Pop history is a blight on humanity. The sheer amount of ignorance it has spread is staggering. The idea that a historical event can be covered in a single 10 minute “unbiased” youtube video has caused millions to lose any ability to actually understand history.
I hope that one day our society will look upon these things the same way we look at films like “Triumph of the Will.”
It’s in the name, “Simple History”. It’s the same for the “Armchair Historian”. Perhaps the name is a Freudian slip?
No, it’s more like disdain for “professionals.” It’s anti-intellectualism. “I’m not one of those stuck up snobs in their ivory towers, I’m just a regular guy like you viewer! So you can trust me, but not those people who tell me how wrong I am.”
Didn’t the guy that “covered” the story for the NYT got arrested after for being a conman and was demonstrated everything he said about, well, everything was a completely made up?
Not sure if he was published in the NYT or arrested, but Hearst’s primary source for the whole Holodomor story never went to Ukraine and used pictures from previous famines in south eastern Europe. In short, yes, he was a conman and everything he said was entirely made up.
Is there any good history channels on youtube, because all the more popular channels (Simple History, Oversimplified, etc.) have the tendency to spew CIA (and in this case, Neo-Nazi) propaganda.
Ancient Americas is pretty good for pre-colombian history of the Americas.
https://www.youtube.com/@AncientAmericas
Miniminuteman generally covers psuedohistory, tearing it to bits, but his stuff is quite entertaining:
https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773
Epimetheus does general broad overviews of various historical nations, his narration style can be a little dry, and it tends to be a bit light on detail, but it is good for an overview:
https://www.youtube.com/@EpimetheusHistory
Historia Civilis mainly does stuff on Rome, but he is one of the better Rome channels (a lot of them tend to be…white supremacist):
https://www.youtube.com/@HistoriaCivilis
Speaking of Rome, the “History of Rome” podcast by Mike Duncan is fantastic, and he also did another podcast called “Revolutions” where he goes through historical revolutions, including the Russian revolution (though I personally haven’t reached that series yet, so I can’t vouch for its accuracy.)
Unfortunately, there are relatively few channels that focus on non-western history, partially due to western bias and partially due to language barriers.
he also did another podcast called “Revolutions” where he goes through historical revolutions, including the Russian revolution (though I personally haven’t reached that series yet, so I can’t vouch for its accuracy.)
He is horribly lib sometimes in the first 3 (English, Yankee, French) but as soon as he reaches Haiti he starts to realise the hypocrisy of liberalism and it only gets better after that. On the first two he was working on the constraint of “15 episodes per revolution” so they suffer a lot for it, so you can skip to French or Haiti if you just want to check it out. The dude is an incredibly skilled podcaster though with a lot of attention to detail, and he always makes sure to correct every mistake when pointed out. His Rome one was what got me into history in the first place.
He also spawned a whole trend of in-depth history podcasts (like History of Byzantium) and while I haven’t found one so catching yet, I think it is harder to be spewing nonsense if most of your audience is already a bunch of history nerds who will correct you endlessly. YouTube mostly encourages going for aesthetics and briefness so it’s actually harder to put a similar amount of research and information density. I guess hbomberguy has become a modern conspiracy history channel for the last 2 years after the midlife crisis. He only posts once a year. Youtubers are weird.
If there are i don’t know of them. Would be awesome if some comrades could make channels to compete with the likes of those you mentioned. Even when it comes to topics that have nothing to do with communism and are far removed from modern historical events they are incredibly biased and peddle a very biased eurocentric and especially anglocentric narrative.
Muh gluten-free diet before it was cool
