Serious Question: Why Do We Study History?

You’re probably heard “Orwell didn’t write 1984 as an instruction manual!” But what if Evil *is* using it as an instruction manual… and by doing so, achieving more evil than they otherwise would have? Are we sabotaging ourselves by remembering the past? Because nobody is using 1984 as an instruction manual on resisting evil.

Othering Unvaccinated Persons

h ttps://brownstone.org/articles/othering-unvaccinated-persons/

By Jared McBrady, 10 January 2022

In my teaching, I prepare undergraduate students to become high school history teachers. In one course, teacher candidates prepare and deliver mock lessons. Their peers play the role of high school students, and I observe and give feedback following these practice lessons. Whether coincidence or a reflection of the times, this fall a good number of mock lessons covered the rise of totalitarianism. In one excellent lesson, a teacher candidate had his students examine the contexts that gave rise to totalitarianism. He accompanied this lesson with an excerpt from a world history textbook listing characteristics of totalitarianism.

This lesson hit on the true purpose for including totalitarianism in high school curricula. That purpose is not to honor the likes of Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini. Nor is that purpose to provide the methods of totalitarianism as an instructional manual to follow. Rather, the purpose of teaching on totalitarianism is to deliver a warning: heed well the conditions that yielded totalitarianism, so you can recognize and avoid them. 

A warning to whom, to do what?

One passage from the lesson’s textbook concerned me the most: “Totalitarian leaders often create ‘enemies of the state’ to blame for things that go wrong. Frequently these enemies are members of religious or ethnic groups. Often these groups are easily identified and are subjected to campaigns of terror and violence. They may be forced to live in certain areas or are subjected to rules that apply only to them” (pg. 876).

Creating an enemy of the state requires othering: a process of dehumanizing through marginalizing a group of humans as something different, less than, and other. Such othered groups become an easy target to scapegoat, unfairly bearing the blame for a society’s ills.

History is replete with examples of othering. The Ancient Greeks othered based on language, labeling those who did not speak Greek barbarians. In the United States, chattel slavery and segregation were sustained through othering based on skin color. In Nazi Germany, Hitler othered based on religion, casting Jewish people as enemies of the state.

None of those is an example of ‘othering’. People who don’t share culture/language would naturally see each other as different groups. American segregation was an attempt at NOT ‘othering’… squaring the circle of “Negroes are citizens too” despite radically different racial behavior.

A better example of othering would be old Adolf’s treatment of Poles and Slavs. Those cruelties was done purely for political and wartime convenience. Whereas the Jews strip-mined Germany’s economy in the Weimar years.

Othering frequently plays on people’s stereotypes and fears. In the United States, for example, black men have been othered as “thugs,” playing on fears about violence and criminality.

Also not a good example. Stereotyping is not scapegoating. A good example of othering would be the Russian kulaks who selfishly grew their own food. But perhaps they’re are too white for this historian’s taste.

Now, some politicians are othering the “unvaccinated.” These politicians attempt to scapegoat and marginalize this minority group, despite knowing that vaccinated and unvaccinated persons alike can contract and spread COVID-19. Below, I provide the words of three politicians as examples of othering language. I also encourage you to read their words in context.

In the United States, President Joe Biden’s September 9 press conference announced sweeping vaccine mandates. He expressed that “many of us are frustrated” with unvaccinated persons. He laid blame on them for the continued pandemic; Biden claimed that this “pandemic of the unvaccinated” was “caused by…nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot.” He faulted “a distinct minority of Americans” for “keeping us from turning the corner.” And he promised “We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part and want to get back to life as normal.”

In a September 17 interview on the Quebec talk show La semaine des 4 Julie, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau labeled those opposed to vaccination “misogynists” and “racists.” Then, he exclaimed that Canada needed to make a choice: “Do we tolerate these people?”

In France, President Emmanuel Macron gave an interview with Le Parisien on January 4. In this interview, he categorized the unvaccinated as non-citizens, referred to their “lies and stupidity” as the “worst enemies” of democracy, and proclaimed “I really want to piss [the unvaccinated] off.” Macron argued these unvaccinated persons to be only “a very small minority who are resisting,” and asked a chilling question: “How do we reduce that minority?”

Segue

h ttps://ca.investing.com/news/economy/macron-doubles-down-on-plan-to-pissoff-the-unvaccinated-2616235

(Bloomberg) — President Emmanuel Macron on Friday stood by the uncompromising stance and combative language he directed earlier this week at France’s unvaccinated citizens amid record numbers of new Covid-19 cases.

Macron in a Tuesday interview with Le Parisien used salty language — saying he wants to “p— off” people refusing inoculation — to express zero-tolerance for failing to get fully vaccinated. The government, he said, will keep up the pressure on the holdouts as a way to contain skyrocketing case counts.

“You can get upset about ways of talking which may sound colloquial, for which I take full responsibility. But what upsets me is the situation in which we are in,” Macron said at a Friday news conference in Paris. “It was my responsibility to ring the alarm. That’s what I did this week so that things will move faster.”

The president’s verbal broadside, which sparked a political uproar, comes as parliament is pushing ahead with legislation to restrict access to restaurants, museums, concerts and public transportation to the fully vaccinated. The lower house has approved the bill, the Senate will take it up next week and the government expects it to come into force Jan. 15.

THIS is an example of othering. In order to push draconian control measures through the French bureaucracy, and possibly to rig an upcoming April election, he offers a convenient scapegoat of people who, yesterday, were totally normal people. “Relax, you’re only punishing people who deserve to be punished! This is justice, not my… not a despot’s wet dream! And once we succeed in destroying the unvaxxed, once that glorious precedent is set, we can revisit the definition of vaxxed, a definition which I alone shall control and bestow… temporarily… upon the proven loyal.”

End segue

In these communications, Biden, Trudeau, and Macron employed several practices of othering.

• They created a majority in-group, signaled by use of the first person plural (we, us), and a minority othered group, signaled by use of the third person plural (they, them).
• They cast blame for government pandemic policies on that othered group (“keeping us from turning the corner”).
• They used words to signal to the in-group that they should be angry at the othered group (“many of us are frustrated,” “I really want to piss them off”).
• Trudeau and Macron specifically used labels that devalued this othered group: misogynists, racists, enemies, non-citizens.

It’s a little funny to watch this guy struggle to question what he’s been raised to never, ever question. How exactly do you ‘other’ an enemy or non-citizen? They are already ‘other’.

• Most worryingly, Macron and Trudeau questioned whether and how to eliminate this othered group (“Do we tolerate these people?” and “How do we reduce that minority?”).

My hope is that this will all amount to nothing more than ignored political rhetoric – empty bluster these politicians hope will score a few popularity points with their electoral base. My fear is that it will not. Either way, this dangerous othering language must be recognized and condemned.

Notwithstanding his racial ignorance, I give McBrady full credit as a historian for identifying the imminent threat. Most of his colleagues never will.

The West’s leaders are committing war crimes and terrorist acts against their own peoples.

Historians study causality: contexts, conditions, events and their outcomes. We have examined the conditions that yielded chattel slavery, the gulag, the Holocaust, Jim Crow, Rwanda. This is not an attempt to equate current pandemic policies with these past tragedies.

Noooo, not at all! Heh heh. “Don’t make me see this! I’m scared to see this… but… but… I must know!”

Rather, this is a warning call. We have seen these conditions before, and we have seen where they lead. Turn back now – that way leads to darkness.

The Bidenreich ain’t turning back. They want to go where this leads. Normie doesn’t have the option to turn back except armed revolt, the ones who haven’t already lost their wits to fear and isolation. That ain’t happening even in USA where revolt was the official plan. And we who see what’s coming, what good is knowing when there’s no action to take?

There’s a case to be made that we would have been better off burning the history books. Forcing the wicked to relearn the principles of True Evil would have limited their ability to succeed at mind tricks like othering to a single human’s lifetime. People who are unwilling to burn perfumed princes, are generally still willing to burn books, so cultural ignorance would have limited the damage in a way that knowledge has not. Although both methods fail to limit the existence of evil.

Are there principles of True Good to be learned and passed forward? There is Scripture, to be sure, but it hasn’t been updated in 2,000 years. Perhaps humanity cannot be Good long enough for God to bother with additional instructions on human psychology and behavior.

One supposes that we are better at recognizing evil than past generations were. But really, how hard is it to recognize the evil in this case study:

Democratic lawmaker wants unmasked House members relegated to isolation boxes in the gallery

h ttps://www.theblaze.com/news/democratic-lawmaker-wants-unmasked-house-members-relegated-to-isolation-boxes-in-the-gallery

Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) wants to put unmasked House members in a box — literally.

Due to COVID-19 concerns, Clark is asking the sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives, William Walker, to require lawmakers who forego masks to attend the floor from isolation boxes in the gallery.

If she was actually concerned about getting the Moronic variant then she would put herself in an isolation box. Scratch that, she’d skype into the Capitol Building or send a proxy. But no, she is obviously wanting to dehumanize her political opponents who not only defy the Narrative, they still aren’t dead as predicted. How much education does it really take to see this?

Which is actually a good question. Coof-Moronic is objectively known to be a nothingburger yet our overlords have so successfully reformatted Covidian brains that they cannot be convinced by any argument. Some people today will wear their face diapers to the grave in bleak, eye-rolling terror of Covid-Flurona-2045.

Would evildoers have known how to do that had we deleted the memory of Soviet indoctrination methods in the 1980s?

Well… yeah, probably they would have. The Bidenreich was taught directly by the Bolsheviks escaping “Jewish persecution” who were careful to preserve the methods of deceit in their own religious texts for millennia. Also, knowing about Bolsheviks and immigration hazards and other trends in history did nothing to stop the ‘Murican imperialists from betraying everybody and ultimately themselves, too.

So no, there’s little point in erasing history. It’s just a tool like many others we have.

Members already face fines for entering the House floor without wearing a mask. The first offense costs $500, while subsequent instances of noncompliance cost a whopping $2,500.

“Unfortunately, these fines have proven insufficient to prevent some Members from repeatedly violating this commonsense rule,” Clark wrote in the letter to Walker. “In fact, two House members alone have accumulated more than $100,000 in fines over the last year. This callous disregard for House rules endangers the health of Members of Congress and the professional staff whose physical presence is required to ensure continuity of government.”

Salute to Marjorie Taylor Greene & Andrew Clyde of Georgia! Fresh air is always a smart purchase.

It is good to know the truth and better to act upon it. But the Church… the real Church, not the perfumed princes and fancy boxes… doesn’t have a theology on how to thwart massive, institutional evil. It’s a feature of Christianity. Christ warned us that His kingdom isn’t a mortal one.

History is like every other technology that humans invent. We create it and teach it in order to be like God, that great Creator and Author and wellspring of Truth, then the devil shows up using our creations to steal, kill and destroy Creation. There is no moral progress to be made in remembering history any more than there is moral progress in making a firearm. The act and skill of making it are valuable but the end product must still be used with wisdom. Not with knowledge. !Science! is a popular religion because it always tells you how but never if you should.

Speaking of moral progress… it’s an open secret that our governments across the world are teaching the sheeple that we unvaccinated are a deadly threat, and it’s clear that history remembering the previous times this happened is not going to prevent it happening again. History says that the last time this happened, the Kulaks responded by starving to death… thanks, history! You remind me to put my trust in God.