"A Dangerous Right-Wing Agenda"

Duncan · Apr 7, 2004

"What-if" historians are "reactionary and historically redundant" according to Tristram Hunt:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1187184,00.html

Seems to be partly a response to the Simon Heffer article I linked to a few days ago.

wkwillis · Apr 7, 2004

Ridiculous, but right wing?

I complained about the contemptous lack of effort or rigor in the 'What If's in American History' already. Not right wing, just not paying attention. At least on this board we sometimes try for plausibility. When I think or how they somehow imagined that the Union would charge up the hill at Gettysburg...

Prunesquallor · Apr 7, 2004

I only glanced at the article which didn't strike me as especially interesting- I tend to regard Hunt as a "rent-a-quote" type. I suspect he knows very little about this subject. Having said that, he has a point with regard to Roberts and his crowd. They do incline towards the "smug right," portraying themselves as dangerous individualists while being safely embeded within the establishment.

Grey Wolf · Apr 7, 2004

Duncan said:
"What-if" historians are "reactionary and historically redundant" according to Tristram Hunt:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1187184,00.html

Seems to be partly a response to the Simon Heffer article I linked to a few days ago.

Well, that Hunt article is complete bollox and simply shows the author's inability to look deeply into any subject. Apart from my not being any kind of right-wing apologist (so where is this bias?) its quite clear that like all people with an axe to grind he has cherry-picked his quotes to work them into his argument. I am quite sure that if one could be bothered one could find quotes extolling the virtues of alternate history, just as he has foud quotes (and rather insulting ones at that) to attack it. And his article is littered with personal opinion at every turn, eg 'The unfortunate truth' which hardly indicates any sort of attempt at unbiased over-view, and simply smacks of a pre-conceived bias for a subject he has no interest into looking deeply into

Grey Wolf

Norman · Apr 7, 2004

I agree with the Wolf on this one, the writer is cherry picking his research to support his ideas. Additionally, from what I have seen of this forum, I see no right wing bias in the AH community.

What I do see is what we could call a 'chrono-centric' perspective on the part of the writer, that merely because things have turned out a certain way, it was the best way it could turn out.

As an illegal immigrant from another timeline in which the Goths survived to become a major player on the world stage, I resent the implication that the history that led to my world view is any less real than that leading to this timeline.

zoomar · Apr 7, 2004

Wow! Based on the way people who say anything good about GW Bush, John Ashcroft, or "the religious right" on this board get viciously pounced on by the cultural leftists, either the article's writer is a fool or this is not an AH Board!

zoomar · Apr 7, 2004

Well I read the article. Humourless and unimaginative Left-wing party-line claptrap just like what you would expect from "The Guardian". I guess this guy probably couldn't watch an episode of "South Park" without seeing it in class-warfare terms.

Landshark · Apr 7, 2004

zoomar said:
Wow! Based on the way people who say anything good about GW Bush, John Ashcroft, or "the religious right" on this board get viciously pounced on by the cultural leftists, either the article's writer is a fool or this is not an AH Board!

Perhaps we're not being cultural leftists, perhaps we're just being ironic and you missed it because you're an American?

David Howery · Apr 7, 2004

so, this guy thinks AH buffs are right wingers?! He certainly hasn't spent any time on this board then....

zoomar · Apr 7, 2004

David Howery said:
so, this guy thinks AH buffs are right wingers?! He certainly hasn't spent any time on this board then....

"...perhaps we're just being ironic and you missed it because you're an American..."

I guess you are also an American missing the irony too.

David Howery · Apr 7, 2004

yeah, yeah, I get the joke. the point is, the guy who wrote the article really has it wrong. I've read AH that covers both sides of the spectrum... like anything else, AH politics will reflect the politics of whoever writes it, so it's not biased one way or the other...

wkwillis · Apr 7, 2004

I've heard about that one

I talked to another guy from that timeline (I think). Isn't that the one where they worship beer and never wash except when they sweatbath?

Landshark · Apr 7, 2004

wkwillis said:
I talked to another guy from that timeline (I think). Isn't that the one where they worship beer and never wash except when they sweatbath?

I think you'll find you were actually talking to a college student there.

Anyway I think this guy's just appeared on Newsnight on BBC2. I caught the last couple of minutes of it and there was one guy defending "counterfactuals" and another attacking them. Apparently by discussing AH we're undermining the general public's interest in real history or some such.

So that's us told isn't it.

Ian the Admin · Apr 7, 2004

Landshark said:
Perhaps we're not being cultural leftists, perhaps we're just being ironic and you missed it because you're an American?

By American standards, pretty much the entire western world is "cultural leftists". For example most of the right wing in Canada wouldn't touch the US Religious Right with the ol' ten foot pole. (And outside the US, opposition to Bush foreign policy is by no means an especially "leftist" thing).

Ian the Admin · Apr 7, 2004

As far as the original point goes, the author has obviously read one or a few popular collections of alternate history by historians and public figures, and tarred the whole pursuit with them.

In that limited context he's not that off base, though - the books he mentions DO have an overwhelmingly right-wing perspective. I mean, Conrad Black and David Frum are quite right wing, and aren't historians at all.

DominusNovus · Apr 7, 2004

Landshark said:
Anyway I think this guy's just appeared on Newsnight on BBC2. I caught the last couple of minutes of it and there was one guy defending "counterfactuals" and another attacking them. Apparently by discussing AH we're undermining the general public's interest in real history or some such.

They talk about alternate history on TV in Britain? Wow.

Landshark · Apr 7, 2004

Ian Montgomerie said:
By American standards, pretty much the entire western world is "cultural leftists". For example most of the right wing in Canada wouldn't touch the US Religious Right with the ol' ten foot pole. (And outside the US, opposition to Bush foreign policy is by no means an especially "leftist" thing).

I've had the reality of the first sentence brought home to me in the last day or so. I made the mistake of participating in a disscussion about weather or not more Frenchmen had died fighting for Hitler on the Russian Front than had died fighting the Nazis. One American was saying that if the French had been "real men" they never would have surrendered and that if the US was invaded every man, woman and child fight the enemy to the death with the same level of fanaticism as we've seen in Iraq. I jumped in to say that it was entirely reasonable for the French to surrender in 1940 as they had no idea just how bad the Nazis would be only to be told in no uncertain terms that I was wrong and was left with the feeling that as a non service person certain people thought that not only was I talking rubbish I shouldn't really be participating in such topics in the first place.

Well it did remind me why I stopped going to political forums. Too many loudmouth jackasses who think volume is a substitute for a reasoned arguement.

Landshark · Apr 7, 2004

DominusNovus said:
They talk about alternate history on TV in Britain? Wow.

We also have a radio programme about it and the occasional TV documentary.

Leo Caesius · Apr 7, 2004

Landshark said:
I jumped in to say that it was entirely reasonable for the French to surrender in 1940 as they had no idea just how bad the Nazis would be only to be told in no uncertain terms that I was wrong and was left with the feeling that as a non service person certain people thought that not only was I talking rubbish I shouldn't really be participating in such topics in the first place.

Well it did remind me why I stopped going to political forums. Too many loudmouth jackasses who think volume is a substitute for a reasoned arguement.

Landshark - you should check out this oldie but goodie from The Onion, America's Finest News Source. It was published before the invasion of Iraq. I think you'll find the article rather relevant to what you've just told us.

Leo Caesius · Apr 7, 2004

Ian Montgomerie said:
By American standards, pretty much the entire western world is "cultural leftists". For example most of the right wing in Canada wouldn't touch the US Religious Right with the ol' ten foot pole. (And outside the US, opposition to Bush foreign policy is by no means an especially "leftist" thing).

Really? I thought that Stockwell Day could give any American conservative politician a run for his money. Then again, his campaign was a miserable failure...
And, of course, among her many outstanding citizens, Canada boasts my favorite half-Japanese fascist, Adam Yoshida. Either his weblog is satire, in which case he's the funniest person to come out out of Canada since Mike Myers, or he's honest about the things he says, in which case he is the most unintentionally funniest person to come out of Canada since William Shatner.