We have a problem with selective retellings of history. Right now, many are rightfully reexamining American exceptionalism and the skeletons in our history. For many, this is a new path to travel down. They have heard only half of the American story, the good parts. This comes at the expense of the aspects of our past that are harder to deal with, America’s sins, failures and blights, which are many. Grappling with these things is not easy and it is even harder to do so with nuance and accuracy. But the pendulum is now swinging from exceptionalism to total deconstruction and nihilism. Neither position is healthy or conducive to edifying conversation or more importantly the pursuit of truth.
Of course, part of the problem is that postmodern philosophy has been seeping into the social sciences for decades. Admittedly, it is perfectly appropriate for varying theories of history to be applied in academic circles. It is also perfectly appropriate to acknowledge that any retelling of history is socially located and thus tinged with a bias and an interpretation. This does not however negate the fact that there are objective truths about historical events, developments and phenomenas. Unfortunately, what relativism, postmodernism and intersectionality result in is the rejection of any kind of narrative that espouses an empiricism and consensus rather than speculation, ideological frameworks and identitarian politics. It is possible to accept the concerns of critical theory and its related fields to the study of history. Sadly, forms of radical materialist history ironically become exactly what they purport to reject and in doing to propagate historical revisionism which emphasizes one “truth” at the expense of another, or in some cases, completely rewrite history so that it historical anomalies not longer contradict their ideology. It is frankly Orwellian in praxis.
We see the fruits of these neo-marxist ideas in the call to tear down statues and to “cancel” certain people. Now, it is entirely appropriate for a society to do such things when there is general consensus, reasonable cause and legality. It is even appropriate at times for such action to be taken outside of the law by a select few when action won’t or can’t be taken by the governing authorities. However, what is dangerous is when the call to tear down legitimately racist statue become conflated with all historical figures. What is more troubling is when statues of anti-racist and abolitionist figures are defaced and destroyed either due to ignorance or ideology. We have seen statues of prominent Quaker abolitionists, Catholic philanthropists and many other good people desecrated. It is difficult to tell if this stems from a lack of proper knowledge or because some simply believe the past is unredeemable. This is what happens when ideology replaces truth. There is a very fine line here. It has already been crossed far too many times by the radical left. This is also the case in the realm of free speech, which is threatened now, perhaps more than ever in American history due to the power and censorship of tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
One of the most devious and deceptive ideas circulating in progressive bubbles is the minimization of how deadly socialist, communist, Maoist and Leninist countries/governments have been. The 20th century saw countless capitulations to these ideologies across the globe. As a result hundreds of millions, yes, hundreds of millions were murdered. Typically, the lessons learned from the 20th century revolve around the rise of fascistic nationalism in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy or Imperial Japan. All three of these examples testify to the dangers of mixing ethno-nationalism with a cult of personality. We now look back at these dictatorships as prime examples of right-wing populism and authoritarianism. What is often left out is how similar these regimes were to the left-wing populism and communist/socialist regimes that the 20th century witnessed. In fact, the Nazi party was known as the “National Socialist” party (aka the National Socialist German Worker’s Party). Imperial Japan incorporated a statist form of militarism, fascism and capitalism. These regimes were responsible for countless murders and genocidal campaigns. But we are all quite familiar with the evils of Nazi Germany and right-wing authoritarianism. So why is it that our history courses politicians and cultural figures today, particularly in academia, speak so little about the sheer magnitude of death promulgated by the communist and socialist governments of the 20th century? Why are millennials and Gen Z’ers so entranced and enthralled with the allure of such ideologies when they have only resulted in death? In fact, by virtually any historical measurement, the combined number of deaths which occurred under the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and all the other left-wing governments easily surpasses that of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and fascist Italy. It’s estimated that around 20 million died under Stalin, with at least a million of those being within the Soviet gulags (we will come back to this later). Somewhere between 20 to nearly 50 million people many have died under Mao and the number is even higher when famines and starvation are accounted for. The Khmer Rouge likely murdered up to 2 million. And the numbers only grow when we include the death’s under Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il and others. Of course there were other right-wing governments in the 20th century too and the point here isn’t to declare one to be a greater evil. Rather, it is to confront the danger of romanticizing an ideology that is responsible for untold suffering.
If our society refuses to acknowledge the truth about the past, we will stray towards the same decisions that allow for such suffering to occur. The phrase is often trotted around to warn about Hitler or to make absurd and farcical comparisons between Trump and Hitler. However, the danger of such such an ambivalence towards left-wing genocide and oppression is increasingly present as young millennial take up denialism, revisionism and ignorance. If you think this isn’t already happening I would encourage you to watch the following video. Countless Russian dissidents and political misfits were murdered and “re-educated” in Soviet gulags. Here, previous members of the Bernie Sanders campaign ( a self-described “democratic socialist”) were captured on camera claiming that the gulags weren’t all that bad, that conservatives and Republicans need to be re-educated and that sometimes its okay to kill those who refused to be “re-educated.” The video speaks for itself.
Game of Tomes 