Talk:Historical revisionism/Archive 1

message: Is the following the article author's POV?
:Historical revisionism is a type of research that aims to change the conventional, most widely-accepted understanding of specific historical events.  History is, after all, written by the winners.  Historical revisionism thus is legitimate historical research
* This article is not npov. there are holocaust-revisionist scholars out there who are certainly not nazis or anti-semitists. When you have an event of such a large scale as the holocaust, there are bound to be details that historians get wrong. to automatically dismiss any criticism of the standard story at all for the sake of political correctness, is ridiculous. Sure, there are a lot of nutcases who want to pretend it never happened at all, but academics who want to quibble over the details should not be white washed as extremists. Vroman
::I'd question some of the paragraph's terminology, but it seems like this article is talking about two different things: the popular view of revisionism -- a view largely shaped by David Irving and his ilk, note; and the academic view,  where all writing of history is seen as revisionist, and nobody thinks revisionism wrong, since it's just a method -- no, the method -- of writing history. As a friend of mine, formerly of McGill's history department, put it: "Revision is kinda the point of writing history."  
::In the latter sense, revisionism is as old as history writing itself: compare the account of Augustus' reign in the Res Gestae Divi Augustae and Tacitus' account of same in Book I of the Annals. (See the first item under revisionism -- that summarizes the average historian's view perfectly.)
::So I don't know whether I should rewrite more of this from the historian's point of view, or just leave it as it is: discussing both perceptions, but leaning towards the popular, or non-academic, POV. --Mirv 09:19, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Is the following the article author's POV?

message: Another genre of historical revisionism is associated with a famous chess player. This school of thought attempts to reconstruct history based on what it sees as evidence that things like the Roman Empire did not really occour two thousand years ago, but more like fifteen hundred years ago. They attempt to use mathematics and cite missing information to prove this theory.
---
If this isn't blatantly slanted writing I don't know what is:
"Less legitimate revisionism
Revisionism in the style mentioned above is usually a force for good as it brings important new information to light and helps destroy old myths. However, there are other types of revisionism which are much less positive. Instead of being motivated by didactic pursuits, some types of revisionism are spawned by a desire to reshape history to help serve a particular political agenda."
They're using terms like 'less legitimate' and 'force for good' as if they were neutral and quantifiable states of being. I think this should be rewritten, and will do so shortly when I get the time to do so.
Peregrine981 00:51, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Paragraph now points up contrast between didactic revisionism and political revisionism, using more neutral terms. --Mirv 06:25, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Temporal Revisionism

message: Why is his name on this page? The page mentions him, but what it says about him is rather strange and not very detailed. Does anybody know more? Does he really belong on this page, or is his name here because of vandalism mistaken for something factual? ChessPlayer 12:51, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It was added by an anonymous user with two edits. It probably has no value. - George Washington III 17:00, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Finally the term "historical revisionism", or simply "revisionism" is used sometimes to refer to specific revisionist theories associated with the famous chess player Garry Kasparov, which believe that the events of what are known as the last 3,000 years occurred in either a much shorter or a much longer time frame, and attempts to explain how.
It sounds like the sort of thing that some people might believe, but I've never heard of it being attribted to Kasparov. I'd like to see a source for it before it went back in - a search on Google hasn't turned anything up. --Camembert
Camembert, I found it on my first google: It is apparently something he does adhere to and he even wrote the introduction to a book about it. check this out. Danny 17:07, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Oh heck, I must've searched for the wrong things. It seems kind of familiar, that article - I might have even read it before... ah well, I'll put the paragraph back in the article (I might fiddle with it a bit first). --Camembert
I haven't checked Kasparov specifically, but I suspect he is just a follower of Fomenko's "New Chronology". If that's true, this section could be just renamed. (It's strange there is already no reference on Fomenko here, as he seems to be one of the most popular revisionists nowadays.) --212.27.240.40 02:48, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Garry Kasparov 

message: If you had replaced it with another image, perhaps, but we are building an encyclopedia, not destroying one. The story of George Washington and cutting down the apple tree is not any more esoteric example of historical revisionism than other example. If you have somthing better, lets see it. Stbalbach 15:22, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: Although the term does encompass the general meaning as defined here and as used in a Washington Post article . It also has a more specific usage which should be reflected in this article which is when it is used as a label for an article which deliberately misrepresents and manipulates historical evidence for political motives, an example of  this usage is reported in another Post article 
:People for the American Way saw it in a different light:...
:"Our primary concern is continued right-wing intimidation against the expressions of opposing points of view, whether attacks on dissent, intimidation of scientific researchers, or a demand for historical revisionism -- or historical cleansing -- regarding Ronald Reagan."
The David Irving page states that Justice Charles Gray, the trial judge of his failed libel case, concluded :"Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."
As the trial judge found Irving "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence", and as a Google search on David Irving's own web site [historical revisionism site:fpp.co.uk] shows that a common modern usage of the term "historical revisionism" is used to describe Irving's writings, I think that a mention of this alternative modern usage of the phrase should be included on this page because without it the article does not describe all current usage of the phrase.
Given Irving's failure in his the British libel case and the use of it to describe Irving work this meaning of the term is not an unbalanced POV. Searches of current mainstream English language newspapers with Google, (eg ["historical revisionism" site:www.guardian.co.uk] and returns articles using the term as a shorthand for "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" for political motives.  Philip Baird Shearer 14:01, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A second common usage of the phrase "historical revisionism"

message: The whole section under "Interesting Times" is POV. It is a partially articulated side of a long-standing argument about what history is, the Philosophy of History, or Historiography, and is not really specific to Historical revisionism. In fact it tries to explain Historical revisionism within one, of many, philosophical views of what history is. There are other views on what history is. As well, it only made sense when speaking about 19th and 20th century historians writing about their own times.
So I have made some changes
0) Changed the title to reflect what is actually being discussed (which really doesnt belong in this article, it belongs in historiography or philosophy or history.
1) removed "nationalism" as an influence. There was no nationalism in ancient Greece. 
2) removed "ideology" .. a modern concept and idea that doesnt transfer to historians further back in time.
3) Should remove zeitgeist which is a modern concept and term and makes no sense when speaking about, say, the Middle Ages. 
4) "historiographical paradigm" .. this is a loaded term it is often used by people speaking about the holocaust. It is also not very friendly to the general reader. Changed to "model and outline of history".
5) "which is agreed upon by contemporaries." .. didnt make sense what was trying to be said here. No work is fully agreed upon by contemporaries.
6) "This is the point-of-view of the most recent wave of revisionists." .. this needs to be supported and clarified. Which "recent wave of revisionists" ?
-- Stbalbach 18:12, 27 Jan 2005
:At least editing the text is more constructive than just deleting it! I think you are confused. The point is not if such things as nationalism influenced events in Ancient Greece. It is that such things as ideology, nationalism, language and culture influence the interpretation of the events today. A very good example of this is the changing analysis of the English Civil War.
:* Ideology has an influence on historical analysis and can lead to a revision of history. As is discussed in the Civil War article "The Marxist school of thought, which became popular in the 1940s, interpreted the Civil War as a bourgeois revolution." This was one of the standard interpretations of the English Civil War from the 1940s up to the late 1970s and was widely taught in English schools and universities.
:* Nationalism does effect the way historians in the modern era view history. Just look how military historians are sill fighting the Battle of Waterloo. For an example of how Nationalism can effect a revision of history, see how the influence of the European Union (and other factors) have been reinforcing regional identity in the UK. As the regions in the United Kingdom have become more assertive, so the interpretation of events in the English Civil War see the article Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
:* Language has a huge effect because the primary sources most readily available to historians are in languages they understand. See Dark Ages for an example of what this means and the effect it has.
:* Culture is plays a large part in influencing the view of historians see the section of slavery for an example of this. Philip Baird Shearer 19:36, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with new text 

message: The paragrpah as it was originally written made little sense overall to me so I rewrote it so that it more clearly states the second meaning of historical revisionism as it is sometimes used today. I also removed some material that needed to be better explained in how it relates to this 2nd definition. Since that material is also included word for word in the [[Historical revisionism (political) article, I think it should simply be left out of this article and simply try and fix the paragraph in the other article so as to better explain the relevence of the articles and material quoted from them. --Cab88 13:16, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite of the paragraph on historical revisonisms second meaning