The Cult of History

[Iwasamwillbe]

More and more from certain segments of the left on Twitter, you see the abstract concept of history be ascribed the attributes of some sort of pantheistic deity, or embodiment of destiny and fate.

History is defined as bipolar, having two sides. There is a Right Side of History, and there is a Wrong Side of History. To be on the Right Side of History is to basically be in some "secular" equivalent to Heaven, and to be on the Wrong Side of History is to basically be in some "secular" equivalent to Hell.

Of course, since the people most likely to use this kind of terminology are strongly left-wing, possessing left-wing politics (at least of a certain type) is to be on the Right Side of History, while possessing any politics to the right of Bernie Sanders is to be on the Wrong Side of History.

Now, what I want to know is: why did this Cult of History start, when did it start, and why did it take off on Twitter the way that it did?

 

[A Welsh Cake]

I thinks it’s to do with Civil Rights movements being a thing of the past. Because it’s such an important cultural turning point, so much so that it’s taught in history classes beyond America, that’s where it’s gained the reverence it has.
The majority probably agree that being nice to people is the right thing to do so on a very surface level understanding of history it would only be natural to see the civil rights movement as “the right side”.

I will posit it was but I know some kiwis unironically hate niggers. That’s beside the point.

Because the “right side of history” was based on the racial discrimination at the time, the modern left assume that their fighting for the poor pocs is also going to be on the“right” side. Despite all the shit we know shows otherwise.

 

[(((Oban Lazcano Kamz)))]

nigger

 

[tuscangarder]

Who wants to be remembered as evil?

Victors write history though.

 

[Christ Cried]

I've begun to think about the "secular religion" we've adopted as a society in the last 10 years. Politics is religion, Hitler is the devil, racism is original sin. That's about as far as I've gotten

 

[BR55]

I think it's almost religious in nature.
Any big brained fedora tipping redditor knows that there is no God.
But if there is no God then there is no Eternal Justice or Judgment.
So the End of History/Right Side of History is an attempt to create a secular version of Eternal Justice.
Otherwise you would have to accept that one day your actions will be forgotten and that they were never that important to begin with.
The End of History is essentially the lynchpin for leftist mythology.
The idea of random and uncaring chance and the whims and schemes of men great and small governing humanity is way more scary than capital H History decreeing that Star Trek IRL is the predetermined endpoint for human civilization.
TLDR the End of History is a secular version of Heaven and Whig History was a mistake.

 

[Chaptersevenbankruptcy]

It's not remotely new. Look up "Whig History."

 

[Jewthulhu]

Short answer: Whiggers and Protestants.

 

[Unsmug Anime Avatar]

The Postmodernist movement tried to define itself as the opposition to "legitimizing metanarratives" (which is where the term postmodernism actual came from) and this includes of course Hegelianism and other teleological views of history but they had to drop that claim because of how many times it is contradicted.

Modern Western society is supposed to be "enlightened" enough to admit that history "has no purpose" as Popper, for example, claimed, but no one has been able to actually accept this because they don't want to admit that their own political movement isn't the best ever invented and the final purpose of human society.

We claim that history has no purpose, but the whole narrative given even at the University level by many professors is that the whole of political history has been moving from darkness to light, from tyranny to freedom. No one wants to accept that democracy isn't the Best Thing Ever, or more importantly that history doesn't show that democracy is the Best Thing Ever. Historians will constantly repeat that "we don't make value judgments" and then proceed to make tons of value judgments because they have to. After all, "history" provides a great narrative to "prove" liberalism, but only if you stack the cards.

 

[crocodilian]

It all boils down to a founding myth. History leads to culture, so it behooves interested parties to control what history is "the correct history" so they can better cultivate the present.

Spoiler

 

[Cool kitties club]

Ah good old whig history a fascinating delusion which believes all humanity is progressing towards freedom/communism/equality/good term. Funny how this progress only seems to have appeared in the 19th century and wasnt really seen before then.

I've begun to think about the "secular religion" we've adopted as a society in the last 10 years. Politics is religion, Hitler is the devil, racism is original sin. That's about as far as I've gotten

Progressivism is just Puritans 2.0. Same rule by intellectuals same protestant orgins same obession with using the state too enforce its politics its just been secularized. This is a quote from the protestant caucus in 1942 notice how weirdly similar is to certain policies toady:

These are the high spots of organized U.S. Protestantism’s super-protestant new program for a just and durable peace after World War II:

• Ultimately, “a world government of delegated powers.”
• Complete abandonment of U.S. isolationism.
• Strong immediate limitations on national sovereignty.
• International control of all armies & navies.
• “A universal system of money … so planned as to prevent inflation and deflation.”
• Worldwide freedom of immigration.
• Progressive elimination of all tariff and quota restrictions on world trade.
• “Autonomy for all subject and colonial peoples” (with much better treatment for Negroes in the U.S.).
• “No punitive reparations, no humiliating decrees of war guilt, no arbitrary dismemberment of nations.”
• A “democratically controlled” international bank “to make development capital available in all parts of the world without the predatory and imperialistic aftermath so characteristic of large-scale private and governmental loans.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“As Christian citizens,” its sponsors affirmed, “we must seek to translate our beliefs into practical realities and to create a public opinion which will insure that the United States shall play its full and essential part in the creation of a moral way of international living.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Collectivism is coming, whether we like it or not,” the delegates were told by no less a churchman than England’s Dr. William Paton, co-secretary of the World Council of Churches, but the conference did not veer as far to the left as its definitely pinko British counterpart, the now famous Malvern Conference (TIME, Jan. 20, 1941). It did, however, back up Labor’s demand for an increasing share in industrial management. It echoed Labor’s shibboleth that the denial of collective bargaining “reduces labor to a commodity.” It urged taxation designed “to the end that our wealth may be more equitably distributed.” It urged experimentation with government and cooperative ownership.

See also this quote from Twilight of the Idols by Nietzsche; pg 538 to 541 in the Portable Nietzsche collection:

Whether we have become more moral. — Against my conception of "beyond good and evil" — as was to be expected — the whole ferocity of moral hebetation, mistaken for morality itself in Germany, as is well known, has gone into action: I could tell fine stories about that. Above all I was asked to consider the "undeniable superiority" of our age in moral judgment, the real progress we have made here: compared with us, a Cesare Borgia is by no means to be represented after any manner as a "higher man," a kind of overman. A Swiss editor of the Bund went so far that he "understood" the meaning of my work — not without expressing his respect for my courage and daring — to be a demand for the abolition of all decent feelings. Thank you! In reply, I take the liberty of raising the question whether we have really become more moral. That all the world believes this to be the case merely constitutes an objection. We modern men, very tender, very easily hurt, and offering as well as receiving consideration a hundredfold, really have the conceit that this tender humanity which we represent, this attained unanimity in sympathetic regard, in readiness to help, in mutual trust, represents positive progress; and that in this respect we are far above the men of the Renaissance. But that is how every age thinks, how it must think. What is certain is that we may not place ourselves in renaissance conditions, not even by an act of thought: our nerves would not endure that reality, not to speak of our muscles. But such incapacity does not prove progress, only another, later constitution, one which is weaker, frailer, more easily hurt, and which necessarily generates a morality rich in consideration. Were we to think away our frailty and lateness, our physiological senescence, then our morality of "humanization" would immediately lose its value too (in itself, no morality has any value) — it would even arouse disdain. On the other hand, let us not doubt that we moderns, with our thickly padded humanity, which at all costs wants to avoid bumping into a stone, would have provided Cesare Borgia's contemporaries with a comedy at which they could have laughed themselves to death. Indeed, we are unwittingly funny beyond all measure with our modern "virtues." The decrease in instincts which are hostile and arouse mistrust — and that is all our "progress" amounts to — represents but one of the consequences attending the general decrease in vitality: it requires a hundred times more trouble and caution to make so conditional and late an existence prevail. Hence each helps the other; hence everyone is to a certain extent sick, and everyone is a nurse for the sick. And that is called "virtue." Among men who still knew life differently — fuller, more squandering, more overflowing — it would have been called by another name: "cowardice" perhaps, "wretchedness," "old ladies' morality." Our softening of manners — that is my proposition; that is, if you will, my innovation — is a consequence of decline; the hardness and terribleness of morals, conversely, can be a consequence of an excess of life. For in that case much may also be dared, much challenged, and much squandered. What was once the spice of life would be poison for us.

 

[ZeCommissar]

Its due to a lack of understanding of history and the oversimplification of how it's taught in most schools in the USA and probably other nations as well.

There is no "right" or "wrong" side of history, there is only history. Anyone that tells you that their way of life is the "inevitable conclusion" is a fucking idiot. It's like when a commie goes "a capitalist society will crumble and revolutionize to give power to the proletariat." Maybe a conservative would word it as "the silent majority" where they just assume everyone else in the nation thinks like they do, they are just quiet about it.

No faggot, your way of life isn't the only "right" way that everyone will eventually adhere to. People on both sides of the political spectrum say this shit all of the time in different ways. I remember a post on 4chan that I can't find for the life of me that basically said "our ancestors were conservative for millennia, therefore our way of life is the natural and just way of society" which is just "right side of history" with extra wording on a different political side. However, you're completely right in that lefties use this term far more often than their political opponents.

I am extremely suspect of people that say such things. They have it in their head that since they are on the "right" side of history that means they are doing us a service by trying to force us to toe in their line. It's also a smug way of going "hey history will remember me as the one full of justice, and it will remember you as the one full of hate!".

 

[Cool kitties club]

Its due to a lack of understanding of history and the oversimplification of how it's taught in most schools in the USA and probably other nations as well.

There is no "right" or "wrong" side of history, there is only history. Anyone that tells you that their way of life is the "inevitable conclusion" is a fucking idiot. It's like when a commie goes "a capitalist society will crumble and revolutionize to give power to the proletariat." Maybe a conservative would word it as "the silent majority" where they just assume everyone else in the nation thinks like they do, they are just quiet about it.

No faggot, your way of life isn't the only "right" way that everyone will eventually adhere to. People on both sides of the political spectrum say this shit all of the time in different ways. I remember a post on 4chan that I can't find for the life of me that basically said "our ancestors were conservative for millennia, therefore our way of life is the natural and just way of society" which is just "right side of history" with extra wording on a different political side. However, you are completely right in that lefties use this term far more often than their political opponents.

I am extremely suspect of people that say such things. They have it in their head that since they are on the "right" side of history that means they are doing us a service by trying to force us to toe in their line. It's also a smug way of going "hey history will remember me as the one full of justice, and it will remember you as the one full of hate!".

History is determined by power and ideology is determined by power. Many people get confused andthink it’s the other way around.

Commie idea of class conscience and that all the working class will just one day magically become communist and rise up. The alt right had a similar problem in that thier whole plan was to tell as many “based” things as possible in hope that white people will just magically adopt white identity politics.

In reality most people don’t think too hard about politics or philosophy and just choose an “offical” position that is said by the msm or politicians or a university.

 

[ConfederateIrishman]

Ah good old whig history a fascinating delusion which believes all humanity is progressing towards freedom/communism/equality/good term. Funny how this progress only seems to have appeared in the 19th century and wasnt really seen before then.



Progressivism is just Puritans 2.0. Same rule by intellectuals same protestant orgins same obession with using the state too enforce its politics its just been secularized. This is a quote from the protestant caucus in 1942 notice how weirdly similar is to certain policies toady:


See also this quote from Twilight of the Idols by Nietzsche; pg 538 to 541 in the Portable Nietzsche collection:

Short answer: Whiggers and Protestants.

It's not remotely new. Look up "Whig History."

These, fuck Whigs and fuck Whig "People"; Never forget it was the British Whigs who were cheering on the Irish Great Hunger after ensuring nothing was done to mitigate it because "muh free trade", "the Irish are so backwards that of course they are starving, they should advance into the 19th century already", "feudalistic serfs get feudalistic conditions", etc.

 

[XYZpdq]

Every time I see this thread I keep thinking of the Living Colour song

Spoiler: LOOK IN MY EYES

 

[L50LasPak]

This premise is full of shit. The only reason anyone believes in a strong binary history is when they don't actually know any history. It takes a five minute conversation to tell if somebody has no idea what the fuck history is, and you can even still be polite if you're in public and don't want to get dragged off for making a nuisance of yourself.

Why is this so prevalent on Twitter? Easy. You can't fit any history into 140 characters and not have it come off like you're a shithead. Not possible. We know these people are shitheads, of course, but the majority of them probably can't even tell you which countries have had civil wars or not.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Ah good old whig history a fascinating delusion which believes all humanity is progressing towards freedom/communism/equality/good term. Funny how this progress only seems to have appeared in the 19th century and wasnt really seen before then.



Progressivism is just Puritans 2.0. Same rule by intellectuals same protestant orgins same obession with using the state too enforce its politics its just been secularized. This is a quote from the protestant caucus in 1942 notice how weirdly similar is to certain policies toady:


See also this quote from Twilight of the Idols by Nietzsche; pg 538 to 541 in the Portable Nietzsche collection:

Nietzsche would probably get called an "incel" today.

 

[Red Hood]

There's no right side or wrong side of history. Just historical treasure to hunt and sell to the highest bidder.

 

[WonderWino]

This does make a good point about history when you think about it

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Pretty much every group likes to think of itself as being looked back fondly in the greater scope of history. Though you need to be quite the exceptional person to actually state it.