I am afraid history has too often been widely used as a political instrument
1. Ultimately, I see [mainstream]# historians defeated and denigrated to the condition of pariahs left with only a chronology to which to hold on to. This, despite their dream of chronicling history in a way that, at the end, would vindicate them.
Historians have too often ‘reconstructed’ society to custom fit their own (or their lackeys’) designs. Through their writing, they have used the power to play with the destinies of ordinary people.
Historians ignore the repressions and genocides, the persecutions and mass killing of innocent people, as well as the many infamous political deals, the conquering violence of new rulers, the invasions, the geographic and cultural annexations, the prostitution of ideas and ideals and the condemnation of any dissidence by megalomaniacs. In doing so, they have destroyed any notion of legality and have played on the credulity of later generations.
Such historians miss digging out the bottom of things that chronicle the obscure matters hidden down there, i.e., the millennium long dung –dung that may be old and stale, but that needs to be brought up to the surface.
In their attempt of being ‘truly historical’, they miss narrating the history of the personal tragedies of little people, rather hidden in the comings and goings of historical periods. So, what about the individuals down there? Did mainstream historians ever think about them –about them having to postpone their dreams and their lives until the historical tiredness of mainstream history is gone and their lost utopia is rewritten?
The hypocrisy of mainstream history has shown rulers can get away with murder
-Mainstream history really becomes a big nightmare as we find it as the written account of ‘the-truth’-as-we-are-supposed-to-believe-it. (Marx dixit)
-As historians purport to present to us the history of a given period, they inform us about how the phenomena they recount came about and what the assumptions were at the time. This is a hazardous affair, for in such an undertaking, historians tacitly place some things in light, others in shade. (paraphrasing Goethe)
2. Reading mainstream history often brings out in me adverse reactions. Why? Because, to me, it is proof of how decisions that devastate lives from within can be and have been hidden for posterity.
When it comes to deplorable, unwelcome facts or issues, mainstream history does not tolerate witnesses; itactually silences bothersome witnesses.
The price mainstream history will never repay is that of the millions of lives that could have been saved, as well as the that of the human rights (HR) of further millions of people that could have been upheld.
Mainstream history makes deadly facts look more as if they were a divine punishment than the works of men inebriated with power, with a thirst for control and with the pretentiousness of achieving historical transcendence.
Having history rewritten to place it where it is convenient to the powers that be is not something Hitler or Stalin invented… This is one more reason why it is better to keep mainstream history gagged and interpreted with a grain of salt.
Life of the have-nots and history are indeed intertwined though this fact is simply too often ignored
3. In the name of some kind of a ‘historic necessity’, millions of have-nots are and have been literally dragged into oblivion by the vicissitudes of a history that disguises the attitudes and actions of supposed benefactors.*
*: As students of history, we cannot admit that such omissions are accepted; they are omitted by historians with the pretext of such omissions being a matter of historic or political necessity.
4. After so many infamies and all types of crimes against humanity we can authoritatively speak of the victims of history (certainly true from a HR perspective) –victims whose destinies were shaped by ulterior forces that overwhelmed them till they ground them to dung.
The beneficiaries-of-history-mis-told have entered history as henchmen receiving the veneration of their victims who were often pushed to death. This is just an example of the too often total indifference by the writers of history about the fate of these victims.
5. History has taken revenge on people who have gone through all possible phases of poverty (with shattered dreams and lost hopes for any future) that history, then, has considered to be un-appealable recounts. Millions of people actually went through life without suspecting the treason they were subjected to by their fate not being recorded fairly –all committed in the name of ‘history’. To them, history has been a fraud in their millennia-old quest for equality. What could possibly save them when they have forever been condemned by a history told to fulfill the Machiavellian designs of so many different rulers since time immemorial?History has been buried by those leaders who literally became the owners of history. To call a spade a spade, mainstream history has gotten away with defeating the truth or presenting it in a distorted, manipulated way.** One has all the right to ask: Is it that contemporaries of these atrocities did nor want to know? Or for us: Is ignoring the true past complicity-in-silence? And/or: Will we have to forever carry with us the dead weight of an untold history of crimes anddeceptions?
**: Historical evidence is not only partial and epically ‘favorable’ to the haves, but is not infrequently shamelessly manipulated and different from what most people have lived through.
6. At a time when a ‘great disenchantment’ with mainstream history has become entrenched, a rupture with it is needed so as to change not only the world’s political balance, but to bring up the real ultimate truths.
With hindsight, our struggle must be against history biasedly portrayed.
History can be written in a different way with less chatter about battle and victory heroes and more told about real-life-oppressed-and-deeply-depressed-people –heroes of sacrifice, the legitimate type of heroes that deserve recognition for posterity (Albino Gomez).
To ventilate the many details of a history perverted and buried, what is needed is to rewrite it to arrive at a coherent vision more real of what has been the obscure existence of the oppressed. (But, beware, history’s vengeance can be more powerful than the vengeance of the most powerful emperor that ever existed).
7. So it is: Down with mainstream history! As necessary, we have to reinterpret it. We have to cut across the veneer of the farce and touch the tragic aspects of the underlying truth. The time is now, when we witness a progressive loss of fear and the oppressed can write their own history.
#: The word ‘mainstream’ has been added.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org