International Man: Historical revisionism refers to the reexamination and reinterpretation of historical events in order to correct inaccuracies, update understanding, or challenge existing narratives.
This sounds like just applying critical thinking to history.
What is your opinion?
Doug Casey: The essence of critical thinking is to question every statement and examine the accuracy and logic of the answers. It’s important to seek answers to root causes and not accept things at face value.
The problem with history as taught in schools is that different versions are presented as facts without nuance. Looking at history is a lot like examining an elephant: one person feels its legs and thinks it’s a tree trunk, while another person feels its trunk and thinks it’s a snake.
The CIA is said to have coined the term “revisionism” in the 1960s to expose interpretations it didn’t like. There are at least two reasons why those in power dislike revisionism.
First, a thorough investigation of history requires detailed and well-explained answers that may reveal the crimes of those in power, who may be jailed, bankrupt or deeply humiliated. Historical revisionism is always opposed by those in power, because it could topple their regimes.
The second is being able to debunk myths. Myths are a double-edged sword. Even if they are not true, they are a bond that binds people together, so they are often a good thing. But in the long run, reality and truth are better than myths. So we should not be afraid to debunk myths, even if they are useful.
In any case, much of popular history contains crimes that should be recognized. As Gibbon said, “History is but a catalogue of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
International Man: Why does challenging a widely accepted contemporary or historical event create so much controversy and negative prejudice?
Shouldn’t that be considered healthy and necessary in a free society?
Doug Casey: Yes, but it’s not in the interest of the powerful to expose crimes or debunk favorable myths. Every country embellishes its history to make itself look as good as possible. The average person just accepts what they’re told. As Sam Cooke said in the song “It’s a Wonderful World,” “If you don’t know much about the Middle Ages, just look at the pictures and turn the pages.”
Take the War of Independence, for example. It wasn’t just a revolutionary war. It was also a war of secession, but people don’t like to say it that way because it creates comparisons with another war of secession, the Civil War.
According to revisionist historians, the War of Independence was also a civil war, and perhaps one-third of the country’s population was on the side of the Crown. Only one-third were rebels, and the other third were neutral. Native Americans and many black slaves fought for the British. But this fact compromises the very essence of our national myth, and some who dislike the idea of America like to highlight the negative aspects. I like the founding myth, but I also like truth and accuracy.
The same kinds of issues arise on a much larger scale in the Civil War (the revisionist name for the American Civil War). It is commonly believed that it was fought to free the slaves, but this is simply not true. The slaves were not freed until the middle of the war, and only in the Southern states, not the Northern states. The main justification for the war was taxation, and secondarily, whether the new territories could enter the Union as slave states.
The main source of revenue for the U.S. government was import tariffs, but the South bore the bulk of these tariffs, which were dramatically increased to protect Northern manufacturers.
That, not slavery, was the main reason the South seceded. Slavery was highly controversial in both the North and South, but it wasn’t the reason for the war itself. Few people talk about it because it seems more noble for the good guys fighting to free the slaves to win than it is for them to maintain their economic advantage.
You can’t have a free society without debate over facts and what is right and wrong. But teachers just repeat what the government says. And the narrative can change dramatically. Even as we speak, historical myths are being replaced with more recently created propaganda. We are seeing statues of Washington and Jefferson being replaced with statues of George Floyd.
We are not as bad as China or the USSR, where entire societies were based on lies and no one even questioned them, but we are being pushed in that direction by our current thinking about political correctness and wokeism.
International Man: Comedian Norm MacDonald once joked,
“The history books tell us that, by some stroke of luck, the good guys have always won. What are the odds?”
What are some historical examples where the so-called “good guys” did not win?
Doug Casey: We all know the old adage, “I’m a freedom fighter. You’re a traitor. He’s a terrorist.” It’s often a matter of perception. And, in fact, everyone thinks he’s the good guy.
Even the worst mass murderers, such as Alexander, Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler and Mao, believed that their actions were good and necessary.
It’s a question of deciding who is really the good guy. Look at the fight between the Hatfields and the McCoys. They both thought they were on the right side of the issue. Or the war between Europeans and Native Americans. Both sides had excellent arguments for killing each other.
It’s like the Battle of the Alamo: Yes, the Americans were brave and they were fighting for what they believed in, but at the same time, the Mexican army was absolutely right to try to drive out invaders who were violating their territorial rights.
There are many such examples. In my own opinion, “good people” are those who stand for individual freedom and prefer non-violence.
International Man: Most people would agree that the winners write the history books.
However, when it comes to specific historical events, those same people will likely accuse you of being a dangerous extremist who promotes hate crimes.
What do you think about this startling display of cognitive dissonance?
Doug Casey: Well, that’s part of the study of history. The closer you get to an event, the more emotions run high, especially if the people involved are still alive. Major historical figures are rarely saints. They usually have a Machiavellian or Kissingerian sense of morality. They tend to cover up crimes and wickedness. You’re not allowed to have certain views. If you do, you’re considered a heretic. And heretics are often burned at the stake.
The attack on Pearl Harbor is a good example. It is now clear that Roosevelt was trying to provoke Japan into attacking, and although he knew an attack was coming, he was willing to sacrifice Pearl Harbor to stir up righteous anger among Americans.
Yes, Japan was the aggressor, but at that point the United States had cut off Japan’s oil and steel supplies and Japan was backed into a corner. People don’t want to believe that because they want to believe the United States is always right – that we’re always the good guys. I’m sympathetic to that view, if only because the United States is unique in that it was founded on explicitly liberal principles. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. government always, or even usually, acts in accordance with those principles.
The 1963 Kennedy assassination is another example. Oswald was definitely a scapegoat. I don’t know who did it, but I suspect it was the CIA, which Kennedy wanted to disband. It was a coup d’état. But whatever the truth is, it will never come out because it would make the US look like a banana republic, the criminals would be revealed, and the founding myth would be further destroyed.
We don’t really know exactly who was responsible for 9/11. All we know is the commonly accepted story. There are many unanswered but obvious questions, such as what really happened in Building 7. To seek the truth, even in the most intellectually honest of circumstances, is to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist.
International Man: Given everything we’ve discussed today, what are the implications as the world heads into its most turbulent period since World War II? What can ordinary people do to protect themselves and even benefit?
Doug Casey: We have at least three major disasters unfolding before our eyes: Ukraine, Gaza, and possibly Taiwan, and I worry that the U.S. government is on the wrong side of all of them.
Russia is being pushed into attacking Ukraine exactly the same way Japan was pushed into attacking Pearl Harbor. This is a border war between Kiev and Moscow that has been overblown. The US thinks it is wise to sacrifice Ukrainian manpower to hit Russia.
Gaza represents a different kind of border dispute, albeit one that has been going on for almost 3000 years. Who owns Palestine, the Jews or the Arabs? Why is that a concern for the US?
With regard to Taiwan, I think historians will see many similarities to what happened in Vietnam and Korea, three countries in which the United States was drawn into conflicts on opposite sides of the globe with entirely different cultures, resulting in millions of deaths and enormous damage.
In all these cases, it is Americans who are currently writing history. But the United States, transformed into a fallen empire, is now on the wrong side of history. A hundred years from now, other great powers will be writing the standard version of history, not the United States. But that certainly does not bode well for Americans right now.
So what can ordinary people do to protect themselves or benefit?
Plan your life with the understanding that the world is unstable, and in such a world you need stable investments that won’t dry up or blow away.
I support two approaches: first, owning physical things like gold and real estate, and second, being a speculator looking to profit from the chaos that is sure to sweep the world in the near future.
Editor’s note: The amount of money the U.S. government spends on foreign aid, wars, so-called intelligence, and other aspects of foreign policy is enormous and continues to grow.
This is a well-established trend that is accelerating and is now approaching a breaking point, potentially resulting in the most significant disaster since the 1930s.
Most of us are not prepared for what is coming. That’s why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team have released an emergency video with all the details. Click here to watch it now.
