Narrative Warfare: This Is (Not) What Historians Are For

Over at the Supreme Dark Lord's blog, we have a post on why never believing the official story is wise. Quoting the article he quoted:

The shocking double tragedy of a D-Day rehearsal exercise 75 years ago this weekend has been remembered in a new book.

More than 1,200 Allied soldiers were killed over two days off Slapton Sands in Devon, a disaster that was kept hidden by the authorities for decades.

On April 27, 1944 over 400 of them were slaughtered by the friendly fire of shells bursts on the beach due to a timing error. The following day nine German E-boats passing through Lyme Bay stumbled upon the exercise and opened fire on the mock-invasion fleet, killing 749 men.

Scores of bodies washed up on to the beach in harrowing scenes that would be replicated six weeks later on the beaches of Normandy.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted his men to be battle-hardened ahead of D-Day so he insisted on live ammunition being used during the trial run. But a calamitous error with timings meant some of the landing craft arrived at the wrong time where they came under heavy artillery fire. The tragic mishap meant a wave of servicemen taking part in the rehearsal were killed on the stony beach.

Historians, like journalists, serve the lawful purpose of being witnesses and transmitters of events. We justify our purpose by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sometimes this commitment means upsetting comfortable--but false--myths, and sometimes that means confronting blatant gaslighting frauds. If the truth is hidden, then it must be brought forth; there's a necessity for secrecy, but once that need is gone then what is secret must be revealed- it's why no one sane trusts the spooks.

We all know that journalists are institutionally unfit for purpose now. Count on historians have similar problems; History is one of the Humanities, and you had better believe that those who view 1984 as an instruction manual--looking at you, Saul--have played the SJW game, the Frame Game, here for generations just as they have in fiction publishing across the board.

You can't have a healthy culture if you are lied to routinely by your elders, and if you lie routinely to your children. (Shut your Gamma gotchas on religion; myth is not a lie automatically.) You can't have a moral culture if fraud and deception are part-and-parcel of your daily routine. The very concept of "official stories" indicates that you've got a corrupt culture in dire need of repentance and reformation. Only the truth, and a ruthless commitment to it, can make and keep a culture healthy and its nation great. Warfare, and only warfare, merits the permission of deception; all else must scorn it for the corrosive thing that it is- much how we strictly control the use of fire.

World War 2 ended generations ago. The generation that fought it is in its twilight now; there is nothing to be gained by keeping secret the whole truth of that war. ALL of it must come out, great and small, horrific and beatific, and be shown to one and all. So must all of history. This is our collective inheritance as Mankind, and what we leave as our posterity to our descendants. Whataboutism bullshit is the basis for protests to the contrary, and Whataboutism's flaw is the false perspective that it's about you- it's not. Larger concerns take priority, and the truth is paramount as it is a subset of The Truth (i.e. God).

And pursuing the truth is worth fighting for.