> While in the past their views may have been countered by equally imaginative narratives from the left — like the liberatory progressivism of Whig historians and Marxist theorists — today it feels as though that ground is too often ceded in favor of “trusting the science.”
The first part describing the webs and flows of objectivity in history, with interesting examples was well written, But the conclusion is a bit odd. The author thinks, if you follow one the links they provide, that the far right individuals like Tolkien's works, and then also invent crockpot alternate histories, and suggests that the left should come up with something similar.
> American narrative in decades, was the work not of historians, but journalists. When the profession has ceded its domination over the public narrative of history, amateurs will take over. [...] Maybe that amateurism is not such a bad thing.
If historians won't do it, the journalists should. I can see interpreting it, yes, but pretending to write whole fictionalized narratives masking as history is a bit extreme. That's exactly what journalists in totalitarian regimes do: in Russia they say that Ukraine is a fictional country, it's just Russians corrupted by the "Satanic West", in North Korea I am sure they tell similar elaborate stories and so on.
The first part describing the webs and flows of objectivity in history, with interesting examples was well written, But the conclusion is a bit odd. The author thinks, if you follow one the links they provide, that the far right individuals like Tolkien's works, and then also invent crockpot alternate histories, and suggests that the left should come up with something similar.
> American narrative in decades, was the work not of historians, but journalists. When the profession has ceded its domination over the public narrative of history, amateurs will take over. [...] Maybe that amateurism is not such a bad thing.
If historians won't do it, the journalists should. I can see interpreting it, yes, but pretending to write whole fictionalized narratives masking as history is a bit extreme. That's exactly what journalists in totalitarian regimes do: in Russia they say that Ukraine is a fictional country, it's just Russians corrupted by the "Satanic West", in North Korea I am sure they tell similar elaborate stories and so on.