Blackshirts and Reds (but there is some stuff he should’ve expanded upon in the sections abt WW2), The dawning of the apocalypse, The paradox of tarheel politics (lib author, and it shows at points. Very in-depth about how evil white southern politicians are and gerrymandering is), how Europe underdeveloped Africa, and facing the Anthropocene (more oriented in environmental science, but details the history of capitalism and some USSR history). All history books have flaws, and what I consider to be the best sources of all time are written and oral accounts and video and picture evidence of those very things happening. Documentaries and history books can twist the truth to fit their argument through bias. But pictures and videos exist by themselves. Too sad with modern tech they get manipulated and the truth is even harder to find.
Ah my man, hard disagree on “videos exist by themselves”.
Even if you have video, or oral accounts of something they are as flawed as the human condition is. The difference is the amount of bias, but they all have it.
In the documentary you’ll have the directors/production company trying to portray whatever they want to portray. In the oral accounts you’ll still have a skewed view, bound to that particular person’s experience. Sure in a sense can be more genuine, but should be scrutinized also. Who is the person? What is his participation in the events? Possible interests? Which social class? Etc…
We must not deny the bias, but embrace it. If we can gather as many different sources as possible, we should be able string a better perspective, but doing so also carries our own bias.
Nothing is neutral. And we don’t lose anything by admiting it.
I’m talking about in regards to events having happened. I’m an archivist and work in collections, so I approach through that way. Some things are debated upon to have happened. Recent news article in my town claims that a notable historical figure walked through a park in town. If we have a picture or video of said figure in said park, then the evidence is undeniable. Now let’s add the bias: we have video evidence that a bomb went off in one place, then the video could be used to argue that bombing is bad because of X, Y, Z that is all demonstrated within the video. For the park example, the fact that said historical figure visited the park could be used as an argument why the park needs more funding, which is an argument that the park employees and board members would argue. History is not biased, the people who write about it are. History is either true or false, what is said based on said history is the bias. However, historians go beyond this and argue their own ideas based on said history. The idea that history is only true or false is to prevent ideas like determinism (that events in history were “fated” to happen, which to us in the communist circle is being against metaphysics) which is the historian’s enemy. In another post I was talking about the hypocrisies of a lot of western academia historians, and being deterministic is why. They make history biased because they don’t look at it objectively. They look at history as “how can I make money off of this?” Instead of looking at it as reporting the truth or not.
Edit: added more things to make my argument more clear
Out of curiosity what are some of your favorite history books?
Blackshirts and Reds (but there is some stuff he should’ve expanded upon in the sections abt WW2), The dawning of the apocalypse, The paradox of tarheel politics (lib author, and it shows at points. Very in-depth about how evil white southern politicians are and gerrymandering is), how Europe underdeveloped Africa, and facing the Anthropocene (more oriented in environmental science, but details the history of capitalism and some USSR history). All history books have flaws, and what I consider to be the best sources of all time are written and oral accounts and video and picture evidence of those very things happening. Documentaries and history books can twist the truth to fit their argument through bias. But pictures and videos exist by themselves. Too sad with modern tech they get manipulated and the truth is even harder to find.
Ah my man, hard disagree on “videos exist by themselves”.
Even if you have video, or oral accounts of something they are as flawed as the human condition is. The difference is the amount of bias, but they all have it.
In the documentary you’ll have the directors/production company trying to portray whatever they want to portray. In the oral accounts you’ll still have a skewed view, bound to that particular person’s experience. Sure in a sense can be more genuine, but should be scrutinized also. Who is the person? What is his participation in the events? Possible interests? Which social class? Etc…
We must not deny the bias, but embrace it. If we can gather as many different sources as possible, we should be able string a better perspective, but doing so also carries our own bias.
Nothing is neutral. And we don’t lose anything by admiting it.
I’m talking about in regards to events having happened. I’m an archivist and work in collections, so I approach through that way. Some things are debated upon to have happened. Recent news article in my town claims that a notable historical figure walked through a park in town. If we have a picture or video of said figure in said park, then the evidence is undeniable. Now let’s add the bias: we have video evidence that a bomb went off in one place, then the video could be used to argue that bombing is bad because of X, Y, Z that is all demonstrated within the video. For the park example, the fact that said historical figure visited the park could be used as an argument why the park needs more funding, which is an argument that the park employees and board members would argue. History is not biased, the people who write about it are. History is either true or false, what is said based on said history is the bias. However, historians go beyond this and argue their own ideas based on said history. The idea that history is only true or false is to prevent ideas like determinism (that events in history were “fated” to happen, which to us in the communist circle is being against metaphysics) which is the historian’s enemy. In another post I was talking about the hypocrisies of a lot of western academia historians, and being deterministic is why. They make history biased because they don’t look at it objectively. They look at history as “how can I make money off of this?” Instead of looking at it as reporting the truth or not.
Edit: added more things to make my argument more clear