• How PragerU Lies to You - The British Empire [Shaun]
    50 replies, posted
Have we really gotten to the point of willing anti-intellectualism where denial of basic historical and scientific facts can be justified by "oh you just disagree with me ~*politically*~" Fuck off
Apologizing for both British imperialism and the Confederacy is enough for me to dismiss any history expert as a fucking idiot, charlatan and an outright evil person. I don't decide who gets to be an expert, but being an expert does not make anyone immune from being called a fucking retard.
If hes such an expert, why are tons of other experts laughing at him for his nonsense.
Yeah not hearing any actual points from you here. Did you even know who he was before getting triggered by this thread? Fair enough that, you’re entitled to your opinion, but he’s not a ‘fucking idiot’ to a lot of other people. Side point, the confederacy was clearly pretty evil. But then I don’t know his stance on it, I haven’t read that part of his work and, frankly, a lot of people in this thread have strawmanned his points pretty hard. ’Apologising’ for ‘imperialism’ is a loaded term these days. As I’ve said countless times, empire was neither good nor bad. Typically the only people who explicitly think so are the people who only got the history education from mandatory schooling and so never developed a nuanced opinion of the positives, negatives and atrocities of colonialism and how they stack up. That said, he’s almost bang on about empire. He’s a well respected historian and I find it laughable how people simply dismiss him because, and it’s accurate no matter your cries to the opposite, they disagree with him politically. Historically and historiographically speaking, his working out and laying out of his argument is second to none. There’s a reason why he has never struggled to attain fellowships at the most prestigious universities.
Did you watch the video in the OP
Well, first off, you’re only really listening to the baseless account from that one poster and he, naturally, has read a significant amount of left wing opinions (likely a result of his left-leaning history faculty and his personal opinions). Niall has a following, indeed, he has his own ‘school’ of historiography. Put simply, no one is really ‘laughing’ at him for his ‘nonsense’. It’s hyperbole from someone who doesn’t like his points.
The British Empire, like any empire throughout history, was pure evil. It existed with the sole purpose of exploiting the labor and resources of its colonies. Anything else is nothing but propaganda, and if you manage to fall for 100 year old propaganda, then you are not a very bright person. And his stance on the Confederacy seems pretty clear to me from the video, nothing in the video seems to be taken out of context or a "straw man"
You do understand we aren’t talking about the guy in the video, right? You have been paying *that much* attention, right?
oops
You are aware that said poster is an actual historian right? Like not only that, but multiple experts have laughed at the dude, and the best comeback you got is "hurr they are just left wingers who can't accept the truth". I wish I was right leaning, so I could sell you some beach front property in Oklahoma.
uhh. One of the department heads at my station is. He actively shares Prager U videos. He also is in the Dave Ramsey cult though so.. yeah.
I'm going to break this post up into themed chunks: No, but I can understand their body of work and their opinions and know when what they're writing in their conclusion doesn't line up with everything else they've said. Because you know, you don't just take it at face value, you evaluate it in context of both existing literature, their own work, the work they're reading, etc... It has nothing to do with his politics but his bad analysis, piss-poor conclusions, and pompous attitude. The fact he acts like he's persecuted because he is conservative is just icing tbh. I know this may come as a shock to you, but there are such things as dishonest historians. Popularly there's a figure like Stephen Ambrose who plagarized throughout his whole career, and fabricated evidence for his biography of Eisenhower. In my interest area, there's Denis Winter, who fabricated a lot of stuff for a book he wrote about Haig in the 1990s, with just as awful conclusions. His work up to that point had been pretty well respected and enjoyed. Which also proves that someone can start off good, but also then start producing some really awful crap later on. He did it in his 2003 documentary Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. Did I say he said that? No, I quoted the conversation with appropriate markers for who said what. Almost as if you didn't read what I posted, or are willfully ignoring it. Furthermore, an academic should not be looking to find "dirt" on the "opposition". No matter which way you try to slice that he fucked up bad. People who have PhDs and teach at top schools aren't infallible gods who can never make awful and stupid arguments, even on a regular basis! See what I said above about colonialism. It's not a "loaded" term. Making the claim that "Empire wasn't really all that bad even with all the slavery, atrocities, concentration camps, forced religious conversions, murder, rape, forced labor, racism, and other forms of exploitation" is downright disingenuous and I'd even say on the level of something like Holocaust Denial or Lost Causery. Oh, and I'm glad you're back to insulting other people's educations and credentials again, since that's what you're best at doing when you don't have an actual argument. this is literally the biggest joke I've heard all day. You're not serious, right? yea sorry no it results from the fact that a system that kills and oppresses wherever it goes can not be construed as "neutral" or "good". And my advisor was conservative so??? No, people do, and you're just not paying attention.
"you are so triggered by this thread" says poster who's posts make up roughly 30% of the thread.
https://twitter.com/dril/status/134787490526658561?lang=en
Man you've been arguing that IlluminatiRex can't be trusted because of his politics since your third post in this thread, every single one of your arguments has a personal attack in it, yet the whole point you're making is that people won't look at Ferguson's work properly, because they rely on going after his politics with personal attacks The cognitive dissonance is insane, I mean look at this post By your logic it's wrong to even imply that Ferguson may be unreliable as he has the credentials, but without a second thought, you just discarded the opinions of almost every contemporary historian based on their politics! It's mind-boggling, the progression of your logic is entirely irrational
You've done nothing here besides attack the credentials of anyone criticising Niall Ferguson, while excusing the flaws in his. Then you accuse everyone else of political bias, lol. If his research is so good and you're so well read on it, how come you aren't countering the actual criticisms
as a refernce point, ferguson’s “school” of historiography on Empire is small. It is not the majority view or consensus. Trying to present it as “right” and a major driver in the field is just wrong. For example, here’s a 2017 open letter from Oxford faculty (there are a lot of names attached!) who research Empire, in response to an Oxford scholar writing a piece defending colonialism and wanting to start a class defending the Empire. This is the same pattern you’ll see elsewhere. Most Histroains do not agree with Ferguson, with good reason.
What pragerU is doing is pure and simple historical revisionism, no patience for that shit. Don't defend it and pretend you care about the historical facts, the crimes of the english empires (and other colonial powers) is not a debate. PragerU is actually paid propaganda paid by far right american billionaires, seriously. I've had to do with a couple people who genuinely watch it, and of course they're the ones sermonning you about fact checking while building their worldview from youtube videos. This kind of revisionism is a genuine threat to the collective awareness of history.
Anyone who participates, especially knowingly, in this level of blatant historical revisionism deserves to be openly mocked and disregarded. It's plain-faced wrong and an outright fabrication. It's well known that the entire point of the US was to escape the tyranny of king and church, but he's trying to paint said king and church as this moral saint that wanted a true free world and not what it actually wanted, absolute power.
The Puritans and Quakers left Britain because they didn't like how any faith and denomination could practice freely. They left to form their own enclaves where only their religions existed. The 'freedom from religious persecution' stuff is a load of crap Americans are thought along with all the other whitewashing of the history if America's founding.
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