Redditor Vo_Lair wanted to compare notes about whose been handling the truth about history. And maybe why it's time to re-examine a few things.
"What are some scary examples of 'history is written by the victors?'"
I think we're about to do a lot of learning. History has been riddled with fraud up until now.
Burn it All
homer simpson evidence GIFGiphy"There is a bunch of Chinese history that is pretty much speculation because whenever a new King would conquer places, pretty much the first move was always to burn all the records and kill the historians to establish dominance."
SMG329
Romans won...
"Carthaginian Civilization existed for well over 600 years. They controlled large parts of North Africa, Spain, Mediterranean Islands, and had trade networks going All over the Mediterranean and even explored the African coast. They were powerful enough to bring Rome to the brink of defeat in two massive wars. Romans won, and as a result, not a single Carthaginian primary source exists."
DaemonT5544
Bad Guys
"WW1. Germany especially are always seen as the bad guys and in western films like Wonder Woman for example, that’s especially the case. But in truth the war was far, far more complex than that and so there wasn’t a clearly defined 'good vs bad' like WW2."
Pow67
"People in general view WW1 with less clear good guy-bad guy lines, but this leads to people thinking Imperial Germany was entirely clean of shitty acts."
Armored-Potato-Chip
Potato Issues
"In the UK, it is not taught that the famine in Ireland was a genocide committed by Britain. Our population still has not recovered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet#Role_in_the_Irish_Famine"
d3pd
"Born in England, all i was taught was that Ireland had some potato disease and all they had where potatoes so they all either starved or moved to the USA."
yfrryrjrriurirgr
Knowledge
Food Vintage GIF by Archives of Ontario | Archives publiques de l'OntarioGiphy"After the Paraguay war, there were no losers left to write history… I guess Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina was what was left."
Much_Committee_9355
"If it helps any, they don't glorify this war when they teach us about it here in Brazil. They make sure to teach how ruthless it was and all the consequences to the Paraguayan people."
_Biaa_-
I have no idea of any of these stories. I am so behind.
Crushed
Thor Ragnarok GIF by Marvel StudiosGiphy"Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor, Mellon, Morgan, Schwab, Stanford. They were called robber barons for a reason. All those schools and music halls and community centers are all built on the backs of crushed men and named after the men who crushed them."
ForsakenPercentage53
In 1899
"The Philippine-American war. Because of WWII the Americans were portrayed as heroes who had the Philippines’ best interest at heart. But few people know about the genocide during the Philippine-American war that started in 1899. Almost 200,000 civilians dead, with civilians dying to disease, famine and US troops wiping out villages."
cerulean200
1916
"The Kyrgyz genocide. In 1916 when Kyrgyz families of the north (tired of oppression) refused to join Russia’s army in WWI, Russian soldiers massacred around 30% of population of the northern tribes. Now they present it as an uprising, which happened because of German-Turkish spies."
sultana_of_jazz
'they couldn't have known'
"Anytime someone says 'Well, by the standards of the time, it was okay.' When talking about an atrocity or horrific practice. It usually means 'By the standards of the people doing the atrocity.' For example, Slaves knew the Slave trade was evil."
"But when we say 'People thought it was okay' we aren't counting the slaves as being people. The victims of history are voiceless, even if our sensibilities have evolved over time. We try to justify things by saying 'they couldn't have known' and almost always ignore a large group of people who certainly did know."
Kenobi_01
The Gauls
"Surprised to see no one mention the massacres of Caesar during the Gaulic wars. He deliberately targeted certain Gaulic tribes to make them cease to exist, which straight up is genocide. Almost every time I hear someone speak of the Gaulic wars I see them either side lining them to the civil war that followed it or it is a heroic struggle from both sides. The Gauls are trying to remain free while Rome is trying to expand and civilize. Almost every time I read about it the atrocities are omitted which I find to be really bad."
Thubbe42
Guilty!
Embarrassed Shame GIFGiphy"Pretty much any indigenous population that got in the way of any colonial power. No single country has a monopoly on the violence and oppression that was done worldwide as the colonial powers expanded. ALL were guilty of it."
crockett5
'nothing bad ever happened'
"I knew when I saw this thread stuff like this would come up. I'm a Japanese person, and I would never defend any of the horrific things Japan did in the past. But I'd like to defend the majority of our citizens who are sick and tired of the revisionist fascist government we currently are stuck with. I sentiment I was so sick of I left. If you know anything about Japanese politics you know that the current party doesn't have a serious contender party and hasn't for a while."
"Racist boomers rally around the 'nothing bad ever happened' party, while the rest of us can't rally around a credible threat. I was a teenager when I learnt what our country really did, and it was horrifying. I wish I could do more than just post a reddit comment, I'm sorry I don't know what to say anymore."
toastybunbun
Aloha
"I mean, the US technically stole Hawaii from a legitimate government. But we have just normalized it as a state."
thedrakeequator
"And banned Hawaiians from naming their children in their native tongue until the 1980s."
jasper426
"The war on the Maori language and its revitalization despite, is honestly super inspiring. The same linguistic revitalization model has since been adapted for many other endangered (many of them Indigenous) languages as well. IIRC Maori is one of the most successful examples of language revitalization in the field."
overly_emoti0nal
Fire Bombs
"During WW2, the British firebombed German cities such as Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and Dresden with the express purpose of killing civilians. Mass-scale firebombing is especially dangerous for civilians, as it massively depletes the oxygen in a given area, causing many people to choke to death. Operation Gomorrah alone killed 37,000 civilians and injured another 180,000 over just 8 days."
"These fire-bombings were war crimes, but because the UK was on the winning side, no one was ever punished for it and now its never taught or mentioned here. I even remember my grandparents coming back from Cologne and commenting that they were disappointed there wasn't much of the old town to see, apparently unaware that that's because the British deliberately levelled the city. The Germans definitely do not forget it though. But they didn't win, so who cares right?"
tristanjff
Thieves
Will Smith Smh GIF by The Academy AwardsGiphy"The UK's affect on India, and the 45 trillion dollars worth of material they stole from India."
Aromatic-Car-824
Damages
"The Bangladesh genocide caused by the fascist Pakistani army generals in 1971. It’s the reason why Pakistan and Bangladesh relations are bad. 3.000.000 Bengalis got killed and 300.000 got raped."
KebabSahab
"Thanks ZA Bhutto for permanently damaging Pakistan and Bangladesh and still having PPP continue to be relevant to this day. Can't have any stable society in South Asia smh."
1creeperbomb
The Receipts
"Notice that everything people are pointing out is well documented. 'People don't care' is not the same as history being erased. It's a nonsensical thing people say. We have MANY records of people that lost conflicts. 'History is written by the literate' is a more apt statement. If history was only written by the victors we would have zero historical context for Jews even existing."
Time_Card_4095
The Monster
"Robespierre, one of the main figure of french revolution has been killed by political opponent, they tried to delete his name from history, accused him of all the kills during the Terror (3 years where a lot of people got killed because of a fear of a royalty return), they even used the body of a very ugly man to make ppl believe it was him (ppl still think its him except historian) and basically now he is seen as a monster by some ppl."
Agitated-Zebra-1764
The Army Card
soldiers falling GIFGiphy"How Spain always claimed to have conquered the Americas by killing and fighting millions of native Americans. They did not. Most died of sickness but they played the bada** army card for quiet some decades. By today's standards it would be embarrassing to tell about how good of a genocide job you did."
SnooComics8268
“area bombing”
"In WW2, the American/British bomber command killed some 600,000 German civvies. The US Bomber command encouraged something called 'area bombing' in large civilian centers with firebombs which they supplied to British Bomber command."
"Many of the pilots were informed that they were bombing important railways/roads/military/industrial targets, and felt 'something wasn’t right' when bombing cities like Dresden. America didn’t lose a single civilian to German bombers, and Britain lost 60,000. Thats 1/10 the amount they killed in their combined bombing campaign."
SkyHighTigre75
Negatives
"Not really a scary one, but I've always found it interesting that the word 'barbarians' is used in such a negative way. It simply means people of different language and culture. But if you're the one writing history it gets a very negative connotation."
-The-Oracle-
Time to do some rewrites people.
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