selling 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.600 Fanta and and way to go for you know, keeping 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.960 the company alive in the face of these Nazi war pigs. 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.800 UM that's apparently like the company line. I don't know, 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:21.960 it could be revisionist history. There are some American companies 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:26.680 that definitely did business illegally in Germany, most prominent among 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:30.520 them as IBM, who literally created not only the machines 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:35.600 but also the programs to tally the people in concentration camps. 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.000 That is not revisionist history. No, that's absolutely true. But 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:40.640 I just didn't I didn't even know when I brought 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:42.320 this drink in here that would be such a great 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:44.720 setup of the show. I just enjoyed men Orange. It 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.040 turned out pretty well. Yeah, so chucky. There's this really 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.560 great article that Conger wrote called how Revisionist History Works. 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:53.320 Email today tell her how good it was. I mean, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.320 it is good, and she ignored me. It's the top 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.000 notch article. And she starts out with a pretty great 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:01.280 intro that I don't feel can be much improved on 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.840 because it demonstrates this whole thing pretty well. Conger talks 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:10.400 about George Washington, how as a little boy, Uh, he 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:14.240 was maybe a little aggressive, and he got ahold of 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:18.760 an axe and uh his father's ax, I believe, and 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.960 he gave a cherry tree forty wax. Then when he 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.120 saw what he had done, he gave it another forty 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:27.480 one and ended up chopping down the cherry tree. I 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:33.239 may have mixed legends here. Uh. And when his father 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:35.920 came out and saw that he had just chopped down 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.599 a cherry tree, a perfectly good money producing cherry tree, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.040 because those things were like gold back then, he said Georgie, 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.560 what did you do? Did you cut this down? And 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:49.200 George Washington looked at the axe, looked at the tree, 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.600 looked at his father, looked at his feet, thought about 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.640 maybe a sandwich later, gonna be present one day? Shut up? Yeah, 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.480 And he said, I so I should probably be like 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.440 every other president and not tell a lie. Instead tell 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.920 the truth, because that's what our presidents do. And he said, father, 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.880 I cannot tell a lie. I did chop down this 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.839 cherry tree. What are you gonna do about it? I 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:14.680 never understood the point of that story. Was it that 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:20.560 he was honest, honest, forthright, upstanding, was willing to accept 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.200 the heat for what he'd done. He was accountable. There's 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:26.520 a lot of stuff wrapped up in just that one 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.440 little fable good with an X, exactly handy. His dad 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.680 had cherry tree, so he, you know, came from a 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:36.320 wealthy background. But the problem is is all of it's 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:38.760 made up. And we've talked about this before. I don't 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.440 remember what what I think it was, maybe the how 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.000 much money is there in the world. We talked about 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.880 how Washington's biographer made up a bunch of stuff. Um 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.599 remember in throwing a silver dollar all the way across 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:53.960 the Potomac. And when I'm saying, like, the problem is 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:56.479 there weren't silver dollars back when Washington was younger, and 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.640 I've seen the Potomac, that's impossible. Yeah, right, exactly. But 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:04.440 the point in is Mason Weems, h Mason Lockweens, who 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:07.440 was Washington's early biographer, just made up a bunch of stuff. 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:10.159 And what is kind of a black eye or egg 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:14.159 on the face of historians for a century or so 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.799 that followed. They just kind of bought these things hooklient 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:19.760 and sinker and it actually, the cherry tree story was 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:24.799 in our textbooks, this total fable, completely made up fable, 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.120 was told the school children as the truth. I bet 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:31.480 it still is in some classrooms and maybe in the ozarks, 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:38.320 you know, but typically outside it has been revised because 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.520 they found out, i think a two thousand and eight that, um, 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.320 there were no cherry trees on Washington's family childhood home, 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.200 so cut him all down right exactly, But there was 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.080 not even evidence of cut down cherry trees. So they 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:54.919 had to go back and say, hey, we need to 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.880 take this out of the textbooks. They did, and nobody 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.680 really was bothered by it. It's pretty minor, it is. 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.480 It's it's not like saying Christopher Columbus discovered America and 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.560 proved the world wasn't round and didn't commit match genocide 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.040 and tortured and rape people, right that, Yeah, that he 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:12.400 and his men didn't sharpen their knives on the skulls 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.280 of live Indians they encounter. Yeah, it's amazing to me 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.160 that that's we still have Columbus Day. Did you you 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.440 know the deal? Now? No one mentioned it. Well, I 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:24.680 think people are starting to pull their heads from their butts. Yeah, 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:27.960 I feel like this year marked the the true beginning 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:29.880 of the end for Columbus Day. I do not think 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.320 it's gonna be around much longer. Shouldn't be. It's just 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:36.440 two history is that man is too complicated, and he 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:41.440 did too many horrific things, even culturally relativistically. Yeah, he 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.000 did horrible things, and I feel like he's not going 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.480 to be honored too too far from now. Yeah, my 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.360 friend Jerry in Portland as a school teacher, and uh, 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:52.680 there's a thing going around Facebook about Columbus and I 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:56.040 shared it, of course, and Jerry said, you know, I've 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.120 the past three years, I've been able to teach this version. 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:01.960 So there's at least like a hundred and eighty kids 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:04.680 in Portland that are now like scarred for life with 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.040 the truth. And I was like, man, that's great. It's 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:08.600 about how sad is that you even have to say 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.000 this version instead of real history, right you know? Right? Well, 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:15.600 I mean that's part of the problem. Is history as 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.360 they figured out and maybe the I think late nineteenth 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:24.160 ordly twentieth century, it's objective or subjective. It's not objective, 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:26.560 and people thought that it was and that it just 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.240 kind of history happened, you talked about it, and that 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:33.120 was that like you there were it was just history. 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.920 It wasn't continuous and like when something happened, it happened, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:38.960 and then once it was written down, that's how it was. 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.280 It was. It's a subjective, ever evolving thing. And we 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:45.320 figured it out, and we'll talk about when we figured 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.719 it out. But first, um, I mean we're what we're 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.240 talking about overall, this idea that history is meant to 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:57.920 be modified as new facts come to light, as attitudes change. Um. 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.520 It is called revisionism. And it's not necessarily a dirty word. Yeah, 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.080 we'll get into that. It definitely has a negative connotation 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.000 when you say, well, that's revisionist history exactly. Uh. And 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.920 that's one lens to to look at revisionist history through. Yeah, 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.880 let's talk about the three um major parts of revisionist history. 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:16.600 I think, well, this is the three ways you can 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:20.360 look at revisionist history. Yeah. One is a theoretical perspective. 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:24.480 Basically we'll say, looking at it through the lens of 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.839 African Americans instead of old white men or women or 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:30.440 you know, any other like minority. That's one example. That's 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:32.160 like you know when people say like get on the 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:36.120 right side of history. Yeah, that's basically somebody being aware 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:40.640 that there is a cultural social lens of revisionism. Sure 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.400 that you know what's going on is going to change 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.719 the attitude towards something that's going to change, and you're 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.400 gonna look like a pretty horrible person when there's a 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.640 picture of you fifty years from now holding a sign 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:56.360 that's Columbus right right exactly. Uh. The other is one 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.280 of the others is fact checking. Um, that's basically just 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.880 to get it right lens. Yeah, like new facts come 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.280 to life, you change the history books. And finally, the 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:09.680 negative perspective um that uh sees revisionism as an effort 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:14.400 to falsify or skew things for you know, usually political motives. 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.760 You know, let's talk about one of those. Congord gives 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.320 another good example of like all three of these wrapped 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:25.720 up in one guy. One Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. So factually, 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:28.560 Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:32.679 He wrote the Constitution, wrote the Declaration of Independence, like 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:36.959 from word a disease. Yes, yes, you're right, might have 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.800 had some help. I don't know, I think other people 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.720 history exactly, but I mean, yes, he he was a 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.040 founding father. There's a lot of stuff that we know 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:51.480 for a fact Jefferson did right, But there's also other stuff. Um, 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.880 in particular that he had a slave with who who 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:57.960 was also his mistress. In her name was Sally Hemmings, 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.080 and he had children with her. And for many, many 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:04.520 years this was viewed by negative revisionists as just a 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.880 dirty rumor, yeah, which is incredibly insulting, it is to say, 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:12.120 because they were in love. Ye, well yeah, Nick Nolty, 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:14.640 you know, it wasn't like, oh he just you know, 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.520 had his way with his slaves, like he was in 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.840 love with Sally Hemmings and it's very insulting to say 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.480 that that's a blight on America that our president with 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:24.839 stoop so low, is to be in love with a 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.760 black woman, you know. Exactly. So the people who looked 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:32.280 at this through the negative view of revisionism, that it 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.360 was meant to sully we're on the wrong side of 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.920 history agreed. So in the late nineteen nineties, I think 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:43.599 maybe nine seven, I don't remember. Um, incontrovertible d n 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:48.960 E DNA evidence showed that Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:52.400 had children together. They did it more than one, yes, 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:54.240 which does imply that they did it. They did it 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.800 a bunch um yeah, because the first time, I mean, 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:02.520 come on. Uh. So with that, we have these three 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.920 different lenses coming to play. You have the social theoretical lens, 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.040 which is okay, well, now we can go back and 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.400 look at history and say, um, maybe Jefferson wasn't the 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:16.000 only one to have a slave mistress, right, Maybe there 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:18.400 was a lot of this stuff going on, and maybe 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:20.520 black folks and white folks were co mingling more than 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.120 we thought, right exactly. Maybe at some point along that's 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:27.800 the way we um we meaning like the midnight mid 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.640 twenty century people of America put our own racist hang 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:36.600 ups on the people before and before during this era, 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.080 and we changed history unwittingly, it changed it back with 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:42.680 this fact that came to life. Then there was the 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.199 fact version yeah, which is like, maybe this is something 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.240 we should put in textbooks, right, you know, or more 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:51.560 to the point, now we can't not put this in 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:56.280 textbooks or the very least biographies, but textbooks do come on. Um. 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:58.760 And then there's a third one, the negative revisionism, which 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:04.160 kind of was um dispelled when this incontrovertible DNA evidence 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.480 came to light. Yeah, because up to that point you 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:10.719 could be like no, no, no, and then once the 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.120 DNA came out, it was like yes, yes, yes. Yeah. 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:18.160 So historians they have connor comparison to journalists, which is 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.840 I think pretty spot on. There's a responsibility there to 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:26.360 get it right and to not use your own skewed perspective, 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.520 Like you know, take the Civil War. If you still today, 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:32.680 if you go out in the sticks of Georgia and 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:35.920 ask someone about the Civil War, they're probably gonna have 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:41.240 some opinion. Yeah that may not be quite right. I 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.559 don't think. I don't know if people at North even 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:45.280 care about that stuff anymore. I think the South has 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:47.600 all the hang ups, sure, because we lost. They were 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.120 the ones, Yeah, the losers and the ones who wanted 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.640 to succeed. Yeah, up North, it's just like what happened. 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.240 But it's amazing that like this, many years later, there's 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:00.400 still that skewed political perspective because of your personal beliefs 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:05.280 in history, maybe family history, you know. Uh So let's 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:09.280 talk about modern revisionism, which pretty much started after World 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:14.040 War One, when the onus was put on historians to 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:16.360 suss it out and say, like, all right, world War 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.640 One happened, So that happened. Uh, we now have an 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:23.080 obligation to record this and teach the world about it. 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.280 But there were a lot of different opinions about it, right, 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:29.160 which makes it tough. And the term revisionist history was 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:32.120 actually coined a couple of decades before World War One 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:37.600 by Marxists who were grappling with um whether or not 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.600 the revolution was inevitable and how to put that down 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.120 in the history books, and revisionism was coined around this 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.920 this time by those people, but it really didn't come 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:52.120 into play worldwide until after World War One, and at 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:56.720 this time scholars started to realize that this is when 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:01.080 people figured out history is objective, Like seriously, up to 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:04.080 this point subjective you mean, yes, thank you. I don't 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:06.280 know why I can't get this straight today. But up 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:12.080 to this point, historians, mainstream historians overall typically believed that, like, 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:17.480 history was objective. Yeah. And now something like World War 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.720 One happened with all the world involved, everyone at a 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.920 stake in it. Because what is history besides um, looking 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.760 good you know, no one wants to look bad in 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:32.000 the history books or making someone look bad on purpose. Um, 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:34.480 and historians started to realize, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Like 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:36.680 it's kind of up to us what goes in the 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.000 history books. And this is such a complicated, complex event 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:47.680 that maybe history isn't objective. Yeah. In thee A, the 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.520 speech was given at the American Historical Association by President 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.960 Carl Becca, and he was kind of the first guy 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:56.880 to really come out in public and say, you know what, 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.840 it's a living, evolving thing. It is very much subjective, 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:07.320 and it's uh subjective because it's humans memory basically the 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:12.600 story definitely fallible or their perspective as individuals. Uh. And 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:14.440 like I said, politics is usually one of the big 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.560 reasons how it gets skewed, but not just politics nationalism. 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:19.880 Everybody wants their country to be the winner or look 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.960 like the good guy or what have you. Um. But yeah, 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.920 Becker was the first to say it's subjective and therefore 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.480 it's subject to revision. And World War One was the 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:32.440 thing that kicked it off. Like we said, the Treaty 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:38.360 of Versailles really really strongly punished Germany, redrew its boundaries 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:41.680 and basically said, Germany, you're responsible for World War One. 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.239 You guys were the aggressor, and everybody else was reacting. 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.280 And then as time wore on, um new documents were 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:51.680 at least that showed that, no, it wasn't just Germany. 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:54.800 There are a lot of other factors involved, including among 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.240 the Allies that contributed directly to the beginning of World 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.080 War One, and Germany was kind of punished unfairly, so 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:05.240 in the League of Nations basically said hey, we need 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:09.480 some sort of guidelines for writing historical textbooks, and they 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.640 came up with that, and from that point on revisionism 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:16.359 was born. And then y one, Carl Becker said, yeah, 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:20.879 here in America, we agree history is subjective and it 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:23.879 can be revised. Yeah, and declassification of documents is a 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:28.119 big way that things can be revised, because you know, 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:31.040 if you don't have it's not just someone's opinion. If 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.439 if you don't have actual documentation and like peer reviewed stuff, 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:39.240 then you can't revise history, you know what I'm saying. Uh. 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:43.159 So that brings us to World War Two, when what 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:47.879 is called the age of historical consensus officially began. Um, 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:51.200 and I get the idea that that was just when 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.320 people sort of historians a banded together a little bit 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:58.520 more than ever before. Yeah, get that feeling. They Yeah, 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:04.160 there was a lot of patriotism, nationalism, and basically everybody said, 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.280 if there's anything that happened in World War Two, is 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:13.280 that the US emerged victorious and saved the world. Jingoism perhaps, Yeah, 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:17.080 very much. So this is among historians. And you know, 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.280 if all historians basically are on the same page that 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.560 America is awesome and kicks ass, then that's what the 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.200 history books are going to reflect. Yeah, and that held 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.840 pretty strong until the nineteen sixties, which, as anyone who 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.160 knows anything about American history knows, it was a pretty 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:36.040 tumultuous time. Uh. Quite a few things to Vietnam War, 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:41.960 civil rights movement, feminist movement, globalization, the Cold War, they 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:49.120 all combine to basically quell that nationalism a little bit. Maybe, yeah, 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.399 for sure. I mean all of the the u s 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:55.840 went from this sunny, happy, suburban, white picket fence Nazi 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.520 butt kicking country to one that was coming apart at 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:03.600 the seems internally. And the historians of the time of 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.840 the sixties said, like, wait a minute, if history is 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:11.639 this ever evolving, UM dialogue, that's table will be revised, 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:13.760 how are we going to document this? And what they 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:17.000 figured out, very wisely, was well, we need to tell 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:21.960 everybody's story four lenses. Yeah, well, at least I think 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:27.959 six maybe emerged from the sixties that basically history became 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.040 more inclusive. It wasn't just about the leaders anymore. It 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:33.359 wasn't just about how great America was. It was the 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.480 whole picture. That's what historians strove to to get to 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:43.399 write the four major lenses from the sixties on or political, economic, racial, 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:48.199 and sexual. That's four, it's not six. You should make 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.159 two more up. We could probably come up with a 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:54.960 couple that aren't like fully covered here. On political lends, 0:19:55.000 --> 0:20:00.120 though UM obviously has to do with foreign policy. Nationalism. Um, 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.040 in the nineteen sixties, I believe you already mentioned the 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:08.600 Marxist revisionism outlined more of a struggle between the classes, 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.600 and maybe he took an approach that wasn't like, gave 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:14.920 the lower classes a little bit more there do, Right, 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.399 It wasn't just like, um, just because somebody was a 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:22.000 prominent leader doesn't mean they were a great person necessarily. Uh. 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.639 And yeah, that was a huge radical change, especially compared 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.639 to that age of consensus among historians. The economic lens 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:35.320 Charles A. Bird, a historian, had a pretty radical idea that, hey, 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:39.080 the Founding fathers were writing the Constitution this sort of 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:43.400 look out for wealthy white dudes. And I think he's 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:46.119 probably right. Yeah, there was a he wrote that in 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.439 I think nineteen thirteen, and it took until the TUMULTI 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.720 of the sixties before anybody ever really like kind of 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.840 championed itmult. I think that's right. Really, if I am 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:02.440 a descriptivist at the at the moment, not just tumult Yeah, 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.400 but doesn't TUMULTI run roll off the tongue a little more, well, 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:08.080 tumulty would be the adjective like that was a very 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:11.280 TUMULTI no, that'd be tumultuous. I know, that's one point. 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:16.399 So anyway, Beard's idea was that the framers of the 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:22.280 Constitution said, hey, let's protect ourselves, and the landowners who 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:26.439 owed money to the framers basically led a revolution in 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:30.080 eighteen hundred that was led by the election of Thomas Jefferson. 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.560 And that's where we are we live in today. But 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:37.280 we may have had much more of an elite society, 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.080 or basically we have an elite society now, we just 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:44.080 would have had had one for longer. So the racial lends, obviously, 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:47.920 uh strove to cast a light on minorities a little 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:51.080 more that were largely ignored thanks to the civil rights 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.560 movement um against some momentum. I remember being in school 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:58.560 and not learning about Malcolm X or Hue P. Newton. Who. Yeah, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.720 I wasn't taught those things classes in high school. I 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:04.640 had to read about them on my own afterwards. College 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:08.959 does a much much better job, for sure, But even 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:10.560 you know, and this was, I mean, this is a 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:12.439 while ago for me. This was in the eighties. Do 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:14.400 you remember, but like you think, it's gotten a little better. 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.680 Do you remember when you learned hopefully at least in 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:21.560 high school. Um about the Native Americans supplied of Native 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:26.560 Americans in the US. I don't remember, man. I remember 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:30.479 ninth grade finally taking a history class where they like 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:33.360 spoke frankly about it, like you're like your friend in Portland, 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:39.200 and I don't remember my mind just being blown because 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:42.119 I was like, well, wait a minute, what about everything 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:44.480 I learned the last eight years, Like all that's just 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:48.400 total bs, like completely is contradicted by what you're saying. 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:52.520 Not only was this stuff like left out, I learned 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.480 the opposite, you know that they basically just went away 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:57.480 on their own because the white man came and they 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:00.000 were like, oh, this place is yours. And I remember 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.920 were being in ninth grade just learning this like wow, 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:05.640 that was a big eye opener for me. I think 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:07.439 that's probably why I got into history, because I was like, 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:10.760 this is pretty interesting stuff, Like there's more out there, 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:13.199 sure I want to know, like, yeah, the whole the 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:17.280 whole thing under the Rachel lens. Also, now you could 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:21.639 learn about dudes like the Tuskegee Airmen or Japanese in 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:26.160 tournament camps, which I never heard of until we did 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:29.680 that episode on me. Until three years ago. But um 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:33.200 that raises another good point, Chuck Uh. With the Japanese 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:36.200 in tournament camps. It wasn't in the history books before, 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:38.800