Scrutable

This group and others like them are trying to 'reclaim' history from the woke lefties who will insist on talking about all those bits of history they would rather remained buried or whitewashed (and I do mean 'white').

https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/

As someone who has always been interested in history as well as a good Skeptic, my hackles are rising. Although it's not a science, facts, evidence and critical thinking are just as important. What can we do to counter this insidious right-wing bollix? If Skeptics in the Pub was still a live event I'd be booking some historians to talk about this development.

Fight ‘em with evidence.

Evidence schmevidence: we're in a post-truth era, and right-wing propagandists have no interest in reality.

It's much more important to have a compelling counter-narrative that appeals to the same audience.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 4:30 pm Evidence schmevidence: we're in a post-truth era, and right-wing propagandists have no interest in reality.

It's much more important to have a compelling counter-narrative that appeals to the same audience.

Quite. If evidence worked the umpteenth anti vaxxer rabble rouser ring leader to die of Covid would have changed people’s minds.

Is (eg) Niall Ferguson a rightwing propagandist who is beyond debate?

Tessa K wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 10:39 am This group and others like them are trying to 'reclaim' history from the woke lefties who will insist on talking about all those bits of history they would rather remained buried or whitewashed (and I do mean 'white').

https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/

So right at the top of that page is an article with a very reasonable sounding title "Slavery: It's All Bad" describing how it wasn't just White settlers who had slaves in North America.

https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/slavery-its-all-bad/

Interesting fact about the author - Professor Elizabeth Weiss. She used to be married to . . . John Philippe Rushton . . .

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... pe-rushton

. . . who was head of The Pioneer Fund . . .

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... oneer-fund

Ah, so its a turd sandwich, reasonable looking on the outside with some horrible shits within.

I do hope yous are being facetious about post-truth though.

If its just a battle of narratives why be good?

Be good because it's good.

But if you want to persuade people to join you in being good, it's not generally enough to provide a bunch of facts. Some groups are especially low-information or even hostile towards the notion of expertise.

Presenting a bunch of evidence and reasoned arguments would help to reassure "woke lefties" (and normal people) that the arguments of racist propagandists are indeed generally bollocks. That may be worth doing in for its own sake.

That same evidence and reason won't dissuade a single racist. They're unlikely to accept a correction about history, and certainly won't about the wider racism. But then, nobody's becoming racist because of misapprehensions about history in the first place anyway.

So the answer to the question depends on who you're trying to reach and why.

But good is based on facts.

If i thought the protocols of the elders of zion was true, id join the nazi party.

noggins wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 8:43 pm But good is based on facts.

If i thought the protocols of the elders of zion was true, id join the nazi party.

For sure. I'm not saying, "don't be good", or that good people should ignore facts. I'm saying that a lot of big baddies are deliberately eroding respect for facts, and that a lot of minor baddies have no interest in them.

I'm not much of a historian - did many people join the Nazi party because they thought the Protocols were factually accurate? Or was it part of a wider program of propaganda to capitalise on wider disaffectation and channel it in a direction that enabled a certain group to seize power? My impression is that no amount of debunking the Protocols would have reduced support for the Nazis by any significant amount.

This is a really good article about History Reclaimed and some of the 'inconvenient' facts they're getting so het up about.

https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/ ... ished=true

noggins wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:58 pm Fight ‘em with evidence.

Naah, fight fire with fire.
These are a bunch of bullshitting c.nts, so either fight them with literal b.llsh.t (find out where they live and smear bovine excrement all over their property/them) or spread lies about them. Maybe some kind of conspiracy theory that the people behind historyreclaimed are secretly a cabal of paedophiles seeking to cover up the evidence of it.

It has long been an unfortunately successful tactic over long ages for groups of unreasonable people to recruit support against another group of unreasonable people. The often do it by making themselves look like the only opposition in town, and not looking too unreasonable to start with.

There was a time in my youth when the major university history departments in Britain were substantially a self-perpetuating cabal of Marxists who wouldn't let anyone else in. I don't know how, but that situation quietly died starting some time around when the Berlin Wall came down. Maybe that's not a coincidence.

As far as I read it, the recent attempted enforcement of certain dogmas in universities, the deplatforming, the trigger issues, I got the impression that there was increasingly a successful moderate reaction against this.

It reminds me of the Hitchens letter in the recent issue of Private Eye. He disses PE's accurate reporting of him being found to have made a factually wrong statement by a press regulator, who analysed the situation correctly, but inconveniently for the anti-mask propaganda he was trying to push, as PE being increasingly lefty and hating him.

tom p wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:59 pm

noggins wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:58 pm Fight ‘em with evidence.

Naah, fight fire with fire.
These are a bunch of bullshitting c.nts, so either fight them with literal b.llsh.t (find out where they live and smear bovine excrement all over their property/them) or spread lies about them. Maybe some kind of conspiracy theory that the people behind historyreclaimed are secretly a cabal of paedophiles seeking to cover up the evidence of it.

Well that part is definitely true though.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 1:12 am

tom p wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:59 pm

noggins wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:58 pm Fight ‘em with evidence.

Naah, fight fire with fire.
These are a bunch of bullshitting c.nts, so either fight them with literal b.llsh.t (find out where they live and smear bovine excrement all over their property/them) or spread lies about them. Maybe some kind of conspiracy theory that the people behind historyreclaimed are secretly a cabal of paedophiles seeking to cover up the evidence of it.

Well that part is definitely true though.

I've certainly read that somewhere

tom p wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 7:28 am

Bird on a Fire wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 1:12 am Well that part is definitely true though.

I've certainly read that somewhere

No smoke without fire, that's what I say.