One Woman’s Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia

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Yes, you are *finally* starting to figure it out. Now you need to work on understanding that the past is a guide to the future: if the BBC (or any supposedly reputable source of historical information) will lie right to your face about something you might not care about, they might start lying to your face about something you *do* care about. And if you didn't give a crap about their first round of lies, what high ground do you have for the second? And if they find that they can lie and get away with changing the historical record, why would they *ever* stop?
 
So you are opposed to threads on how some people re-write history for political purposes. Fine. But why didn't you start complaining with the very first post? And why do you think that anyone who is opposed to arbitrarily changing the historical record for political purposes requires therapy? And why are you opposed to replying correctly, so that the person you're replying to knows you've replied?
 
Ed, I am afraid you miss the point of my perhaps obtuse post. There is no magic foo-foo that
removes bias, identifies misinformation, tells what is missing and many other elements that make
what we refer to as fact, knowledge, data or information almost always something less than
definitive. That applies to science as well as social studies like history.
You talk of Luftwaffe history, so let me use that as an example. "Either something happened or
it didn't". Let us say I researched something for 50 years and gathered all the primary sources
available on a rather unemotional subject like "how many aircraft of a particular type had been
produced". So I end up with 4 primary sources, great! BUT, no two agree exactly! Here is where
critical thinking comes in. There are biases (some rational, some not), errors (unintentional), and
disinformation (intentional).
Critical thinking is a tool to help with these issues, to identify what might cause the differences and
make sense about how to use the inexact and incomplete information (which it almost always is). Critical
thinking is an important element in research, not a separate subject.
ArtieBob
 
You gave your opinion on the BBC. On you the onus to give rhyme or reason to it. Do your own homework.
English is my third language. What's yours?
 
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Orionblamblam said:
Arjen said:
Orionblamblam said:
Arjen said:
Point out the BBC's crimes.
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I have pointed you to Simon Webb. Learn or don't.
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No case then.
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It frightens me to imagine the state of learning in this world if everyone had your driving curiosity.
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In my experience, people of this attitude, no matter their personal bents, will never process what is given to them anyway. It's essentially a delay and/or self-filter tactic with the added benefit of exhausting anyone trying to have a good faith conversation. You'll never find a source "valid" enough or evidence "compelling" enough to teach anyone who talks this way no matter what they believe.
 
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You gave your opinion on the BBC. On you the onus to give rhyme or reason to it. Do your own homework.
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And I gave a link. And here's another link. And another. And another. It's not my fault you're too lazy to bother to look.

Since you cannot be bothered, here;s a single example: the BBC is touting one Mary Seacole as a replacement for Florence Nightingale, for political reasons. They are lying about what Seacole actually did in order to prop up a false narrative. They are *lying.* They are doing it rather a lot, well after their lies have been pointed out. If they will lie that readily there, where will they stop? And why are you ok with that?

It's one thing to be wrong, it's another to lie. if you wish to be considered a reliable source for news and history, lies are a Very bad Thing.
 
So they found another nurse who served in the Crimea? Probably more around?
 
Arjen said:
So they found another nurse who served in the Crimea? Probably more around?
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Ah, no. Learn more. Gaslight less.

For anyone else reading along who is unaware about the Seacole controversy and is actually willing to learn, the BBC and others started touting her as a politically better alternative to Florence Nightingale (who is now linked to eeeevil Imperialism) by claiming that Seacole went to the Crimean War and, using her own money, set up a hospital to provide aid for the British troops. What she actually did was go to the Crimean war and set up a *hotel* for rich British officers, for the purposes of gettin' rich. She supposedly provided medical aid; but in fact she sold sandwiches and lemonade on the battlefield (after the battle was over) and provided quack remedies that likely did far more harm than good. Lead and mercury typically made unwise additions to "herbal remedies," but, hey, never let mere chemistry get in the way of a good story.

Now, going to a battlefield to make a quick buck... that's a fine profession, I suppose. But does it make you a better nurse than Florence Nightingale? Does it make you a spectacular humanitarian? Does it make you so awesome that the BBC should lie about you? If it is acceptable that historical outlets can lie about history in order to make minor figures into major ones, then the dismal track record of the Nazis in creating an atom bomb... why, heck, fellas, they were mere moments from dropping the A-Bomb on Broadway from a fleet of hundreds of Messerschmitt ME 464 supersonic jet flying wing bombers.

Nursing the enduring myth of Mary Seacole
 
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Artie Bob said:
Ed, I am afraid you miss the point of my perhaps obtuse post. There is no magic foo-foo that
removes bias, identifies misinformation, tells what is missing and many other elements that make
what we refer to as fact, knowledge, data or information almost always something less than
definitive. That applies to science as well as social studies like history.
You talk of Luftwaffe history, so let me use that as an example. "Either something happened or
it didn't". Let us say I researched something for 50 years and gathered all the primary sources
available on a rather unemotional subject like "how many aircraft of a particular type had been
produced". So I end up with 4 primary sources, great! BUT, no two agree exactly! Here is where
critical thinking comes in. There are biases (some rational, some not), errors (unintentional), and
disinformation (intentional).
Critical thinking is a tool to help with these issues, to identify what might cause the differences and
make sense about how to use the inexact and incomplete information (which it almost always is). Critical
thinking is an important element in research, not a separate subject.
ArtieBob
Click to expand...

You're talking about a process that once in place, will work from that day forward. Having been involved in doing research for quite some time, I've seen original documents. In the Luftwaffe example, sometimes different terms appear, production figures are off by say 20 airframes, and locations for doing certain work changed late in the war, not to mention subcontractors. The only point I'm making is that the number of inconsistencies are finite. Once that is understood, the research continues. A recent book about a World War I German tank appeared with new photos and slight adjustments to its history. Who was holding on to this information and the photos?
 
I give it another 15 seconds before this thread gets locked or deleted because of chronic triggering. I thought we were out of grade-school here but I guess some words are just too much for fragile constitutions.
 
sferrin said:
I give it another 15 seconds before this thread gets locked or deleted
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Entirely possible... and it would be entirely ironic given the subject matter.

The forum rules argue against conspiracy theories and lies and such. The forum *should* be all about accurate history. One would hope that "factually accurate history" would be privileged over gaslighting and bunkum and false narratives and whatnot in *all* areas of history. Now, the subject matter of general Nazi wikipedia articles might be beyond the scope of the Secret projects Forum, but in my view it's a cautionary tale that should be understood: ᛒᚢᛚᛚᛋᚺᛁᛏ can become "fact" if it is not countered, and this has cropped up several times on this forum. The Nazis A-bomb, flying saucers, wunderwaffen of all kinds perhaps being the most obvious problems.

Shutting down a discussion of this issue because someone is miffed that their own preferred fake narrative-tellers are being smacktalked is a bad idea.
 
Check. Your. Own. Sources. As critically as those you don't like.
 
The usual suspects.
With their usual shtick.
Aimed at their predictable usual targets.
For their same predictable usual “reasons”.
With the usual predictable false claims of victimhood.
And unfortunately likely the same usual response from the powers that be of this forum.
 
Justo Miranda said:
sferrin said:
I give it another 15 seconds before this thread gets locked or deleted because of chronic triggering. I thought we were out of grade-school here but I guess some words are just too much for fragile constitutions.
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Nazi stories never end well:(
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Oh, I dunno, Raiders of the Lost Ark turned out ok. Probably would have turned out better if Indiana Jones hadn't gotten involved... then the Nazis would have opened the ark in berlin in front of Hitler and the entire higher leadership of the Reich would have been melted. Still, the ending was ok.
 
Hitler was best left destroying the armed forces of NAZI Germany, as apparently Churchill said. Mind you, that was from a history program on the idiot box. Programs on the idiot box routinely mislead on events and motivations. I often watch for a laugh when I cannot be bothered to watch anything I have to think about. I asked the beeb news why they called an apc a tank and the reply was, "Well, it has tracks and a gun so we call it a tank and anyway the people watching don't care what we call it". The news is always going to be hyped in the scramble for ratings and awards.
 
Even relying of original source project documents has its pitfalls.

One major project kick off I attended included a compulsory seminar on record keeping, which was basically reiterating over and over, "no smoking guns", "no personal records", "no cya records", the official version is the only version, once a decision has been made, even if it is wrong, do not contradict, decent or revise in any way.

On another project that was more highly classified it was the complete opposite, i.e. keep everything, be able to justify everything, just never ever tell anyone.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Lead and mercury typically made unwise additions to "herbal remedies," but, hey, never let mere chemistry get in the way of a good story.
Click to expand...

Did they?

Actually lead acetate and calomel have astringent properties which made them one of the standard cholera treatments of the day - it would be remarkable if they weren't prescribed in British hospitals in the Dardanelles where Nightingale worked. Herbal remedies of course were quite common among professional doctors, and Seacole's mustard poultices and cinnamon tea would have been as effective at reducing the cramping and dehydration associated with cholera as anything else available. The most common "herbal remedy" for cholera among the British professional medical class was of course opium, which Seacole avoided.

No doubt Seacole's accomplishments and life have been exaggerated by some (as have Nightingale's - the popular image of her is almost completely false, at least if it's anything like what I learned in school), but the story is more complicated than the counter-myth of a simple restauranteer.

Two aspects of this controversy are somewhat strange:
1) The rejection of Seacole as a nurse when there was no formal concept of nursing before Nightingale. (Indeed, the distinction between hotel and hospital at the time was sometimes as fuzzy as the etymology suggests.)
2) The NHS and media conspiracy to erase Nightingale seems to have culminated in spending up to half a billion pounds on no less than seven widely-publicized Nightingale Hospitals during the pandemic.
 
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drejr said:
No doubt Seacole's accomplishments and life have been exaggerated by some (as have Nightingale's - the popular image of her is almost completely false, at least if it's anything like what I learned in school), but the story is more complicated than the counter-myth of a simple restauranteer.
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The issue is that, exaggerated or not, Nightingale *was* pretty much the founder of modern nursing. And she is being replaced by someone who *wasn't* for reasons unrelated to merit. And in order to accomplish that, lies are being told... and believed.

Away from the BBC, a recent bit of historical nonsense I came across was the widespread belief that "Henry Sampson invented the cell phone." Ignoring for the moment that pretty much *no* piece of modern technology was invented by a single individual, what Sampson *actually* invented was the "gamma-electric cell." This is essentially a photoelectric cell that converts not optical light, but gamma rays into electricity. A nifty device, certainly well beyond the ability of most people to create, and worthy of recognition... but it has nothing to do with cell phones or cell phone technology. The problem was that the "gamma electric cell" has the word "cell" in it, and that was enough to confuse someone, years ago. But the idea took root that the gamma electric cell is somehow integral to cell phones... and now a *lot* of people have an almost religious belief in Sampson having invented cell phones. Why do they care? Because Sampson being the inventor satisfies a particular bit of political theater. Thing is, Sampson lived long enough to see this belief expressed online... and he gave an interview where he explicitly denied that his invention had a single thing to do with cell phones. I've presented this interview to some True Believers... and they won't believe the man himself because they've convinced themselves that they *have* to have that figurehead. The fiction has for some people replaced facts that are *easily* presented and explained.

Had this bit of fiction made its way to Wikipedia, the video of Sampson denying having invented the cell phone likely would not be accepted as a valid source.
 
sferrin said:
I give it another 15 seconds before this thread gets locked or deleted because of chronic triggering. I thought we were out of grade-school here but I guess some words are just too much for fragile constitutions.
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It was a bit more, than 15 seconds, but unfortunately, you were right !
 
As someone with a master's degree in History, I have an opinion, and I'm going to leave it here.

Any argument relying on Youtube videos by angry old men and the Daily Mail as primary sources is not one I'd want to stake my life on.

Simon Webb seems to be a reactionary, conservative historian. His videos mix the asking of more-or-less legitimate historical questions and facts, with more speculative (in my opinion, often incorrect) conclusions drawn from them, and elements of racist dogwhistling.

This is evident especially in his choice of clickbait video titles - which is duly reflected in the cesspit of the comments on his videos, filled with vile racism and anti-semitism, as they explain why his not-as-racist ideas on Jewish origins of Multiculturalism are wrong because he's missing the giant global Jewish conspiracy as documented in the Protocol of The Elders of Zion.

Not the best foundation on which to build an argument, but some elements of what Webb says about Mary Seacole are indeed correct.
She wasn't a qualified professional nurse. They didn't exist before Florence Nightingale founded the first school for professional nurses after the Crimean war ended. Nevertheless, nurses existed prior to that point. Some of Seacole's herbal remedies were actively harmful, but so were many (most?) mainstream medicines in use in the 1850s. Nevertheless the major Jamaican Nursing school was named after her in the 1950s, many years before "multiculturalism", so at least in her native country she was considered an important figure in the history of nursing. Webb's certainly not substantially more correct than the "misleading narrative" he claims he is correcting - both accounts are flawed, just in different ways.

There has been a general push to look at history more broadly than the classical "what the men in charge did, which country invaded which" large-scale political and military history and look more at social history. That meant doing more research into the lives of the working classes, of women, minorities, and other groups under-represented by traditional histories.

Mainstream media and education picked some of this up. Some minor historical figures, like Mary Seacole, were "rediscovered" and used to diversify the teaching of history in schools, with the ambition of giving a broader version of history more relevant to a multicultural society.

Is Seacole an interesting historical figure? Certainly. She travelled all over the world and did lots of interesting things. Is she "more important" than Florence Nightingale? Not in terms of her overall effect on the nursing profession.

Is there room for only one notable woman in the history of nursing in the Crimea? No.

Are there other women in the history of medicine who are more deserving of being better known than Seacole? Quite possibly - but that doesn't mean we need to erase Seacole's story. The "Reactionary Old Men" somehow see history writing as a zero sum game. Putting up a statue to Mary Seacole instead of Florence Nightingale is somehow evidence we are 'cancelling' Florence Nightingale.

Never mind that there are three statues of Florence Nightingale in her home city of Derby. Never mind that there's an entire museum in London dedicated to Florence Nightingale, and she is rightly regarded as foundational to modern nursing.

Nobody has deleted her from the historical record. History is not is going to forget she existed, even if they don't learn about her in school.

Nobody taught me in school about the life of the Dalai Lama, or the mystery plays of Medieval Chester, or the details of the world during Pre-Cambrian 'explosion', or the history of the Hawker P.1121. My school, the BBC both signally failed to educate me on a million things I know about.
 
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Notwithstanding Jemiba's locking of the topic, I think its a very interesting and important debate and more relevant to the forum than other locked threads, but I don't see evidence of openness or good faith in many of the replies. A debate is not two angry people yelling at each other "I'm right, you are wrong" - that's just an argument. If you can demonstrate I am incorrect on this point, I will gladly reopen the debate.
 
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