![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 |
There's no inclusion of the revisionism that overemphasizes contributions by a particular, entitlement minded demographic to give its members a sense of self-worth and accomplishment.: i.e. 1 martyr > 750,000 casualties
The pastoralists among the ancient Greeks shone a positive light on a fictional, peaceful, bucolic origin. A modern culture promotes and identifies with the marginally significant Maquis and disregards 40,000,000 Vichy collaborators. History advocates Irish ancestors as victims of a famine and disregards their location on an rock surrounded by seas of teaming fish.
Is there room for a promotionism section on revisionism? Sometimes it's what is not said--the adage: evil of which we do not speak--that revises the truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.231.43.73 ( talk) 17:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Another editor removed the following section without explanation.
Ex-Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo):
In the 90's following a massive western media coverage of the Yugoslav civil war, there was a rise of the publications considering the matter on historical revisionism of the Ex-Yugoslav region. One of the most prominent authors on the field of historical revisionism in the 90's considering the newly emerged republics is Noel Malcolm and his works Bosnia: A Short History (1994) and Kosovo: A Short History (1998), that have seen a robust debate among historians following their release. For example, following the release of Kosovo: A Short History (1998), the merits of the book were the subject of an extended debate in Foreign Affairs. Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History (1998) was considered "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans" [1]. In late 1999, Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota reviewed the book in Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online and while praising aspects of the book also asserted that it was "shaped by the author’s overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths", that Malcolm was "partisan", and also complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false". [2]
- Notes
This seems to me a perfectly legitimate addition to the page. I have re-added it. If any editor can provide a reason for the deletion, I will happily reverse my postion. -- Andrewaskew ( talk) 06:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
In non-historical contexts this kind of practice is called denialism. In several specific historical context, it also is called that ( Holocaust denialism). So would Historical denialism be a better title? Ego White Tray ( talk) 04:06, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Pablo.paz ( talk · contribs) added the following into the article:
Clearly, this belongs to talk page, rather than to the article, so I reverted it. Does anybody care to comment on this suggestion of article improvement? Staszek Lem ( talk) 02:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Is this a form of sarcasm? David Barton is one of the most well-known psuedo-historians in the United States, who lacks any form of degree in History, consistently rewrites history and misrepresents reality in his effort to promote fundamental evangelical Christianity. I will remove the citation (#26), but this has got to be a bad joke. -- Mackinz ( talk) 23:01, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Several sections of this article have the topic of the section in boldface. I have sometimes seen that on the English Wikipedia for phrases which redirect to the article or to a certain section (see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Other uses. But in this case, the topic of these sections are elaborated in separate articles. For example, under the heading Chinese book burning there is a link to the article Burning of books and burying of scholars but below that the same phrase Burning of books and burying of scholars is in boldface. And in the next section (Nazi book burning), the phrase Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen is in boldface but Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen redirects to the separate article Special Prosecution Book-Poland. I think this extensive use of boldface is confusing, so I propose to change it either to italics or to normal characters. Bever ( talk) 21:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
I read the assertion that 'negationism' is a neologism. I think I read the word already before the turn of the century. How old should a word be for not being called a neologism? Bever ( talk) 07:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@ User:Bever which century and in what language? -- PBS ( talk) 18:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
1992, 1998 - I'd say neologism, but google books give hundreds of hits already, so I guess it is pretty maintream now. Staszek Lem ( talk) 19:37, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@ user:Staszek Lem With reference to this edit with the editorial comment "Reverted good faith edits by PBS (talk): negationism redirects here; hence must be boldfaced." give me an example of where I have ever made bad faith edit. If you can not show an example of one, then please apologise for being uncivil. -- PBS ( talk) 18:54, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
![]() |
First off; WP:3O is supposed to be for content disputes, not user conduct issues, which this seems to be. Nonetheless, I'm providing an opinion. @ PBS:, To me, when someone says they reverted Good Faith edits; they are saying that you did not intend wrongdoing by your edit - that your intentions were good but the end result was not so they are reverting you. They are saying that they are assuming good faith on your part - assuming that you did not intend the bad result that they are reverting. Generally speaking, reverting someone without comment implies that they have committed vandalism or made a test edit or whatever. Saying you are reverting good faith edits means they haven't done anything wrong, but for some reason you're revering anyway. I don't think @ Staszek Lem: has anything to apologize for. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:13, 6 March 2015 (UTC) |
Just because a word appears in a few books does not mean it is not a neologism (a raw Google book search returns about 400 results which is not a lot). The word "negationism" does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and Wikiepdia should no be propagating its usage as if it is a dictionary word. As it happens it was I who introduced the word to its prominence in this article as a dab extension with a move back in 2006. I did this because the previous dab extension which was "(political)" caused a misunderstanding over what this article was about among some editors. If one looks through the books returned by the Google book search one will see that while some use it from its modern French meaning, there is another meaning in English linked to the dictionary word "negation" "An act of denial; a negative statement, doctrine, etc.; a refusal or contradiction; a denial of something." and in this broader meaning it is used to mean the "denial of something" but that something can be anything in particular religious doctrines, so to try to removed noise from the books on religious discussion re-running the search but only from 1950 which is about the earliest date that the term could have been used in its modern French meanings, the number of books falls to about 30 the first returned in this search of more modern books is
In this book on page one the author (Elst) assumes the his audience will not know the word so he defines it before he starts to use it:
However his need to do define it shows that the word was not in common usage with his meaning when he defined it (or there would be no need to have such an elaborate definition). Although most of the 30 books returned in the search of books after 1950 are using it either to mean specifically denying the Holocaust or broadening it out as Elst does in his book, some of the books are using the more traditional broader meaning linked to the dictionary meaning of "negation":
I think I have shown that the word is still a neologism (a Google books search of 40 books since 1950) with more than one meaning returned is not common usage (in comparison a search on "Holocaust" returned 1,000 books for a similar search). So until the OED includes "Negationism", Wikiepedia should not imply that the word "Negationism" and this specific meaning for the word is anything but a neologism. -- PBS ( talk) 20:58, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
BTW, WP:NOTNEO says.
IMO opinion the term "negationism" unnecessarily narrows the scope of the current article, and therefore its usage in article title is misleading. Therefore I would support a reasonable suggection about article renaming, per WP:NOTNEO. I would consider the phrase already used in the lede Illegitimate historical revisionism. IMO it clearly draws the distinction and would simplify the lede. I am not filing a WP:MOVE request, because I'd like to have a reasonable consensus about new name first. (I see in talk archives at least 4 page move discussionss). Staszek Lem ( talk) 18:48, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
I do not think that this sentence should remain in the article:
Also, Communism and Soviet historiography treated reality and the party line as one and the same,[16] employing historical revisionism to advance a specific political (and ideological) agenda.
Whether or not Christopher Hill was incorrect to interpret the English Civil War through the lens of communism he was not revisionist. There is a big difference between an objective historian and a negationist. One can be an objective historian and draw different conclusions from the same historical facts.
Likewise the section on the Confederacy is flawed for the same reason. It is beyond dispute that the confederate states went to war over state rights and that the Union states fought over that issue. What confederate sympathising historians do is play up the state rights while glossing over this issue that the right they wanted to uphold was slavery. Similarly Union historians tend to over emphasise the liberation of the slaves and underplay the issue of state rights. This does not mean that most historians on both sides are not objective historians.
This is not uncommon in historical narrative. For example at the moment the British media is full of the 100 anniversary of the Great War, "the war to end wars", "the war to protect democracy", etc. But the motives in 1914 was not for any of those motives (they came later). For the British it was to protect Belgium's neutrality the breach of which by the Germans was seen as threatening Britain's vital national interests (to do with the balance of power in Europe and German navel and imperial ambitions). But the simple narrative history (for those who did not specialise in it post 16 years old), is what the BBC and other popular media have tended to broadcast this week, and that involves the ideas that the Great War was about ending war not Great Power politics. But that does not make the BBC a negationist organisation!
Unlike a Wikiepdia article, historians are paid to write a narrative and analyse events. If they wrote articles in the style of Wikipedia featured articles and only summed up others ideas, their tenure would be in jeopardy for not doing original research and drawing conclusions from that research. The process usually takes time. For example the first job is to catalogue the archives (and that can take a generation), the second job is to sift the primary sources previously archived, and come up with a history or narrative of those sources. New primary sources may lead to new narratives, but often the most recent narratives reflect history through the current academic Zeitgeist.
Here is a simple example of how interpretation of facts can vary without negationism being involved.During the 1980s most armies in the world consisted of conscripts, but the United States and British Commonwealth countries relied on volunteers. That is a fact. But an historian can conclude that this shows how peace loving the English speaking societies are that their governments do not force young men into the armed forces, or an historian can conclude that this shows how warlike English societies are that the government so many volunteers that they do not need conscription.
So any way I think that the first sentence should be modified by taking out the word "communist" because historians like Christopher Hill are not negationists his seminal works in the 1940s reflected the zeitgeist of his profession and the socialist view of his generation.
I think that the section on the Confederacy should be removed, because it reflects a form of nationalism (ie was it "war between the states" or a "civil war") rather than negationism. It is like saying that Americans using the term "American Revolutionary War" for the "American War of Independence" are negationist because the rebels were fighting for independence and the type of government they wanted after independence was inconsequential to the war. This is clearly a silly argument, because both view can be extracted from the primary sources and neither view is negationist as described by the use of the "Techniques" section of this article. -- PBS ( talk) 13:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
All of the examples are post 1900. What about Imperial China? The Chinese were infamous for rewriting history to make previous dynasties seem evil/gluttonous/corrupt/etc since the Zhou Dynasty. I know this can also be found in other East Asian monarchial countries. There should be a section on this, and other older examples of negative historical revisionism. ミーラー強斗武 ( StG88ぬ会話) 10:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I wish to extend the opportunity for User:Staszek Lem to explain his recent edits (which I have reverted for the reasons provided in commentary).-- Froglich ( talk) 20:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I have protected the page for three days to allow you both to sort this out without any further edit warring before you do so. If you reach a mutually agreed compromise before the three days are up, then leave a message on my talk page and ANI and an administrator will reverse my protection. Before you write anything else here
Froglich, please read the policy section to which
WP:PROVEIT links. --
PBS (
talk)
21:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
If the section on Confederate revisionism is going to be a simplistic polemic in support of the prevailing national patriotic mythology, it is best deleted. I did so. If someone wants to put it back , for God's sake, do a better job. No unbiased historian can examine the subject of the causes of the War of the Rebellion seriously without noticing that there are 2 bodies of evidence that superficially seem to point in opposite directions. Too many Southern sympathizers ignore the text of the secession resolution of South Carolina, and at least one other state, but the most egregious ignoring of evidence is done by the Lincoln idolaters and my-country-right-or-wrong types. You can't legitimately just ignore the views of notable contemporaries like William Lloyd Garrison or Lord Acton, just because you don't like them, dismiss the importance of the tariff because you don't understand economics, dismiss the importance of federalism vs. nationalism because you don't have a clue about U.S. constitutional history, or pretend scholars like Hummel, Adams, & diLorenzo are fruitcakes because you hate the idea that the subject is complex enough that you might actually have to study it to understand it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 ( talk) 20:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC) :
There is no equivalency of states rights and slavery as a cause of the civil war. Secessionists did not go to war for states rights, the war was initiated to preserve and extend slavery, as avowed by the principle actors at the time to themselves and to the world. To achieve independence of a perpetual slave-holding republic, the Confederacy centralized economically under government control far more than had been the practice in the antebellum United States -- see Emory M. Thomas, "The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865". Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens objected to the loss of states rights under Jefferson Davis and was self-exiled to Georgia for the duration. Jefferson Davis subsequently adopted Stephens ideology to hold out an alternative rationale for the horrific bloodshed. It had turned out one Southerner could not whip 100 cowardly Yankees with one arm tied behind his back; a miscalculation on the part of the Fire-eaters, the promises of no war at secession for perpetual slavery were empty and so the revisionism followed the unhappy result. TheVirginiaHistorian ( talk) 07:57, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Guys, you are forgetting about the simple test whether a theory is negationism: the issue of contention must be a fact, not an opinion, however commonly accepted opinion may be. Negationism denies solidly established facts by using questionable methods. Once you think of it, the issue becomes clear: the answers to the question "why" in politics are 97% opinions and in 99% cases multiple valid ones. Therefore the issues of "negationism" is moot here. Staszek Lem ( talk) 21:38, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
No, the United States was a “transnational organization” during the Articles of Confederation. It’s perpetual union was made more perfect by a Constitution where the supreme law of the land is the Constitution, laws enacted by Congress, and treaties. Conflating the US under the Articles versus the US under the Constitution is a standard Lost Cause canard of negationism.
No, the War of American Independence was to secure the Rights of Englishmen guaranteed in the ancient Stuart charters and the self-evident natural rights of man in self government only after a twenty-year chain of abuses justified independence. Treason is making war on the United States. Jefferson Davis and his confederates suffered nothing at the hands of the US government at the time of the secessionist movement to justify armed rebellion against a legitimate government. Lincoln was certified constitutionally elected in December 1860, before the newly elected Republican pluralities were seated in Congress.
No, there is no legitimate comparison to the American Revolution, no harm was done the southern states or their citizens by the US government continuously for twenty years prior the Civil War under slaveholding presidents and slaveholding justices, and the pro-slave Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. To pretend otherwise is negationism, “the illegitimate distortion of the historical record”. One northern sectional vote refusing to accept the domestic terrorism of Bleeding Kansas and its LeCompton Constitution for a slaveholding Kansas does not qualify as a long chain of abuses stretching twenty years all with the same object of slave emancipation, or high tariffs, or whatever else that may be unrelated to the personal liberty of free citizens living in free community, the rationale for the American Revolution.
The Civil War was instigated by those who rejected democratic republican government by the US for fear that slavery might not be perpetual in the US as it disappeared throughout the civilized western world in the mid 19th century. However misled the people enlisted in rebellion were by the secessionist leadership, the armed rebellion is unjustifiable by the legitimate historical record. TheVirginiaHistorian ( talk) 10:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Could people who add or remove the image, please, provide reasons in the edits. The only edit with any real argument was mine (in my perhaps not sufficiently humble opinion). Second best was User:Staszek_Lem, who did not state what he did not understand in my edit summary, but at least proposed to discuss on the talk page. I do not care much either way, but changes without constructive edit summaries annoy me. -- Mlewan ( talk) 14:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
I restored the intro section, from before the IP's edits, with some changes. The old version gave a clear explanation that the term "revisionism" has two meanings.
In addition I removed the poorly referenced statement: " English term negationism derives from the French phrase Le négationnisme" - may be it is so, but the source cited does not support this. The source is a review of the book The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide and it says that the word "negation" is the translation of french "negationisme", which refers to holocaust denial. I.e., it does not speak about the origin of the term "negationism" Staszek Lem ( talk) 17:30, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
@ 50.9.48.58: Your failure to answer the objections stated both in article talk page and your user talk page is inadmissible in wikipedia. Staszek Lem ( talk)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 |
There's no inclusion of the revisionism that overemphasizes contributions by a particular, entitlement minded demographic to give its members a sense of self-worth and accomplishment.: i.e. 1 martyr > 750,000 casualties
The pastoralists among the ancient Greeks shone a positive light on a fictional, peaceful, bucolic origin. A modern culture promotes and identifies with the marginally significant Maquis and disregards 40,000,000 Vichy collaborators. History advocates Irish ancestors as victims of a famine and disregards their location on an rock surrounded by seas of teaming fish.
Is there room for a promotionism section on revisionism? Sometimes it's what is not said--the adage: evil of which we do not speak--that revises the truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.231.43.73 ( talk) 17:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Another editor removed the following section without explanation.
Ex-Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo):
In the 90's following a massive western media coverage of the Yugoslav civil war, there was a rise of the publications considering the matter on historical revisionism of the Ex-Yugoslav region. One of the most prominent authors on the field of historical revisionism in the 90's considering the newly emerged republics is Noel Malcolm and his works Bosnia: A Short History (1994) and Kosovo: A Short History (1998), that have seen a robust debate among historians following their release. For example, following the release of Kosovo: A Short History (1998), the merits of the book were the subject of an extended debate in Foreign Affairs. Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History (1998) was considered "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans" [1]. In late 1999, Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota reviewed the book in Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online and while praising aspects of the book also asserted that it was "shaped by the author’s overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths", that Malcolm was "partisan", and also complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false". [2]
- Notes
This seems to me a perfectly legitimate addition to the page. I have re-added it. If any editor can provide a reason for the deletion, I will happily reverse my postion. -- Andrewaskew ( talk) 06:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
In non-historical contexts this kind of practice is called denialism. In several specific historical context, it also is called that ( Holocaust denialism). So would Historical denialism be a better title? Ego White Tray ( talk) 04:06, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Pablo.paz ( talk · contribs) added the following into the article:
Clearly, this belongs to talk page, rather than to the article, so I reverted it. Does anybody care to comment on this suggestion of article improvement? Staszek Lem ( talk) 02:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Is this a form of sarcasm? David Barton is one of the most well-known psuedo-historians in the United States, who lacks any form of degree in History, consistently rewrites history and misrepresents reality in his effort to promote fundamental evangelical Christianity. I will remove the citation (#26), but this has got to be a bad joke. -- Mackinz ( talk) 23:01, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Several sections of this article have the topic of the section in boldface. I have sometimes seen that on the English Wikipedia for phrases which redirect to the article or to a certain section (see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Other uses. But in this case, the topic of these sections are elaborated in separate articles. For example, under the heading Chinese book burning there is a link to the article Burning of books and burying of scholars but below that the same phrase Burning of books and burying of scholars is in boldface. And in the next section (Nazi book burning), the phrase Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen is in boldface but Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen redirects to the separate article Special Prosecution Book-Poland. I think this extensive use of boldface is confusing, so I propose to change it either to italics or to normal characters. Bever ( talk) 21:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
I read the assertion that 'negationism' is a neologism. I think I read the word already before the turn of the century. How old should a word be for not being called a neologism? Bever ( talk) 07:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@ User:Bever which century and in what language? -- PBS ( talk) 18:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
1992, 1998 - I'd say neologism, but google books give hundreds of hits already, so I guess it is pretty maintream now. Staszek Lem ( talk) 19:37, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@ user:Staszek Lem With reference to this edit with the editorial comment "Reverted good faith edits by PBS (talk): negationism redirects here; hence must be boldfaced." give me an example of where I have ever made bad faith edit. If you can not show an example of one, then please apologise for being uncivil. -- PBS ( talk) 18:54, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
![]() |
First off; WP:3O is supposed to be for content disputes, not user conduct issues, which this seems to be. Nonetheless, I'm providing an opinion. @ PBS:, To me, when someone says they reverted Good Faith edits; they are saying that you did not intend wrongdoing by your edit - that your intentions were good but the end result was not so they are reverting you. They are saying that they are assuming good faith on your part - assuming that you did not intend the bad result that they are reverting. Generally speaking, reverting someone without comment implies that they have committed vandalism or made a test edit or whatever. Saying you are reverting good faith edits means they haven't done anything wrong, but for some reason you're revering anyway. I don't think @ Staszek Lem: has anything to apologize for. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:13, 6 March 2015 (UTC) |
Just because a word appears in a few books does not mean it is not a neologism (a raw Google book search returns about 400 results which is not a lot). The word "negationism" does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and Wikiepdia should no be propagating its usage as if it is a dictionary word. As it happens it was I who introduced the word to its prominence in this article as a dab extension with a move back in 2006. I did this because the previous dab extension which was "(political)" caused a misunderstanding over what this article was about among some editors. If one looks through the books returned by the Google book search one will see that while some use it from its modern French meaning, there is another meaning in English linked to the dictionary word "negation" "An act of denial; a negative statement, doctrine, etc.; a refusal or contradiction; a denial of something." and in this broader meaning it is used to mean the "denial of something" but that something can be anything in particular religious doctrines, so to try to removed noise from the books on religious discussion re-running the search but only from 1950 which is about the earliest date that the term could have been used in its modern French meanings, the number of books falls to about 30 the first returned in this search of more modern books is
In this book on page one the author (Elst) assumes the his audience will not know the word so he defines it before he starts to use it:
However his need to do define it shows that the word was not in common usage with his meaning when he defined it (or there would be no need to have such an elaborate definition). Although most of the 30 books returned in the search of books after 1950 are using it either to mean specifically denying the Holocaust or broadening it out as Elst does in his book, some of the books are using the more traditional broader meaning linked to the dictionary meaning of "negation":
I think I have shown that the word is still a neologism (a Google books search of 40 books since 1950) with more than one meaning returned is not common usage (in comparison a search on "Holocaust" returned 1,000 books for a similar search). So until the OED includes "Negationism", Wikiepedia should not imply that the word "Negationism" and this specific meaning for the word is anything but a neologism. -- PBS ( talk) 20:58, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
BTW, WP:NOTNEO says.
IMO opinion the term "negationism" unnecessarily narrows the scope of the current article, and therefore its usage in article title is misleading. Therefore I would support a reasonable suggection about article renaming, per WP:NOTNEO. I would consider the phrase already used in the lede Illegitimate historical revisionism. IMO it clearly draws the distinction and would simplify the lede. I am not filing a WP:MOVE request, because I'd like to have a reasonable consensus about new name first. (I see in talk archives at least 4 page move discussionss). Staszek Lem ( talk) 18:48, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
I do not think that this sentence should remain in the article:
Also, Communism and Soviet historiography treated reality and the party line as one and the same,[16] employing historical revisionism to advance a specific political (and ideological) agenda.
Whether or not Christopher Hill was incorrect to interpret the English Civil War through the lens of communism he was not revisionist. There is a big difference between an objective historian and a negationist. One can be an objective historian and draw different conclusions from the same historical facts.
Likewise the section on the Confederacy is flawed for the same reason. It is beyond dispute that the confederate states went to war over state rights and that the Union states fought over that issue. What confederate sympathising historians do is play up the state rights while glossing over this issue that the right they wanted to uphold was slavery. Similarly Union historians tend to over emphasise the liberation of the slaves and underplay the issue of state rights. This does not mean that most historians on both sides are not objective historians.
This is not uncommon in historical narrative. For example at the moment the British media is full of the 100 anniversary of the Great War, "the war to end wars", "the war to protect democracy", etc. But the motives in 1914 was not for any of those motives (they came later). For the British it was to protect Belgium's neutrality the breach of which by the Germans was seen as threatening Britain's vital national interests (to do with the balance of power in Europe and German navel and imperial ambitions). But the simple narrative history (for those who did not specialise in it post 16 years old), is what the BBC and other popular media have tended to broadcast this week, and that involves the ideas that the Great War was about ending war not Great Power politics. But that does not make the BBC a negationist organisation!
Unlike a Wikiepdia article, historians are paid to write a narrative and analyse events. If they wrote articles in the style of Wikipedia featured articles and only summed up others ideas, their tenure would be in jeopardy for not doing original research and drawing conclusions from that research. The process usually takes time. For example the first job is to catalogue the archives (and that can take a generation), the second job is to sift the primary sources previously archived, and come up with a history or narrative of those sources. New primary sources may lead to new narratives, but often the most recent narratives reflect history through the current academic Zeitgeist.
Here is a simple example of how interpretation of facts can vary without negationism being involved.During the 1980s most armies in the world consisted of conscripts, but the United States and British Commonwealth countries relied on volunteers. That is a fact. But an historian can conclude that this shows how peace loving the English speaking societies are that their governments do not force young men into the armed forces, or an historian can conclude that this shows how warlike English societies are that the government so many volunteers that they do not need conscription.
So any way I think that the first sentence should be modified by taking out the word "communist" because historians like Christopher Hill are not negationists his seminal works in the 1940s reflected the zeitgeist of his profession and the socialist view of his generation.
I think that the section on the Confederacy should be removed, because it reflects a form of nationalism (ie was it "war between the states" or a "civil war") rather than negationism. It is like saying that Americans using the term "American Revolutionary War" for the "American War of Independence" are negationist because the rebels were fighting for independence and the type of government they wanted after independence was inconsequential to the war. This is clearly a silly argument, because both view can be extracted from the primary sources and neither view is negationist as described by the use of the "Techniques" section of this article. -- PBS ( talk) 13:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
All of the examples are post 1900. What about Imperial China? The Chinese were infamous for rewriting history to make previous dynasties seem evil/gluttonous/corrupt/etc since the Zhou Dynasty. I know this can also be found in other East Asian monarchial countries. There should be a section on this, and other older examples of negative historical revisionism. ミーラー強斗武 ( StG88ぬ会話) 10:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I wish to extend the opportunity for User:Staszek Lem to explain his recent edits (which I have reverted for the reasons provided in commentary).-- Froglich ( talk) 20:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I have protected the page for three days to allow you both to sort this out without any further edit warring before you do so. If you reach a mutually agreed compromise before the three days are up, then leave a message on my talk page and ANI and an administrator will reverse my protection. Before you write anything else here
Froglich, please read the policy section to which
WP:PROVEIT links. --
PBS (
talk)
21:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
If the section on Confederate revisionism is going to be a simplistic polemic in support of the prevailing national patriotic mythology, it is best deleted. I did so. If someone wants to put it back , for God's sake, do a better job. No unbiased historian can examine the subject of the causes of the War of the Rebellion seriously without noticing that there are 2 bodies of evidence that superficially seem to point in opposite directions. Too many Southern sympathizers ignore the text of the secession resolution of South Carolina, and at least one other state, but the most egregious ignoring of evidence is done by the Lincoln idolaters and my-country-right-or-wrong types. You can't legitimately just ignore the views of notable contemporaries like William Lloyd Garrison or Lord Acton, just because you don't like them, dismiss the importance of the tariff because you don't understand economics, dismiss the importance of federalism vs. nationalism because you don't have a clue about U.S. constitutional history, or pretend scholars like Hummel, Adams, & diLorenzo are fruitcakes because you hate the idea that the subject is complex enough that you might actually have to study it to understand it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 ( talk) 20:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC) :
There is no equivalency of states rights and slavery as a cause of the civil war. Secessionists did not go to war for states rights, the war was initiated to preserve and extend slavery, as avowed by the principle actors at the time to themselves and to the world. To achieve independence of a perpetual slave-holding republic, the Confederacy centralized economically under government control far more than had been the practice in the antebellum United States -- see Emory M. Thomas, "The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865". Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens objected to the loss of states rights under Jefferson Davis and was self-exiled to Georgia for the duration. Jefferson Davis subsequently adopted Stephens ideology to hold out an alternative rationale for the horrific bloodshed. It had turned out one Southerner could not whip 100 cowardly Yankees with one arm tied behind his back; a miscalculation on the part of the Fire-eaters, the promises of no war at secession for perpetual slavery were empty and so the revisionism followed the unhappy result. TheVirginiaHistorian ( talk) 07:57, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Guys, you are forgetting about the simple test whether a theory is negationism: the issue of contention must be a fact, not an opinion, however commonly accepted opinion may be. Negationism denies solidly established facts by using questionable methods. Once you think of it, the issue becomes clear: the answers to the question "why" in politics are 97% opinions and in 99% cases multiple valid ones. Therefore the issues of "negationism" is moot here. Staszek Lem ( talk) 21:38, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
No, the United States was a “transnational organization” during the Articles of Confederation. It’s perpetual union was made more perfect by a Constitution where the supreme law of the land is the Constitution, laws enacted by Congress, and treaties. Conflating the US under the Articles versus the US under the Constitution is a standard Lost Cause canard of negationism.
No, the War of American Independence was to secure the Rights of Englishmen guaranteed in the ancient Stuart charters and the self-evident natural rights of man in self government only after a twenty-year chain of abuses justified independence. Treason is making war on the United States. Jefferson Davis and his confederates suffered nothing at the hands of the US government at the time of the secessionist movement to justify armed rebellion against a legitimate government. Lincoln was certified constitutionally elected in December 1860, before the newly elected Republican pluralities were seated in Congress.
No, there is no legitimate comparison to the American Revolution, no harm was done the southern states or their citizens by the US government continuously for twenty years prior the Civil War under slaveholding presidents and slaveholding justices, and the pro-slave Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. To pretend otherwise is negationism, “the illegitimate distortion of the historical record”. One northern sectional vote refusing to accept the domestic terrorism of Bleeding Kansas and its LeCompton Constitution for a slaveholding Kansas does not qualify as a long chain of abuses stretching twenty years all with the same object of slave emancipation, or high tariffs, or whatever else that may be unrelated to the personal liberty of free citizens living in free community, the rationale for the American Revolution.
The Civil War was instigated by those who rejected democratic republican government by the US for fear that slavery might not be perpetual in the US as it disappeared throughout the civilized western world in the mid 19th century. However misled the people enlisted in rebellion were by the secessionist leadership, the armed rebellion is unjustifiable by the legitimate historical record. TheVirginiaHistorian ( talk) 10:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Could people who add or remove the image, please, provide reasons in the edits. The only edit with any real argument was mine (in my perhaps not sufficiently humble opinion). Second best was User:Staszek_Lem, who did not state what he did not understand in my edit summary, but at least proposed to discuss on the talk page. I do not care much either way, but changes without constructive edit summaries annoy me. -- Mlewan ( talk) 14:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
I restored the intro section, from before the IP's edits, with some changes. The old version gave a clear explanation that the term "revisionism" has two meanings.
In addition I removed the poorly referenced statement: " English term negationism derives from the French phrase Le négationnisme" - may be it is so, but the source cited does not support this. The source is a review of the book The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide and it says that the word "negation" is the translation of french "negationisme", which refers to holocaust denial. I.e., it does not speak about the origin of the term "negationism" Staszek Lem ( talk) 17:30, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
@ 50.9.48.58: Your failure to answer the objections stated both in article talk page and your user talk page is inadmissible in wikipedia. Staszek Lem ( talk)