Random quote There are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a
scientific text-book, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical
fact.
I can see pretty well how Orwell came to this. Historiographic revision ( or, falsification; deletion, etc.) has been de rigueur for some time. I have, in later years, discovered things I would have learned in school, had the *proper authorities* not seen to obfuscation because of the sensitive (read that: embarrassing) nature of the information. A glaring example comes to mind: the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. When I was in HS, VietNam was raging and protest against that was red hot. It would have added fuel to the fire, something those authorities just could not countenance. Come to think of it, High schoolers, where I lived then, did not know about eugenics either. These are easily recalled instances and there were more.
In Orwells time it was crystal clear that in dictatorships (Hitler Germany, the USSR) history was rewritten, so that inspired him. But look around and you still can see it: Putin in Russia, China, and without a doubt it happens also in the western democracies.
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I can see pretty well how Orwell came to this. Historiographic revision ( or, falsification; deletion, etc.) has been de rigueur for some time. I have, in later years, discovered things I would have learned in school, had the *proper authorities* not seen to obfuscation because of the sensitive (read that: embarrassing) nature of the information. A glaring example comes to mind: the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. When I was in HS, VietNam was raging and protest against that was red hot. It would have added fuel to the fire, something those authorities just could not countenance. Come to think of it, High schoolers, where I lived then, did not know about eugenics either. These are easily recalled instances and there were more.
In Orwells time it was crystal clear that in dictatorships (Hitler Germany, the USSR) history was rewritten, so that inspired him. But look around and you still can see it: Putin in Russia, China, and without a doubt it happens also in the western democracies.
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