Kindle Notes & Highlights
The writing of history, Voltaire believed, should be one form of battle in the age-old war for our intellectual emancipation. Too often, however, history is written and marketed in such a way as to be anything but liberating. The effect is not to enlighten but to enforce the existing political orthodoxy.
the danger of dissident bias is probably nowhere as great as the danger posed by conventional history because readers who approach the dissenting viewpoint after a steady diet of mainstream myths will be alerted to what is different and questionable. Far more insidious and less visible are the notions that fit the dominant ideology so well as to appear unchallengeable.
Not so with orthodoxy. It remains the most insidious form of ideology for it parades the dominant view as the objective one, the only plausible and credible one.
ideological gatekeepers close ranks against any issue that challenges their expertise,
Those who say we “cannot make comparisons” seem to forget that comparison is one of the major means by which human understanding develops.
It was Thiers who presided over the bloody suppression and mass executions of thousands of revolutionary Parisian Communards.
we should note that as early as 1940 Great Britain was financially depleted with few military or industrial assets at hand, yet expending much of its scarce and precious resources to keep the restive peoples of its vast empire forcibly subjugated.8 For the Tory government, maintaining the empire was at least as great an imperative as defeating the Nazis.
it is a matter of public record that a tiny portion of the population controls the lion’s share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media. And while not totally immune to popular pressures, these individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse.
Their wealth serves their power, and their power serves their wealth.
The important thing is not just to identify specific historical events—as might a quiz show contestant—but to think intelligently and critically about them, and be able to relate them to broader social relations.
